Missing posts Posts between early March and late July of 2010 are for the moment missing-- when we moved from one host to another, the prior host arbitrarily witheld 5 months of posts and is demanding we both move back and pay them to get back our data. While I try to solve this, you can find these posts by searching Google and clicking the "cached" option.
I started (co)blogging as NMC in early 2008 on the Folo blog, (with coblogger Lotus); that blog went on hiatus in March, 2009.
In 2005, I covered Fifth Circuit cases for the (now defunct) Appellate Law and Practice blog.
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There was a apparently recently a highest-possible level meeting of Chinese Communist Party officials, worrying about the security of the most sensitive of government documents– what happens if there’s a day of reckoning and these documents come out, wikileaks style?
This caused online speculation about what events would be most interesting to those focused on modern Chinese history. What documents would be most interesting to see? The NY Review of Books blog has a consensus list, along with some details about the meeting:
- The famine during the Great Leap Forward 1959-62. Between 20 and 50 million people died from policy decisions. What happened, and what policies caused the famine and suppressed information? Was grain sold to buy nuclear weapons?
- The death of General Lin Biao 1971. He supposedly plotted a coup, failed, and was shot down in his plane while trying to flee. This story has never been accepted. What really happened?
- Mao’s will and personal lock box late 70s. During the Gang of Four trial, Mao’s wife said he’d left a written will. He also had a lockbox of his most important secrets; his mistress had the key, which was taken after Mao’s death. Was there a will? What’s in the box.
- The Tiananmen Square Massacre 1989. The basic story is known, but records of key meetings are classified and “responsibility for the massacre remains an extremely sensitive question in Chinese politics.”
- Suppression of the Falun Gon after 1999. Falun Gong claims there are concentration camps for members and worse.
- The scope of the secret domestic spying/intimidation/detention program for dissent. There are reports this budget exceeds all parts of government spending except the military.
- Bank accounts of Communist party officials. How much have they hidden away or sent abroad?
Colonel Lawrence Sellin, a reserve officer in Afghanistan, was fired for publicly editorializing about his hatred of PowerPoint and how it is used at the command level in the army. Folks may remember my personal dislike of PowerPoint, and the slide above that was sent ’round the net as an example of the perniciousness of Army PowerPoint presentations (I thought I’d blogged about that slide, but can’t find the post…)
As an aside, this sounds to my son-in-law, who was an enlisted man in both Afganistan and Iraq about what officers do…
In any event, Col. Sellin has written a series of editorials for UPI. Here’s what Col. Sellin had to say about PowerPoint:
KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 24 (UPI) — Throughout my career I have been known to walk that fine line between good taste and unemployment. I see no reason to change that now.
Consider the following therapeutic.
I have been assigned as a staff officer to a headquarters in Afghanistan for about two months. During that time, I have not done anything productive. Fortunately little of substance is really done here, but that is a task we do well.
We are part of the operational arm of the International Security Assistance Force commanded by U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus. It is composed of military representatives from all the NATO countries, several of which I cannot pronounce.
Continue reading An Anti-PowerPoint Rant from an Army Officer
The New York Times has a really remarkable look at recovery in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans since Katrina (above is a partial screen shot), based on research by Anthony Curtis, a professor at USC. His research involves gathering video evidence of changes in the neighborhood; what the NY Times has up on its site is video from 2006, 2007, 2009, and 2010 filmed down nine blocks of Flood Street and Forstall Street, two streets that run at a right angle to the river, Forstall about four blocks from where the levee break and Flood another five blocks farther out. You see the streets go buy parallel– watching each spot in each year at the same time– along with quotes from people from the neighborhood. There’s so much going on in the videos I could not take it in all at once. Highly recommended.
- A Ripley alderman was arrested today for capital murder! ”Ripley Ward 3 Alderman Lonnie Smith was arrested late Friday morning by Tippah authorities and charged with capital murder in connection with the April shooting death of Antrozon D. Wallace of Ripley.” More in the Daily Journal.
- The New York Times has a piece comparing rumor to fact about post-Katrina New Orleans and the city awash in violence, a “narrative of those early, chaotic days — built largely on rumors and half-baked anecdotes — quickly hardened into a kind of ugly consensus: poor blacks and looters were murdering innocents and terrorizing whoever crossed their path in the dark, unprotected city. “As you look back on it, at the time it was being reported, it looked like the city was under siege,” said Russel L. Honoré, the retired Army lieutenant general who led military relief efforts after the storm. Today, a clearer picture is emerging, and it is an equally ugly one, including white vigilante violence, police killings, official cover-ups and a suffering population far more brutalized than many were willing to believe.”
- Sarah continues her Rome adventures, going to the beach at Ostia Lido,where she sees a restaurant called Old Wild West Steakhouse that has as a prominent menu item “Mississippi Beef. I am really unsure what that means.”
