USA: Judiciary: Chief Justice US Supreme Court sworn in, again on Monday

Yes, it's official now. After a 70-something vote out of 100, the United States Senate confirmed the appointment of John Roberts as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. If you want to see what any particular Senator did when his name was called, you can check out the Senate Roll Call Vote on Roberts.

Buzz has it that of the 12 nay-sayers, including Hilary Clinton, all are dependent upon the financial contributions of wealthy radical leftwingers like George Soros and Barbra Streisand, and also upon the membership of the radical groups who besides financial contributions often donate their hate-Bush services as volunteers in poiitical campaigns.

With hindsite, we can now say, bracing ourselves, that the real battle is coming around the President's next appointment to the Court to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Conner. She has given notice of her desire to leave the bench as soon as the President nominates and the Senate confirms her replacement. We can expect Pres. Bush to name that new member of the Court rather soon. Tomorrow? Next week?

Undoubtedly, there will be another round of organizational fever both Yes and No to that second nominee to the Supreme Court, a very fallible process among the citizenry and within the news-and-opinion media to be sure. But compare that democratic process in the American Republic to what happens in Canada with the kingpin Prime Minister making all the appointments with no confirmation vote and no hearings and no public slugfest, where a Supreme Court Justice does not go into office with a Bang, but with a whimper and the public be damned.

I prefer the American way. - Owlb

World Investment & Trade: China & Canada:Govt supine as China poaches Canadian industries

Suddenly, official statistics in Canada reveal that the USA is no longer Canada's chief trade partner (you can click-up a pay-for article on the subject), while China has slipped into that top category, with the balance of trade figures pleasantly favouring the Communist Chinese corporations. Many of these companies are known for human-rights abuses and financial shenanigans. This is "the Robber Baron" phase of China's industrial development, all under the auspices of a totalitarian Communist government which practices slave labour, religious oppression, and outlaws a free labour movement independent of the puppet union sponsored by the Communists.

The most recent case of China's investment strategy vis à vis Canada is that of EnCana, a Canadian oil coporation, which has just sold its assets in Ecuador, in the form of Andes Corporation, to a consortium of the Chinese government's oil companies - China National Petroleum Corporation, Sinopec, and Sinochem - with Andes Corp, carrying a price tag of US$1.4 bn that the Chinese were pleased to ante up.

China e-Lobby took note of The Washington Times brief item on the above matter on September 20, and the pro-democracy Lobby then referred its readers to two earlier Communist China investment manoeuvres in Canada. The first (June 2 edition China e-Lobby):

Communist China gets another chunk of Canadian resources: The Communist-run oil firm Sinopec “took a 40% stake in a $4.5-billion Alberta oilsands project” (Edmonton Sun). The acquisition “comes after China National Offshore Oil Corp. bought a 17% stake in MEGEnergy Inc. of Calgary for $150 million in April” and as Communist-owned Minmetals is in talks to buy out Noranda – Canada’s third largest mining firm.

The second (August 22 edition of China e-Lobby):

Woe Canada! PetroKazakhstan agrees to CNPC takeover: Canadian oil firm PetroKazakhstan chose the China National Petroleum Corp (parent company to Petrochina) over two other takeover suitors (BBC). It was yet another move forward in Communist China’s Canada energy grab.

If you click-up the links I've removed from the second, in quoting these two capsules of info on ComChina's world investment strategy, you can detect for yourself a huge pattern in the Mainland Chinese investment component of its international trade strategy, around the critical development of oil sources to meet the explosive growth of demand to fuel its industries. But, further, each one of these state-run companies in each of the foreign countries becomes a host for parasitic espionage and political practices for the Chinese state and its totalitarian dominant Communist Party.

Why Canada goes supine in the face of these realities when they show up on Canadian soil, has to do more with the fevered visions of Prime Minister Paul Martin, than with a wise and realistic assessment of China's "investment" motives. Martin does not acknowledge, besides desire for profits, either the additional factors of China's human-rights absues and of Canada's own internal security-concerns. Martin has no moderate approach to Canadian investment in China, or to Chinese investment in Canada. On this subject of China, Martin is indeed an extremist, extremely nonchalant.

