North Korean Breakthrough

Well, this looks like a bit of good news.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States says North Korea has agreed to suspend uranium enrichment and agree to a moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile tests.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland also said Wednesday the North has agreed to alllow International Atomic Energy Inspectors to verify and monitor the moratorium on uranium enrichment and confirm disablement of its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.

Her statement says the U.S. will meet with North Korea to finalize details for a proposed package of 240,000 metric tons of food aid.

It's been just the last couple of weeks that the US has been meeting bilaterally with North Korea, without a lot of media fuss.

And perhaps this can be a model for working with Iran. Quite a bit different from bombing them.

The War on Women and Sense

Peter Daou points out that women have to take the brunt of men's negative emotions across the world. So it makes a sort of sense, I guess, that Republican men are trying to push American women back to where they have to take the physical compensation for a variety of unhealthy mental states that women elsewhere do. And, sadly, there are women who agree that they should be in that position. Or, as so often happens in politics, do they imagine that it's only the bad women who will be punished? History suggests otherwise.

But that wasn't the only thing I was thinking about in yesterday's post, nor is it the only thing that Troutsky's comment or the poems he's using refer to.

Blood-dimmed tide...how about Israel's dumb idea of starting a bloodbath across the Middle East? Or Iran's intransigence? There's a good side to this, in that plenty of people are pointing out that this is indeed a dumb idea in multiple dimensions, and it looks like the American government is trying to avoid a war.

And then there is, beyond the War on Women, the stupidity of the Republican nomination battle. Ignorant armies. Others have collected Mitt Romney's financier-frat-boy one-upmanship that is so engrained, he can't imagine that it's not working in the campaign; his funders love it. Or Santorum's sanctity. What I find most bizarre about that is so much of what he says is not Catholic but obviously pandering to the evangelicals he's expecting to vote for him. The saddest thing is that so many seem to take them seriously.

I won't mention the stupidity I'm seeing on a listserv that supposedly was set up to discuss communication strategies. It makes me wonder if there's any point in trying to have a discussion with anyone any more.

Added Later: Also the Wikileaks/Stratfor thing. I've felt for a very long time that Stratfor is far more hype than substance. The latest Wikileaks "revelation" supports that. Adam Weinstein lists the revelations so I don't have to read them.

Beyond Parody

The stupid was so thick today, a parody of Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" started forming itself in my head. But when I went to find the poem, I saw that it was far more expressive of what I was feeling than any parody I could invent.

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.


Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.


The Sea of Faith...well, we know what Rick Santorum and his Catholic bishop friends would think that signified. And perhaps that was what Arnold meant, although if he meant religion, it probably encompassed a great deal more than control of women's reproductive organs.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another!

I'm lucky to be immersed in a Sea of Faith of friends; just got a phonecall from one I hadn't heard from in a decade. But worlds change, and Arnold's was changing, as ours is. Sara Robinson points out, back to Santorum and friends, that these changes can take a long time indeed.

Arnold leaves us on that darkling plain. But it seems to me that if hang with those friends, it might just turn out to be a little more various, beautiful, and new.

Thinking Through Iran With the Help of George Kennan

I'm reading John Lewis Gaddis's George F. Kennan: An American Life. I've written a couple of longish posts over at Nuclear Diner trying to apply some of his thinking to today's situation with Iran (here and here).

One of the things I'm impressed by as I try to put myself into Kennan's mindset is how readily and exclusively the modern strategic mind (yes, let's call it that; or we could talk about Very Serious People) gravitates to the use of military force. Hardly any attempt to think out smart ways of putting an adversary in a bind. And I felt I really needed an adjective to clarify what kind of bind, but couldn't think of a good one. A symptom either of our current conceptual insufficiency or my mental inadequacy.

Worth Saying Again

The judgement of the US intelligence community and others in the government is that Iran does not have a current nuclear weapons program.

Also, they don't have missiles that can reach the US and aren't likely to for several years at the earliest. Israel pulled this one out of their, um, hat this week to try to drum up support for - what? Even more sanctions? War? Dan Murphy points out that this kind of talk has been around for some time, and, say it again, Iran doesn't present a danger to the United States.

