THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† Carrying The Torch For The “Genocide Olympics”: Academy Award-winning director Steven Spielberg had been hired by the Chinese government an artistic adviser for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games to be held in Beijing this coming August. Concerned over China’s close relationship with Sudan and the ongoing genocidal violence in the Darfur region, Spielberg had made several private entreaties to President Hu Jintao of China to use his leverage to compel Sudan to accept international peacekeepers and foreign aid workers to stem the violence and ease the suffering in the region.
Meanwhile, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last March, Mia Farrow famously asked, “Does Mr. Spielberg really want to go down in history as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games?,” a reference to the filmmaker who recorded the 1936 Berlin Olympics for Hitler for all posterity. Spielberg has now decided he does not want to play that part in Beijing’s “Genocide Olympics” and has walked off the set. Reports The Washington Post:
The filmmaker announced his decision to pull out of the Games on Tuesday only hours after actress Mia Farrow and former Olympic swimmers Shannon Shakespeare and Nikki Dryden delivered an open letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao at the Chinese mission to the United Nations in New York. The letter, signed by eight Nobel Peace Prize laureates, 13 Olympic athletes and 46 parliamentarians, criticized China for its support of the Sudanese regime in Khartoum.
Here are excerpts from Spielberg’s statement, which can be read in full here:
After careful consideration, I have decided to formally announce the end of my involvement as one of the overseas artistic advisers to the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games.
In anticipation that this day might one day come, I left unsigned the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games contract presented to me nearly a year ago. Since that time, I have made repeated efforts to encourage the Chinese government to use its unique influence to bring safety and stability to the Darfur region of Sudan. Although some progress has been made along the way, most notably, the passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1769, the situation in Darfur continues to worsen and the violence continues to accelerate.
With this in mind, I find that my conscience will not allow me to continue with business as usual.
Farrow, who called Spielberg action “an extraordinary act of conscience,” adds that she hopes it will “influence other participants, sponsors, and supporters of the Olympic Games to also drop out.”
† Craig, Constituents Clash: The Senate ethics committee “publicly admonished” Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) in a letter that concluded his arrest by the vice squad for disorderly conduct in an men’s bathroom in the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport was justified, and that his attempt to withdraw his guilty plea was “an attempt to evade the legal consequences of an action freely undertaken by you - that is, pleading guilty." Craig was also admonished for diverting $213,000 from his campaign committee to pay legal expenses in the case without permission from the ethics committee. Last October, a MN judge found that Craig's plea was “accurate, voluntary and intelligent” - meaning he can’t take it back - and Craig’s appeal of that ruling is still pending. The ethics committee did not recommend any punishment or a public inquiry into the matter, and Craig has said he intends to serve out his term.
† The Keystone Kops Are Enforcing U.S. Immigration Laws: Before the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency grants permanent residency to green-card applicants the FBI is supposed to perform a criminal background check. The FBI has fallen more than six months behind in this task, so the Bush administration is simply dropping the requirement. No government agency even knows how many of the 47,000 green-card applicants who have been waiting for this final step in the process to be completed will be affected. The American Civil Liberties Union is all for the new, more lenient procedure – natch - but Steven A. Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies, tells The Washington Post that this is the expected result of the government operating its immigration system “on the cheap,” adding: “You end up with people waiting longer than they should, and getting approved when they shouldn't. It's bad for crime prevention, national security and customer service.”
† What Freedom Of Speech Means To Muslims: To prevent the “poisoning the electoral sphere” leading up to the parliamentary elections that will be held a month from now, Iranian authorities banned five Web sites that comment on news and political affairs. One of them, Nosazi (“Reconstruction” in Farsi) is pro- Ahmadinejad, but stepped on some sensitive toes by criticizing Hassan Khomeini (the grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini) for wanting to prevent pro-democracy candidates from running for election.
† HP Sued For Spying On CNET Reporters: Hewlett-Packard has agreed to an out-of-court settlement of a lawsuit by The New York Times and three BusinessWeek reporters whose phone records were illegally obtained in a practice known as “pretexting” in an investigation by the company into boardroom leaks to the media that went awry. Five lawsuits by other journalists and their families against H-P are still pending.
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