From the Chinese side, if you click-up the article live-linked in blue at the top of this refWrite blog entry, China View gives us a larger picture and emphasizes other aspects the Going Global industrial policy of the Chinese state in the one-page report "Outward direct investment to increase". The developments specified in our blog entry here, can be found in outline in the text of the page we've cited from China View (part of Xinhua). But the emphasis of the Outward Direct Investment report probably derives (thru this latter state-run news source amidst the severe rise of censorship of news under Hu Jintoa's régime), derives from politically-instructed writers perhaps themselves well aware of and constrained by the political and espionage functions of Chinese corporations in Australia, the USA, and Canada. - Politicarp

Politics: Latin America: Colombia's Prez, Uribe, initiates peace talks with ELN guerilla group, amnesty offered to 38 FARCs

At the same time he is trying to disarm and demobilize 20,000 rightwing "counterterrorists" some of whom have operated to "protect landowners and drug kingpins," Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe has opened talks aiming for peace with the leftwing militant group ELN whose members he had labelled "terrorists" in the past. More surprising yet, Uribe has offered pardons to ordinaries and amnesties to leaders of the even more violent farleft FARC. What precise conditions obtain in both cases is not yet clear to this refWrite commentator.

Uribe has yet to publicly invite the FARC to the negotiating table in Colombia. But under pressure from the hundreds of families of kidnapped citizens, he has been gradually softening his attitude towards a so-called humanitarian accord that would swap jailed guerrillas for about 60 high-profile political prisoners, including three Americans. And he no longer demands a cease-fire or that the talks take place outside of Colombia.

The president's sudden willingness to negotiate with both left-wing groups may have more to do with outside pressure than a major shift in Uribe's beliefs. He has been the object of intense international criticism concerning negotiations with the paramilitaries.

A so-called "Justice and Peace" law passed in June has been called a sham by human-rights groups because it pardons large groups of the fighters and may protect top commanders [among the "counterterrorists"], often accused of being drug dealers, from extradition to the United States.

The Christian Science Monitor's Rachel van Dongen reports that an electoral campaign in 2006 frames developments now, and that Uribe maintains a phenomenal 3-year 70% popularity level since he entered office. - Politicarp

Disaster: New Orleans: The City of Jazz bamboozles a rebuild, but jazz itself was hurt, more than a below-water urban insanity

There's a lot of bamboozling going on right now about rebuilding the City of New Orleans. Not a good idea. But let's parse what we mean by "City" in this instance, and for starters let's distinguish 1.) the City, 2.) the Port, and 3.) the Cultural Capital of Jazz as a now world-artform.

My idea is that the City not be rebulit. On the other hand, the Port of New Orleans should be reconstructed and enlarged as the down-Mississippi world-port of national and international trade. Beyond that, the Old City which went relatively unscathed because it sits on hi-ground, and the transMississippi zone of Algeria both should also be restored - perhaps in conjunction with one another, the complex being explicitly re-designed as a tourism mecca around Jazz, its musical parents, its sibs, and its cousins (leave rap out, as it has other civic matrices and points of origination). And, when I say "jazz," I definitely do not have songs and lyrics in mind, but instruments and instrumentalists, and the styles the instrumentalists invent, proliferate, and perpetuate.



Let's support the Port and all that Jazz!

If you want to donate to relief for jazz muscians in New Orleans, and to do so thru the fund for that purpose set up by Preservation Hall in the Old City, you can do so at the Hall's relief website. Thanks to Jason Kottke for the Hat Tip! - Owlb

My earlier comment on New Orleans, Katrina, the response, and rapper Kanye West has been rewritten a bit.

World Poverty: International Monetary Fund & World Bank : Debt cancellation for 18 states with hi-poverty (14 African,4 Latino)

Yep, the efforts at the top of the world economic organizational system to enact G8 proposals for debt cancellation have rumbled on a step further toward fulfillment. These are bureaucratic moves, but moves that are absolutely essential in the real world, despite the sneers of the anti-globalizationists and negative-anarchists that decry both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

We have them, we need them, they aren't perfect, and just how much they function in your interest and mine is questionable, tho clear answers are slow to arrive.

Still, we can applaud this rumble-shuffle forward as it will take a certain unsolvable pressure off the following countries where, no matter how irresponsible the state apparatus of each may have been, the people in large part are desperately poor on a daily basis:



Debt cancellation must be accompanied by other steps, among which are (yet not limited to) what's outlined in this statement from the Treasurer of the US:

'Successful conclusion'

The World Bank gave its blessing to the debt relief deal late on Sunday, at the end of the lender's annual series of meetings with the IMF in Washington.