Jean Shepherd

Could not have grown up without him.

When I was a teen-ager, my parents gave me the third floor of our mansard-roofed house as my bedroom. I listened to Jean Shepherd late at night on my transistor radio up there.

So many thanks to Richard K. Barry, at The Reaction, for reminding me of him. The video is a pale shadow of those stories late at night. The audience dilutes them. The magic was in Shepherd's talking to himself and allowing me to listen in.

The Thing About Science

If you're serious about doing science, it can break your heart. Things you thought were true, when subjected to experimental confirmation, just aren't. So you figure an alternative way to check it, repeat what you did before to make sure you didn't get something wrong. And the results still come out the same way.

When it's happened to me, I've conceptualized it as coming into contact with an adamantine wall of reality that busts up my mental concepts. And it continues to stand, unscathed, while I decide whether to gather up the pieces or just let them rot.

But others see it differently. If you want to sell cigarettes or carbon-based fuels, the issue has nothing to do with that adamantine wall and everything to do with much more malleable minds. So we saw the cigarette manufacturers play their waiting game in the 1960s as the evidence piled up that their product caused lung cancer and other illnesses. As people died, the public began to realize that the cigarette manufacturers were pushing their financial interests.

Global warming doesn't kill people the way cigarettes do, so science has had a harder slog against those who make money from it. And, like the cigarette manufacturers, the sellers of fossil fuels have not been shy in putting forth their own story, science be damned, or harassing those they see as their opponents.

Not only are people not coughing blood, it's going to take more than eliminating a small pleasure/addiction from our lives to respond to global warming. So the public is more willing to aid and abet the fossil-fuel pushers. All they have to do is what they've been doing. Plus the political angle: if liberals are for it, we're agin' it is currently a powerful motivator in some quarters.

So Peter Gleick became frustrated enough to do something dumb. The documents from the Heartland Institute are real, and they document some of the ways that those who make money from the commercial status quo dupe those who have some gripe against those who argue for change. Someone broke into university e-mail accounts a while back to try to discredit the scientists. Gleick used deception, those others used hacking. Gleick admits his wrongdoing; the hackers remain anonymous.

Neither is particularly praiseworthy. Me, I prefer feeling out where that adamantine wall lies. But for something that will change the world as global warming is likely to, there will be a lot else going on.

Coverage of Gleick's admissions:

Climate Progress
Andrew Revkin
The Guardian
Brad Plumer
Balloon Juice

Mainstreaming Moar Crazy

When you start looking at things in a particular way, you're likely to see more of it. So, after looking at how the Atlantic is persuading us that being worried about fluoride poisoning your precious bodily fluids the other day, I've found somemoars:

The Atlantic (again, but another author) tells us that British reporters (the author is a Brit, so I guess we must believe him) see "the Tea Party as hillbillies who firmly believe that Obama is a native of Kenya." This was not easily checkable, because the single link was to a YouTube video that didn't play properly. Other bizarre European beliefs: "America is the land of intolerant, fundamentalist religion, with screaming televangelists calling homosexuals Satan's semen-drenched acolytes, while Europe is charting a path toward enlightened secularism."

Other shockingly overwrought reporting claims that Herman Cain is not presidential material (but the tone in which it was said was not right) and that Newt Gingrich may be dog-whistling with the phrase "food-stamp president."

The Washington Post presents, I guess in a desire to present all sides of a controversy, Glenn Beck's endorsement of the Catholic hierarchy's desire to control women's health issues in the name of the bishops' religious freedom. What's freedom, after all, if you can't tell other people how to use it?

Asphalt Archaeology

Here.

Flu Secrets to be Revealed - Updated

It looks like the World Health Organization (WHO) is not going to listen to me and has given the go-ahead for everyone to publish everything about deadly and highly transmissible influenza viruses.

My concern has been less for terrorists and more for people messing around in their home labs, convinced that they know how to handle this. That fear has been somewhat allayed by reports that although the viruses are very transmissible from one ferret to another, the altered viruses seem to be less deadly than the H5N1 that has been observed in nature. "Somewhat allayed" because my alternative interpretation of that news is that somebody doesn't know what they're talking about; could be the scientists who have said confusing things or the reporters who just don't get it or some combination.

