EXPOSED: The REAL 2008 Oscar Best Picture Nominees

The News Corpse Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is proud to present its Oscar nominees for 2008.

News Corpse would like to congratulate the nominees and remind them that they are already winners.:

Atonement – The story of a country and a political party finally trying to make amends for a history of repression.

There Will Be Blood (Mud) – An epic tale of the destructive power of nature, and the even more destructive power of a corrupt and incompetent government.

Michael Clayton (Hayden) – Espionage, intrigue, torture, and deceit mark this political thriller that delves into the secret world of the CIA.

Juno (Repo) – This is the heartwarming tale of a family struggling to make ends meet in an economy ravaged by self-serving politicians and their cronies.

No Country For Old Men – Follow the adventures of a mysterious and foreboding figure who exudes fear and terror wherever he roams.

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Pony Party: Don’t look Now

That one just made me go a little cross eyed…..

That second one kinda just zoned me out out…

Should I have mentioned that if you’re hung over staring at that stuff might hurt?

Whatever you do DO NOT TOUCH THAT BUTTON….

Way to go you erased us all. Bummer.

Please don’t rec pony party, hang out chit chat, and then go read some of the excellent offerings on our recent and rec’d list.

Pony Party: Your Morning Art

Morning. If I am up you should be up! Fall into that post Valentine’s Day funk yet or are you still cresting the wave of joy and after glow?

Have some morning art….

Mellow I am not awake music….

Random picture….

Show me your random art projects or pictures if ya got any. Please don’t rec pony party, hang out, chit chat and then go read the excellent offerings on our recent and rec’d list.

Docudharma Times Saturday February 16

This is an Open Thread:

This is no terror ground

Or place for the rage

No broken hearts

White wash lies

Just a taste for the truth

Saturday’s Headlines: Democrats Look for Way to Avoid Convention Rift : Evolution Of a U.S. General In Iraq: In praise of … José Ramos-Horta: We can persuade Taliban to be peaceful – expelled UN man: Protests over Beijing games ‘will grow’ :Old questions hang over the new Kosovo: Coroners blame soldiers’ deaths on an acute lack of equipment: Africans unite in calling for immediate moratorium on switch from food to fuel: UN troops ‘trapped’ in Eritrea: Blast kills Islamic Jihad militant in Gaza: Feud leaves Haiti hospital half-built


Democrats’ wiretap stance endangers U.S., Bush says

Their refusal to extend warrantless powers increases the risk of attack on the nation, he says. Lawmakers accuse him of fear-mongering and say he has the tools he needs.

WASHINGTON — President Bush warned Friday that the United States was in “more danger of attack” because Congress failed to extend a domestic wiretapping law, while House Democrats said Bush had manufactured the impasse by threatening to veto a short-term extension.

“American citizens must understand, clearly understand, that there still is a threat on the homeland,” Bush said after meeting with Republican congressional leaders. Noting that the Senate had passed a bill extending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s warrantless domestic wiretapping, Bush said House Democrats — protesting protections for phone carriers from privacy lawsuits — had blocked it.

“By blocking this piece of legislation, our country is more in danger of an attack,” he said. “By not giving the professionals the tools they need, it’s going to be a lot harder to do the job we need to be able to defend America.”

USA

Democrats Look for Way to Avoid Convention Rift

Former Vice President Al Gore and a number of other senior Democrats plan to remain neutral for now in the presidential race in part to keep open the option to broker a peaceful resolution to what they fear could be a bitterly divided convention, party officials and aides said Friday.

Democratic Party officials said that in the past week Mr. Gore and other leading Democrats had held private talks as worry mounted that the close race between Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton could be decided by a group of 796 party insiders known as superdelegates.

The signs that party elders are weighing whether and how to intervene reflects the extraordinary nature of the contest now and the concern among some Democrats that they not risk an internal battle that could harm the party in the general election.

Evolution Of a U.S. General In Iraq

No. 2 Commander Transformed Tactics

CAMP VICTORY, Iraq — When Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno first came to Iraq in 2003, the division he led was quickly accused of overly aggressive tactics that did more to fuel the insurgency than quell it.

But over the past 15 months, Odierno has earned a very different reputation. Even some of his critics now say his tenure as the No. 2 military official in Iraq — a position he handed over this week — reflects a newfound understanding of counterinsurgency doctrine and the necessity of using nonlethal tactics to reduce violence in Iraq.