The IMF had already given its backing, and the two international lenders will now ask their executive boards to rubber stamp the agreement.

US Treasury Secretary John Snow said the World Bank's development committee had "strongly endorsed the proposal for 100% cancellation" of debts.

"We expect the executive boards of the IMF and World Bank to swiftly give final approval and move on to implementing it," he said.

Eighteen nations stand to have $40bn in debt written off initially, while $55bn could be released eventually, UK Chancellor Gordon Mr Brown said.

Oops!, only $40bn out of a total of $95bn? From the 18 most-disastrous national economies in the world? - at least in Africa and the Western Hemisphere? More info is needed to understand the parameters of what actually has been written off, and what hasn't. Because we know if it's the same 18 countries, then they're still stuck in the revolving door - and thus we'd be confronted with another half-way measure with no guarantee of actually helping anyone. - Owlb

Baseball: Blue Jays vs Red Sox: After a game this afternoon, the teams will meet again tonite - Jay spoilers of Sox fortunes?

BLUE JAYS WATCH

Blue Jays fans! - don't miss the game with the Boston Red Sox tonite (telecast, I presume). Game starts at 7:05 PM. As the item from the Ottawa Sun indicates, tonite's game follows on an earlier game this afternoon (a sequence called a "day-niter"). As we come to the end of the Baseball season, Toronto's Blue Jays have the chance to become spoliers in the battle of the Yankees and the Red Sox for the lead in the American League East.

At Boston, the scheduled game between the Blue Jays and Boston was postponed by rain Monday night, forcing the Red Sox to play a day-night doubleheader in the middle of a tight pennant race. The game will be made up today at 1:05 p.m., and the teams will play again at 7:05 p.m. as scheduled -- so Boston must rearrange its pitching plans for the week. The Red Sox entered yesterday tied with the Yankees atop the AL East with seven games to go. Curt Schilling, slated to start last night, will now pitch tonight against the Blue Jays and then in the regular-season finale against New York at Fenway Park on Sunday -- instead of Saturday. Tim Wakefield, originally scheduled to pitch tonight, will start the day game for the Red Sox.

There's an inning-by-inning updated scoreboard for tonite's game at the Sun Sport site. - Owilie Scowlie

Music: Live 8 concerts: Live 8 DVDs to be released Nov 8, says Geldoff, says Fox 411 entertainment alert

Live 8, the series of concerts that were part of the worldwide lobby effort on behalf of reducing Africa's extreme poverty at last summer's G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, will be releasing a set of 4 DVDs of the mega-music event on November 8, 2005.



While the special Technorati webpage that updates Live 8 developments hasn't yet taken cognizance of the super-release, Fox 411, a daily entertainment email newsletter, has a full account (along with on rapper Kenye West's new album, and one by Tim McCarthy as well).

According to Sir Bob Geldof's press release, "EMI and the Live 8 organization have agreed that a generous royalty from sales of the Live 8 DVD will go to the Band Aid Trust for the relief of hunger and poverty in Africa." The Fox 411 coverage explores the questions arising in regard to who will give what to whom in line with the charitable purposes of the Concert Event/s. "The four-disc set includes all of the big performances from London, Philadelphia and Edinburgh. Separate discs from the Paris, Berlin, Rome and Toronto shows will also be available." Do the royalties that are hived off for the owners of the songs become profits for the writers and/or subsequent owner who bawt them from writers, thus compromising the principle of charity in a separate category from the "royalties for the discs sold?," Fox 411 asks.

Watch for further developments as November 8 approaches. And watch the Technorati Live 8 by means of our badge in the right-hand column, to follow how quickly its front page gives attention to this latest emergent issue in the relief movement against extreme poverty in Africa. - Owlb

Canada: Fed politics & foreign policy: What's on Norman Spector's mind Friday AM?

Having been away from blogging, news analysis, opinion-crafting, and even news surfing - I was truly surprised now that I'm starting up again, surprised to find these three items on the hi!ly-reputed daily newsurvey of Norman the Great. I add enumeration of Mr Spector's three points and bold to held the points stand out, because of my interspersed comments, sarcasm, and word-plays - which complicates the text further.