We'll see, I guess.

If you want to read my now obsolete maunderings, they are here, here, and here, the first being the most recent.

Update: A much more detailed look at the issues involved from someone whose background is closer to this field than mine is. Her points about scientists deciding for all of us are good ones.

It's the ACA They're Trying to Abort

I think we have to be clear about the goals of all those men wanting to shove things into women's vaginas.

Kay at Balloon Juice gets it right: it's the ACA they want to gut. And, of course, shame the sluts. Presumably this is as good as those little blue pills.

I'd add that they're also spoiling to send some of these state laws against women's health sent up to the Supreme Court, because they're convinced that they've finally got a bunch of men up there who will vote to keep women barefoot and pregnant.

But, that said, I think that the best tactic may be to laugh at them. That blue-pill problem? Yes, there are terrible side effects possible from those correctives for erectile dysfunction, realer even than those propagandized by those wanting to shove stuff into women's vaginas. So we'll protect the poor dears from their unslakable desires by making sure they are properly medically cared for: a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test before any meds for erectile dysfunction can be performed.

Or that ancient funny that Rick Sanctorum's sugar daddy let loose yesterday: an aspirin between the knees, haha. Dr. Rubidium shows us how that works.

It's beyond stupid, but these male fanatics are out there, determined that every sperm reach its God-determined goal. And that women be confined to kinder, kirche, kuche.

And, ultimately, destroy the prospect of reasonable healthcare for everyone. Two birds with one stone!

Bits and Pieces - February 15, 2012

I've wanted to write about the Russians drilling into Lake Vostok, isolated from the rest of the world by thousands of years worth of ice, but there just doesn't seem to be much more than this available.

Lise Meitner, one of my role models.

When I go to an official DOE meeting, I am always put off by the way the question period is run. Five minutes for each commenter, while the government participants sit back and try to look interested, but never respond, as a matter of policy. It looks like the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future may have found a better way.

A US arsenal of 300 nuclear weapons? Although I'm seeing a partial walkback on social media.

Talks to begin between the US and North Korea, but nobody's expecting much to come of them.

Here's a shark swallowing a shark.

The Day After Israel Attacks Iran - Updated

Iran seems to have responded to the attacks on its nuclear scientists by similar bombings of Israeli embassy personnel in Tblisi and New Delhi. The perpetrators haven’t been identified. Hezbollah is everyone’s first guess, although Juan Cole questions that.

These incidents seem unlikely to spark the war that Israel has been broadcasting its readiness for, but it’s not clear that Israel isn’t planning one for later this year. And the Republican candidates for president seem to be longing for one.

As we saw in the Iraq war, macho posturing is easy, but war is hard. So we heard that war in Iraq would be a cakewalk, that our military would be greeted with flowers and sweets, and that once Saddam Hussein was out of power, the people of Iraq would work together to build a democratic government. None of those happened, it’s been a long nine years, and Iran is far from democracy.

Those optimistic evaluations were devoid of historical perspective, or worse, constructed of cherrypicked history to give the results the speakers wanted. Wishful thinking, or propaganda, whichever they were, is a poor way to prepare for war.

Although nobody has yet used quite as dismissive a word as cakewalk about a proposed war with Iran, there have been suggestions that the Iranian people would be glad to be bombed and invaded and would side with the invaders against their rulers, probably a first in history and not too different from the anticipated roses and baklava in Iraq. Although war is mentioned by some of those contemplating attacks on Iran, its results are minimized.

Larger geopolitical effects are seldom even considered. Israel’s view of Iran, the one we hear the most about, is not shared by any other nation, and some nations have positive relations with Iran. India and Turkey continue to import oil from Iran. China has long had close relations with Iran and would like to extend its influence westward. It is working with the other P5+1 nations (US, Russia, Britain, France, and Germany) to bring Iran to the negotiating table.

So let’s consider what a war between Israel and Iran would actually look like.