Asia-Pacific

In praise of … José Ramos-Horta

   * Leader

   * The Guardian,

   * Saturday February 16 2008

East Timor’s president, José Ramos-Horta, underwent a fourth operation yesterday. He remains in an induced coma after being shot and almost killed on Monday by a former ally in the rebel movement that freed his country from Indonesian rule. The story is terribly sad. President Ramos-Horta is an intellectual human-rights lawyer who won a Nobel peace prize in 1996. Last month he walked, unarmed and without guards, to a mountain village to negotiate with Alfredo Reinado, once a major in the Timorese army, who then broke away to fight the new government. The pair reached an agreement that should have brought unity to East Timor, which has suffered awful violence since Indonesia invaded in 1975. Instead Mr Reinado changed his mind about peace this week and led an armed gang down from the hills; the rebels first attacked the presidential palace, where Mr Reinado was shot dead by guards, and then fired on the president as he walked at dawn along a beach. He lay bleeding for 30 minutes before help arrived. Mr Ramos-Horta is a moderate and a democrat, a skilled informal diplomat who spent 30 years trying, successfully, to persuade a world that had never heard of East Timor to consider its plight. Doctors say he should recover, but his situation remains serious. Yesterday Australia’s new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, visited him in hospital. “I know the old José, he’s a fighter,” he said. “He’s got a good fight ahead of him still, but he’s a fighter.” Let us hope he is right. Timor needs him back

Asia

We can persuade Taliban to be peaceful – expelled UN man

Two-thirds of the Taliban-led insurgents in Afghanistan can be persuaded to abandon violence, according to a British aid worker expelled from the country for opening talks with some of those allied to the militant group.

Michael Semple, a UN official arrested by the Afghan government on Christmas Day last year, said he was confident that most Taliban-linked insurgents could be absorbed into Afghanistan’s reconciliation process.

In his first interview with a British news organisation since he was forced to leave Afghanistan by the government of President Hamid Karzai, Semple defended his role in talking to elements linked to the Taliban. Until 2003 he had been a senior political adviser to the British embassy in Kabul.

Protests over Beijing games ‘will grow’

This is just the beginning, activist warns, as China tries to limit damage

For six years, the organisers of the Beijing Olympics have been planning an event that will restore China to the centre of the world stage.

No expense has been spared, no detail overlooked. Beijing has splashed out $440m (£224m) on the spectacular “Bird’s Nest” stadium to underscore its rising economic power and ambition. Organisers have drawn up a guest list of the global great and the good to witness the re-emergence of this ancient civilization. And to entertain them and emphasise the openness of modern China, they hired the biggest name in Hollywood to help choreograph the festivities.

But with less than six months to go, this celebration of Chinese resurgence is threatening to degenerate into an opportunity for critics to land some blows on the communist leadership.

The stadium architect, Ai Weiwei, refuses to attend the opening ceremony because of the “disgusting” political conditions in the one-party state. The VIP list will not include Prince Charles, a friend of the Dalai Lama, who told the Free Tibet movement that he will be absent. And now, in the biggest blow yet, Steven Spielberg has resigned as artistic consultant, saying his conscience will not let him choreograph an event for a country that has done little to use its influence to ease the slaughter in Darfur.

Europe

‘Are we a society of values, or of blood?’ Old questions hang over the new Kosovo

Albanians and Serbs united in uncertainty as province prepares to go it alone

Just before dawn on one of Kosovo’s last mornings as a Serbian province, young military cadets are being put through their paces on a concrete drill field.

The 38 young men and women in matching tracksuits represent Kosovo’s hopes for the future, at least for its Albanian majority. As dense clouds of jackdaws swoop and wheel above them, they run in perfect formation, chanting their determination to defend the new nation about to be born.

“Bullets don’t scare us,” they shout. “A just war makes us even braver.”

These are the seeds of a modern security force that is supposed to be built on democratic values rather than ethnic ties, just like the embryonic state it is pledged to defend. But on the eve of independence, it is far from clear whether either will live up to the ideal.

Coroners blame soldiers’ deaths on an acute lack of equipment

Shortages of equipment were blamed yesterday for the deaths of British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan as two coroners in separate inquests made withering attacks on the Ministry of Defence.