- The New York Times hangs out with Dr. John overlooking the Hudson and attempts to follow his hipster jive.
- The Washington Post tracked the Minerals Management Agency from its creation by Reagan Interior Secretary James Watt through the present, and how it captive of the various extraction industries.
- The weirdest spam I’ve had lately asks me if I want to become the area’s dog bite attorney. Seriously. If it were Springtime I would have thought it an April Fool’s joke. Woof! Hey, my dog got attacked by a known to be vicious American Staffordshire terrier, and no ambulance chasers tried to sign him up, so maybe there’s an opportunity here I’m underestimating.
The Saint Louis Post Dispatch is reporting that Cardinal’s slugger Albert Pujols is going to appear at Glen Beck’s rally in D.C. tomorrow, along with manager Tony LaRussa who… somehow… thinks its not a political event:
“I made it clear when we were approached: I said, ‘If it’s political, I wouldn’t even approach Albert with it.’ I don’t want to be there if it’s political,” La Russa said.
La Russa created a minor stir last month when he publicly supported an Arizona statute calling for heightened enforcement against illegal immigrants.
Along with a number of staff members, coaches and players, La Russa met two months ago in the Cardinals clubhouse with Beck and fellow Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly.
Pujols autographed a bat for Beck and the two struck a relationship that facilitated Saturday’s appearance.
“I made the point several times: What is this about?” La Russa said Thursday, noting an understanding that invitations were ‘sent out across party lines, different disciplines, all kinds of stuff.
“I don’t know who’s going to be there, who’s going to accept it. But the gist of the day is not political. I think it’s a really good concept, actually.”
Talking Points (where I saw this story and which had the headline idea first) asks the obvious question:
On what planet is a Glenn Beck rally in the National Mall on the 47th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech that features Sarah Palin not political? Beck claims that he didn’t plan for the event to be on the MLK speech anniversary, but it’s not a coincidence, according to Beck. It’s “divine providence.” It also happens to be the same weekend that FreedomWorks, one of the driving corporate/Republican Party forces behind the tea party movement, is holding its convention in DC.
The title of the event is “Restoring Honor.” According to Beck: “This is going to be an iconic event. This is a moment quite honestly, that I think we reclaim the civil rights movement.” Reclaim the civil rights movement? Beck also says, “If you come, I believe this may, maybe in 100 years from now or 200 years from now, I believe this will be remembered as the moment America turned the corner.”
Ok, guys: Forget the rally and focus on beating the Nationals this weekend, all right?
Scott Barretta writes in the Clarion Ledger:
One of Mississippi’s oldest and most unique musical traditions is the fife and drum picnic, which has traditionally had its strongest roots in Tate and Panola counties. On Friday and Saturday the tradition continues with the Otha Turner Family Goat Barbecue and Picnic in the Como area.
Musicians at the event, which starts both days in the mid-to-late afternoon, include the late Turner’s granddaughter, 19-year-old Sharde Thomas, who now leads his Gravel Springs Fife and Drum Band. Other artists include Kenny Brown, Mark “Muleman” Massey, Blue Mother Tupelo, David Evans and members of the Burnside family.
The African-American fife and drum tradition appears to have developed shortly after the Civil War, though it’s likely its roots stretch back to African-American musicians in the Federal Army. The tradition pre-dates blues, though today the repertoire includes blues standards including Sittin’ On Top of the World and My Babe.
The legacy of Otha Turner, who died in 2003 at 94, is actively celebrated by many members of his family, including his eldest daughter, Betty Turner.
“I’ve been going to these picnics for 65 years,” says Turner. “They weren’t as big as they are now, and before they just had one fife and drum band and it was just locals. Now you’ve got people coming from all over the United States and outside of the country, too.
“I get the chance to see so many people and I love that goat. I don’t get to have goat but once a year.”
The picnic takes place at the former home of Otha Turner on O.B. McClinton Road, just east of Gravel Springs Road in Tate County. Bands play on a makeshift stage, but the highlights are the fife and drum band’s processions through the crowd.
Admission is $2.
If you’ve never been, you should go. Here’s directions courtesy of Kenny Brown’s facebook feed. The Oxford directions will obviously work for anyone coming from the South on I-55 (in which case start the 2 miles on I-55 from the Batesville exit).
Oxford:
Rt 6 to I-55N,
Como exit E on Rt 310 2 miles,
L on Hunter’s Chapel Rd,
N on Hunter’s Chapel 4 miles (Hunter’s Chapel becomes Gravel Springs Rd),
R on O.B. McClinton Rd,
1-2 miles, Otha’s house is on R
Memphis:
I-55 to Sentabobia,
E on Rt 4 about 4 miles,
R on Gravel Springs Rd 3 miles,
L on O.B. McClinton Rd,
1-2 miles, Otha’s house is on the R
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