1.) Paul Martin did not refer to his great innovation of last September--"asymmetrical federalism"--even once in his vision speech on Tuesday.

And, three days later, I've not been able to find a single analysis of the speech in English that mentions the air-brushing of the "a-word" [assymetrical - an assymetrist measures how much of an ass a public official is - Owlb].

2.) As readers of this press review know, I'm no fan of Pierre Pettigrew of Paris [Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs]. That said, Kevin Libin will be very fortunate if the Minister's chauffeur doesn't sue* him for his posting about you-can-guess-what.

* [Norman live-links the word "sue" to his own quote from Glen McGregor's article in The Ottawa Sun that makes the unanticipated remarks that follow. - Owlb]

Glen McGregor

The Ottawa Citizen

The chauffeur who accompanied Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew on government-funded trips abroad is considering legal action after an item on a conservative magazine's website questioned whether they had a romantic relationship.

Kevin Libin, editor-in-chief of the Calgary-based Western Standard, wrote in a web log entry this week that the media should have asked about the nature of Mr. Pettigrew's relationship with driver Bruno Labonte following a report that they had travelled together to Europe and South America.

If you wander over to the Western Standard website and scroll down, you can still find the posting as well as the comments it has elicited.

[Besides Pettigroom's (he's known for his dandified hair-dos) role in l'affaire pettigruesome, one can't help but note in passing that the intellectually-insipid Civil Marriage Act rammed thru by Prime Minister Paul Martin is having further consequences (recall the two heteromale friends who announced they'd marry to get the newly-available benefits now up for grabs under the generic-marriage concept of the Act), further consequences which the neo-jerkidicism never anticipated, here brawt home - rather, to Paris and other hotspots visited by the twosome Prettigruesome and his car-driver Labonte. O, the bounties of the public troff at which even Mounties must duly scoff!]

[McGregor continues quoting and commenting on the notables, making the point to which I referred in my bracketted paragraph just above. - Owlb]

"Mr. Labonte is discussing these attempts on his personal reputation with his lawyers," Mr. Pettigrew's press secretary, Sebastien Theberge, said in an e-mail.

Mr. Theberge emphatically denied there was anything improper between the two men.

"Mr. Pettigrew's relationship with his driver is and has always been strictly professional," he wrote. …

Mr. Libin said he had not heard from Mr. Labonte's lawyer.

"I cannot imagine that, in a country where same-sex partners have the same rights as heterosexual couples, that suggesting a romantic entanglement between one man and another man would qualify as any sort of slander," he wrote in the blog.

Mr. Libin has been editor-in-chief of Western Standard since it launched last year. The magazine, published by former Canadian Alliance [political party now merged with the Conservatives] strategist Ezra Levant, describes itself as "the voice of the New West."

3.) No mention of the Canadian ambassador [to the UN?, to the US?, to France?] in this report:

The United States and Europe sought support Thursday for a tough new resolution they are circulating at the International Atomic Energy Agency accusing Iran of "noncompliance" with treaties governing its nuclear program but not immediately referring the matter to the United Nations Security Council.

But the new draft proposal, which signaled that Iran's case would be sent to the Security Council eventually, was meeting the same resistance from Russia and other countries as an earlier draft that would have referred the case right away, European diplomats said….

In another development Thursday, European Union diplomats walked out on a march in Tehran marking the anniversary of the beginning of the war with Iraq in 1980 after ballistic missiles rolled past carrying anti-American and anti-Israel banners, Agence France-Presse reported.

West Presses for Nuclear Agency to Rebuke Iran, Russian Dissent (NYT)

What do you call the sequence of news-surfing from source to source, some kind of journalistic enthymeme? In any case, I want to Hat Tip all three sources in the sequence Pettigrew/Labonte. Thanks to Norman Spector's Daily Press Review, to Glen McGregor of The Ottawa Sun, and to Mr Kevin Libin's quick uptake in Western Standardon the imps of the gmarriage law for the likes of Ambassador Pettigrew and his driver Labonte who seem able to fleece the public of its tax-moneys while remaining strictly outside the bonds of gmatrimony (in which case, some jerkidical Canadian court would probably find grounds to approve the fleecing). As to the initiative against Tehran's nuclearization, so ably written up by Simon Wiesman in today's New York Times: why isn't Canada on board? This too is pretty gruesome. - Owlb

Southeast Europe: Serbian recalcitrance: Serbia still blocks Kosovo independence

"Kosovo wants to become independent of Serbia, while Serbia insists it should remain a Serbian province," writes Erliss Selimaj matter-of-factly in Southeast Europe Times. The truth is that Serbia has not really come out of its denial, since it lost its mythical empire, not only Kosovo, but all of former Yugoslavia which it tried to rule under Whathisname, now on trial in the Hague. Serbia still blackmails coastline and restive Montegnegro into a pseudo-federation, that allows the Serbs to speak of the contrived entity "Serbia-Montegnegro."