One coroner attacked the MoD’s “unforgivable” failure to supply basic equipment, and accused it of a breach of trust. Both inquests showed that an acute lack of equipment had played a part in the deaths of a young officer in Afghanistan and two soldiers in Iraq.

Captain James Philippson, 29, of 7 Parachute Regiment Royal Horse Artillery, was killed by a gunshot wound to the head on June 11, 2006, when his unit went to the rescue of other British soldiers who had come under fire from the Taleban in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan.

Africa

Africans unite in calling for immediate moratorium on switch from food to fuel

By Daniel Howden in Massingir, Mozambique

Saturday, 16 February 2008

Scientists and NGOs across Africa are calling for a moratorium on new biofuels projects as millions of acres of prime agricultural land in sub-Saharan Africa are switched from food to fuel.

African governments, encouraged by counterparts in the industrialised world, have bought eagerly into the “green revolution” with promises of exports, energy security and job creation. The reality is the forced removal of small farmers, rising food costs and scant benefits for local populations.

UN troops ‘trapped’ in Eritrea

The United Nations has condemned Eritrea, accusing it of preventing hundreds of peacekeepers from crossing from Eritrea into Ethiopia.

The UN ordered its regional force to withdraw to Ethiopia after the Eritrean government cut off its fuel supplies.

But the UN says only six vehicles have been allowed to leave, some troops have been threatened at gunpoint and now their rations have been stopped.

Eritrea denied blocking their departure saying its supplies had simply run out.

Middle East

FBI warns of possible Hezbollah revenge in U.S.

State and local law enforcement receive an intelligence bulletin to watch for retaliation by the Lebanese militia group, which has vowed to avenge the death of its leader.

WASHINGTON — The FBI and Department of Homeland Security sent a bulletin Friday to state and local law enforcement authorities advising them to watch for potential retaliatory strikes by Hezbollah, one day after the Lebanese militia group vowed to avenge the death of a top commander by attacking Israeli and Jewish targets around the world.

“While retaliation in the U.S. homeland is unlikely, Hezbollah has demonstrated a capability to respond outside the Middle East to similar events in the past,” said the intelligence bulletin sent to about 18,000 state and local law enforcement officials late Friday afternoon.

The FBI also said it was intensifying its domestic intelligence-gathering efforts to identify any potential Hezbollah threats in the United States in the aftermath of Tuesday’s car-bomb assassination of Imad Mughniyah in Syria.

Blast kills Islamic Jihad militant in Gaza

JERUSALEM: A senior military commander of the radical Islamic Jihad movement was killed Friday night along with at least five others as a powerful explosion destroyed his house, but the Israeli military denied having anything to do with the blast.

The three-story house of Ayman Atallah Fayed was destroyed and six nearby homes damaged in the crowded Al Bureij refugee camp, Palestinian witnesses said. As many as 40 people were wounded, nine of them critically, according to Dr. Moawiya Hassanain, a Gazan Health Ministry official, and more casualties were being evacuated.

Abu Ahmed, an Islamic Jihad spokesman, accused Israel of a “Zionist massacre” from an airstrike, but an Israeli military spokeswoman flatly denied that Israel was responsible for the explosion. “There was no attack in the Gaza Strip,” said the spokeswoman.

Latin America

Feud leaves Haiti hospital half-built

Accusations fly between a Haitian archbishop and televangelist Jan Crouch.

CARREFOUR, HAITI — A multimillion-dollar building project involving a Haitian pastor and the Trinity Broadcasting Network has collapsed in recriminations, leaving behind a half-built hospital with a giant cross-shaped hole in one wall.

With $2.5 million already spent, work stopped almost two years ago on the first children’s hospital in this slum of half a million people, when the partnership between Archbishop Joel Jeune of Haiti’s Charismatic Church and Jan Crouch, the co-founder of the Costa Mesa-based TBN, turned bitter.

Jeune claims that Crouch erupted in anger when he told her that some Haitian boys who had been hired to guard the construction site reported that a TBN missionary had made homosexual advances.

TBN executives counter that the falling-out occurred when they confronted Jeune with their suspicions that he had siphoned off some of the Christian broadcaster’s donations.

Here lay we all

A friend of mine died yesterday, Valentines Day morning. She was at home surrounded by her sisters and held by her husband at the moment her body failed, as they sang to her and prayed. I sat in the hallway a few feet away and listened but did not impose myself to take up precious space at her bedside. She had pancreatic cancer that had remitted and recurred. Pain medication partially worked in the last few days, providing her hours or minutes of unconsciousness at a time but not in the final hour and a half of her life. Although unresponsive, she cried out strongly and often. Drowning finally ended her pain.

