The New York Post’s Richard Johnson is reporting that “A consortium of mysterious European investors has approached [Mel] Gibson about a possible takeover of Disney now that Comcast has thrown in the towel.”
The Defamer speculates: European, mysterious, loaded, and loves Gibson? Is even the Vatican coming after Eisner now?
While The Daily Kos says, “Seriously, though, could you imagine Disney being added to the right-wing nutjob empire? We might as well let Rev. Moon buy them out and make Mickey his disciple.”
Mel, The Man For The Mouse House?
World Food Prices Set to Rise
At the same time we’re being hit by increased prices for gas at the pump, the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute (EPI) reports that world food prices are set for a dramatic jump in the coming year.
According to the group’s calculations, four successive shortfalls in annual grain harvests have reduced the world’s carry-over stocks to their lowest level in 30 years, amounting to only 59 days of consumption. That is 11 days short of the 70-day level that is traditionally considered the minimum needed for food security.
The last time global stocks were so low in the early 1970s, wheat and rice prices doubled with disastrous consequences for millions of the world’s poor. A similar pattern may be asserting itself now, according to Lester Brown, EPI’s founder and president, as basic food and feed commodities are on the rise.
Brown says that the challenge of rebuilding the stocks to the 70-day consumption level will be very difficult to overcome, particularly if early indications for the winter wheat crop, which was planted last fall, are not hopeful.
Iraq: The Prisoner Abuse Scandal
How the Abu Ghraib Photos Got Out
COURT-MARSHALL: Lieut. Calley was convicted in 1971 for murder at
My Lai in the last high-profile court-martial of an American soldier.
According to a story published in the New York Times, the father of Ivan Frederick, one of the prison guards now charged with Iraqi prisoner abuse, fearful that his son would be a scapegoated, contacted his brother-in law, William Lawson, who contacted “retired Colonel and muckraker David Hackworth,” who put the father in touch with the ‘60 Minutes II’ producers.
The irony, Mr. Lawson said, is that the public spectacle might have been avoided if the military and the federal government had been responsive to his claims that his nephew was simply following orders. Mr. Lawson said he sent letters to 17 members of Congress about the case earlier this year, with virtually no response, and that he ultimately contacted Mr. Hackworth’s Web site out of frustration, leading him to cooperate with a consultant for “60 Minutes II.”
60 Minutes II says: “We heard about someone who was outraged about it and thought that the public should know about it.”
And as has been reported througout the weekend, reports indicate that there’s more to come: “Officials said that the photographs showing psychological or physical abuse numbered in the hundreds, perhaps more than 1,000, with Mr. Rumsfeld hinting Friday that more may come out.”
Iraq: The Prisoner Abuse Scandal
What Happened to Bush’s Dream Team?
DREAM TEAM: President Bush speaks to the press about establishing an
independent investigation into intelligence failures in Iraq on February 2,
2004 in Washington, D.C. Bush is surrounded from left to right, Secretary of
State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Up until the beginning of last week, the Bush administration pretty much had its way with the American media. Whatever policy position President Bush enunciated to the American public through the press, whatever spin on events the White House promoted on any given event, was pretty much reported verbatim — without comment, philosophical reflection, or investigation as to the veracity of the information — by the American press and was printed, or broadcast, untrammeled, and edited in such as way as to preserve the imperial nature of the Presidency.
No more.
With the publication, last Monday, of the Abu Ghraib pictures of Iraqi prisoners being tortured by American troops internecine warfare began to break out in the once closed ranks of the Bush administration.
In the latest issue of Time, the magazine’s Washington-based reporters report that those who surround Bush are finding it increasingly difficult to present a positive message, as finger-pointing has taken the place of “keeping on message.”
Top Bush officials griped about what one called Rumsfeld’s “destructive arrogance.” Says the adviser: “You have no idea what it’s like to deal with the United States of Rumsfeld.” Colin Powell’s closest aides, like chief of staff Larry Wilkerson, were quoted in GQ magazine, saying that Powell was weary of fighting ideological “utopians” in the Administration and being forced to do “damage control” and “apologizing around the world.” Powell’s foes, perhaps in retaliation, blamed him for being slow to decide to travel to the Middle East to help quell the furor over the abuse scandal. Says a senior Bush official of the open warfare: “It is not very conducive to a healthy working environment.”
The White House will surely try to regroup, but it is appearing increasingly obvious that a wholesale purge of the senior ranks of the Bush administration will become necessary if Bush is to have any reasonable chance at a second term in office.