But, regarding Kosovo against which Serbia conducted a genocidal war that Europe and the USA brawt to a halt, Serbia still is not able to grasp that only 6% of the Kosovo population is of Serbian ethnicity. The Serb minority is entitled fully to its human and civil rights, but it cannot bind the largely Muslim majority to the Serbian state. That state has absolutely no moral authority among the huge majority of Kosovars - who, not incidentally, are of Muslim background and among whom Islamic European culture of a unique kind is undergoing a renaissance counting many institutions active in many realms of Kosovo life. There are Muslim political parties practicing democracy and helping to build a democratic society of Muslim majority. This reality should not be bound to Serbia's fantasy of overlordship. Yet both in Kosovo itself and in Serbia, the Serbs have remained intransigent towards the desire of the Kosovo majority's desire for an independent state.

Nevertheless, one can only applaud the recent meeting held at last, in Vienna no less, on September 16.

The talks between the ministers of local governance of Kosovo and Serbia -- Lutfi Haziri and Zoran Loncar -- were described as businesslike and civil, focusing on some of the less-contentious issues that have prevented a lasting peace in Kosovo, such as local government reform and the return of tens of thousands of Serbs and other minorities who fled the province after the war.

The officials also discussed the return of property records, which Serb authorities took when they relinquished control of the province to NATO-led forces and the UN administration, officials said.

Eide said the meeting was a positive step and that both ministers agreed to discuss the issues together. "We cannot expect from this meeting to reach an agreement on difficult issues. If this was possible, the whole process would have been shorter. But I think that it is important that all the elements are put on the table and the talks were open and frank," he told journalists.

Analysts say that Kosovo -- which has been under UN administration since 1999 -- is making an effort to display willingness to co-operate in order to show that it is ready for the UN-backed status talks.

In the world such as it is, the meeting in Vienna was a very postive, tho very small step. We all need more of these in the whole region of Southeast Europe. - Owlb

USA: Disaster: Kanye & Katrina West underwater in New Orleans

Kanye West, a 26-year-old rapper and recently enriched thereby to maintain status in the upper reaches of the Black middle-class, has wed himself to Katrina, an entity of another species with whom he shares her rage. Some of this rapper's rage was utterly human and justifiable; another element of it was mechancial, like that of his new wife. [My semiotic analysis occurs within the bracketed material in the quote from Mr West below - Owlb.]

West: "I hate the way they [Blacks and Whites producing news coverage] portray us [Blacks who loot and/or look for food,] in the media. You see a black family, it [the technical assemblage of images and voiceover/s constructed by the team of technical media experts involved] says, "They're [the Blacks are] looting." You see a white family, it [the same technical assemblage by the same kinds of media experts mentioned, but who, when their images of Blacks are compared with their images of Whites and then the two different portrayals are juxtaposedas part of a single narrative as it were - then, thus editorialized, the constructed narrative no longer belongs to either of the originating reporters or camera men or audio techies but now involves TV news editors who construct the juxtaposition] says, "They're [the Whites who are looting or looking for food, are merely] looking for food."

I intervene in the text of wealthy Mr West's discourse, to applaud his gumption and selection of a semiotic factoid that constitutes in itself an indictment of the hysterical kind of coverage given to viewing world as presented by the imagery and word unique to the narrative-creating editors of CNN and ilk in the panic-journalism that flooded the airwaves in the wake of Mrs West's rage. This was Kanye's moment of truth - to give voice on NBC's fundraiser show to the racist insensitivity of TV news editors in putting one reporter's voiceover using the word "looting" in juxtaposition to another reporters's voiceover with another set of images and recorded spoken words, where the term chosen for the imagery portraying the Whites was merely "looking for" ... food. Neither of the reporters involved are at fault, but the overall editorial process of the narrative-creating editors who create such a fateful juxtaposition are. I was only watching CNN in those days, and saw these images, and saw Mr West's presentation. Was it before or after his presentation that CNN news editors selected reports of two different reporters to juxtapose directly and immediately the two narratives directly?, I would be interested to know.