A couple of years ago she was diagnosed cancer and her prognosis was less than 5% chance of living beyond 6 months. Her treatment was first rate and with chemotherapy and surgery she went into complete remission. There wasn’t a trace of cancerous tissue in the organs that were removed, the therapy had been so successful, which is rare. However the treatment was so hard on her that she was left a shell of herself. We nearly lost her then and she almost succumbed to the trauma of the treatment. She had intense pride and it was clear she suffered greatly from seeing herself so feeble so she strictly limited her contact with anyone including old friends. Slowly she regained her health with many bumps along the way and only recently did we start seeing her back in her familiar settings. I saw her just before Thanksgiving as she made a point of coming to see me. She looked strong and had the old powerful and happy glint in her eye. She had always been a force to behold and she was back. I hugged her and told her how good she looked. I was happy to finally have her fully here among us again. Not more than a month later her diagnosis was changed again with no hope this time of survival. She went into bottomless depression and refused contact with anyone but her immediate family. Being a nurse, she even attempted push her family away and to find a facility to commit herself to that would oversee her care and allow her to deny her family the witness of the wrenching end she knew was coming. Of course that was far too much to demand of anyone and she was lovingly cared for at home by her family and hospice, but her passing has left wounds on those that were there. Hospice is a blessing, believe me.

Her name was Valencia. The influence of her life has been felt intensely by people around this earth. Right now funeral and memorial preparations are commencing with multiple services planned locally but also in a native American community, the Himalayas and a large monastery in southern India. Memorial funds are being forwarded to an orphanage in Haiti. She was christian and very set in her beliefs but welcomed them all into her life with a smiling open gaze, without bias or question.

She had a husband and two children, one of which she lost into the justice system because of mental illness – she and her husband had decided to adopt and raise a crack baby, an infant boy as their own since they viewed themselves as a uniquely qualified counsellor and RN team. However he was saddled with unfair and unresponsive disabilities and behaviors from the start that has bankrupted the family emotionally and financially. Even so, she always called him, “the joy of my life.” Many note aloud the coincidence of cancer with losing her boy. Now he is a ward of the state even though still under age, so that he can continue to get good care and treatment that the family can no longer afford. Lately that has included being imprisoned.

Many times I have had conversations with people in this very religious and conservative community about the fairness of “god” and the involuntary suffering by people such as Valencia’s son, who everyone knows and who had every advantage yet in retrospect, never any chance. This boy was damned before he took his first breath. I don’t think I will bring up Valencia’s death should the conversation recur – it is too much – too sensitive for anyone that knew her.

This is not meant as a memorial but my memories are vivid and fond and I hope I have conveyed a sense of her to you.

This we all have in common. We all suffer and we all die and I do not pretend to know what happens after. Regardless, it ends badly here for all of us. See that clearly and do not presume to know what you do not. As bad as that is…no because of it…we have a shared basis for truly looking at each other with understanding and care. Nothing is as inescapable and bad as this shared experience, and nothing is as deep as our shared connection because of it. I think we call it empathy and compassion. There is no room for pity in this unless you are in denial of your own fragility and mortality.

I had not seen this before – out of the muck of the brutality of life itself grows the possibility of, the need for and the flower of compassion. There is no place for it otherwise. Take a close look at it. As delicate as it seems, nothing is as potent. There is nothing else to hold on to either. I have looked – tell me what you find. But I can see that it is possible the view may buckle the mind and an insane haunted hellish and energetic denial take over. But with a little strength I think it is possible look closely, so that the bones of reality show and that there is truth there of some use. It is a terrible place to be with forces threatening to and actually tearing us apart, but it is life and is where we all are, just some less oblivious than others. For some reason it seems important to me to look honestly as I can while my body is still calm and my mind still works with any clarity.

All we have that makes it tolerable is each other. All else is insanity and denial and yet there are a lot of people in the grip of these two wreaking havoc in the fragile lives of others, causing huge amounts of needless suffering and death. Our shared experience cries out to us. Our shared connection demands that it stop. Life is more than enough on its own.

The complicated ethics of superdelegate voting are not *that* complicated