Kanye West did not end his national prime-time intervention with that brilliant observation. Back to the rapper, the transcript of whose remarks can be found in "Kanye West's Torrent of Criticism, Live on NBC," by Lisa de Moralaes [(column, The TV Column), WaPo, Sept 3, 2k5, webpage C01].

West: "And, you know, it's been five days [waiting for federal help, adds Moralaes in her own brackets] because most of the people are black." That's the inner hurricane in Mr West himself speaking [with a little clarifying held from Moralaes]. And sad to say, it is a lie, a hurricanic lie, but nevertheless a lie. A presumptuous falsehood, for which he can be forgiven because of the overflow of intense feeling generated by the insensitivity of the panic newsediting on programs like those of CNN - especially Blitz Wolf, Karen HeadlinePrime, and Nancy Grace. Yes, it's true that I can't remember the black woman's name in this trio, but then Blitz and Nancy are well (even excessively) labelled - while HeadlinePrime's stupid and uncritical advocate for Mr West was not labelled when I went back to her evening news show in order to attach names to my CNN-unfamiliar memories for this write-up some days after the events.

West: "And even for me to complain about it, I would be a hypocrite because I've tried to turn away from the TV because it's too hard to watch. I've even been shopping before even giving a donation, so now I'm calling my business manager right now to see what is the biggest amount I can give does he mean, he'd like to give the biggest amount possible relative to his retaining a tax deduction, discount, write-off, etc? ... because if not, I would add that otherwise the sky's the limit, Mr West, as in "sell all that you have and give the proceeds to the poor"], and just to imagine if I was down there, and those are my people down there [here in Mr West's discourse "my people" means "my race" who have been labelled 'looters,' when a comparative group of whites are only 'looking-for's]. So anybody out there that wants to do anything that we can help -- with the way America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow as possible." America is set up to help the black people as slow as possible, says West, in a concept that is sheer unmitigated racist ideology.

West: "I mean, the Red Cross is doing everything they can. We already realize a lot of people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way -- and they've [is this the TV news editors again?, apparently not and apparently Mr West has a most slippery use of "they" at work for him in this discourse] given them [USA soldiers?] permission to go down and shoot us!"

Another hurricane-force lie! in which West adopts the media-editors' juxatpositions as his own, not pausing to consider that some Blacks are robbing, harming, and intimiadating other Blacks, as well as Whites, the poor as well as the well off. Indeed, some Whites also do the same against Blacks and Whites, rich and poor. That the government would give law enforcement permission to shoot the dreadful few in both racial configurations when the perpetrators are cawt in the act of harming others, is completely lost on Mr West in his rage of racist emotion.

In his second round on the NBC show, West demonstrated his absurdity further, by tacking on this tidbit.

West: "George Bush doesn't care about black people!"

On to other voices. In a wide-ranging article in The Washington Post, "Was Kanye West Right?," by Dan Froomkin (column, White House Briefing), WaPo, Sept 13, 2k5 (5 webpages), the Black journalist doesn't inspire any more confidence in Mr West and his racist worldview, while not really analyzing what West did and said in a serious way, to skip off and cover many other facets of the story, facets that have been reworked in the media at large since that time.

Now, with Hurricane Rita being upgraded to Category 5 and its path being projected as most likely to hit in the vicinity of New Orleans or Galveston, the recent claim that New Orleans would be drained by October is now wishful thinking only, the post facto adoption as a commonplace the notion that the levee's holding a river and lake back from inundating a large city looks much more significant than the five-days that Mr West so feverishly focused on in his bout of logistical lunacy. Another flash of resentment is now surfacing over the fact that the New Orleans' government was anxious to get citizens back into the least damaged areas, some people were returning to the town - only to be urged out again, due to Rita's developing ferocity. In the mood of Mr West, I just saw celebrities on TV setting up a blame scenario again, this time for encouraging evacuees to become returnees and then to become evacuees again. Is mindless blaming really an adult activity in these disaster-driven days? - Owlb