In 2009, at another peak of Israeli saber-rattling, Anthony Cordesman and Abdullah Toukan did a study of an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. This is probably the most detailed analysis on the Web, but it doesn’t say much about a likely Iranian response and other repercussions.*

Their specifics:

The attrition rates of the Israeli Air Strike will be high, could go up to 20 to 30%. For a strike mission of some 90 aircraft, the attrition could then be between 20 to 30 aircraft.

Also,

Iranian response against Israel
• Immediate retaliation using its ballistic missiles on Israel. Multiple launches of Shahab-3 including the possibility of CBR warheads against Tel Aviv, Israeli military and civilian centers, and Israeli suspected nuclear weapons sites.
• Using proxy groups such as Hezbollah or Hamas to attack Israel proper with suicide bombings, covert CBR attacks, and rocket attacks from southern Lebanon.
Regional Security
• Give rise to regional instability and conflict as well as terrorism.
• Destabilizing Iraq through the Shia against US occupation, further arming insurgency
groups when possible.
• Support and upgrade Taliban capabilities in Afghanistan.
• Increase the threat of asymmetric attacks against American interests and allies in the region, especially against countries that host the US military such as Qatar and Bahrain.
• Target U.S. and Western shipping in the Gulf, and possibly attempt to interrupt the flow of oil through the Gulf.

These are the usual generalities. We need more detail.

Damage in Israel
Israel has one of the best missile defense systems in the world, and theater missile defense can be effective. How many missiles Iran has that can reach Israel is not known. One source claims 200,000 missiles aimed at Israel, but this is probably a great exaggeration. Unless the number is in single digits, some will get through and will kill Israeli civilians. Whether Iran has chemical and biological weapons is not clear, but explosives will do significant damage if they land in Tel Aviv and other cities. Additionally, rockets are likely to be launched from southern Lebanon, most likely targeting civilians.

From one reporter living in Israel:

I understand why people don’t think about missiles loaded with poison gas or bubonic plague landing on Israel; I don’t think about it much anymore, either, because it’s become too close. Instead, I think more about the less-than-doomsday scenarios: a conventional missile war lasting weeks, spreading beyond just Israel and Iran. I think about those 200,000 missiles pointed at Israel, and about what sort of blood account the Muslim Middle East is going to have with this country after we launch a war to defend, for the third and by far most dangerous time, our exclusive “right” to nuclear weapons in this part of the world.

I imagine the day after the smoke clears, for however long it clears, when Israelis count their dead and realize they’re going to have to do it again in another year or two or three, and I wonder what it’s going to be like in the interim. I try to imagine a future in which Israel, believing it has no choice, starts one war after another after another whenever some Middle Eastern country decides it wants a fraction of one percent of the weaponry Israel has had for decades.

Damage to the United States
Damage to the United States would be primarily economic rather than physical, except for the military and potential terrorism. The last five points listed by Cordesman and Toukan have been discussed to some degree in US media. The effect on the military seems to draw little concern from the broader American population. In fact, almost half of American voters would approve of a war with Iran, according to a recent poll.

But we can hope that American policymakers are taking a longer view. An enormous rise in oil prices resulting from unrest around the Strait of Hormuz or the withdrawal of Iranian oil capacity through war damage would set back what appears to be the beginnings of an economic recovery. And there is the question of paying for US involvement, if that came to pass.

The war in Iraq has been estimated to have cost $3 trillion dollars or more. Iran is a larger country, with a more complex terrain. The nuclear and military installations range across the country. Iran’s military is much stronger than Iraq’s. All that suggests that a war with Iran would be more expensive than the war in Iraq.

International Repercussions
Most of the discussion of an Israeli attack on Iran has been limited to Israel, Iran, and the United States. But there are many other countries with interests in such an attack, and some might just join in.

Israel has few friends in the area. Saudi Arabia, home of the Salafi version of Sunni Islam, is concerned about Shia Iran’s influence in the area, particularly the possibility of its acquiring nuclear weapons. So it has been offering oil to Turkey and India to replace what they buy from Iran and has hinted that it would turn a blind eye toward overflights by Israel to bomb Iran. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. But how long would Saudi Arabia stand by Israel after the dirty deed was done?

Egypt, under Mubarak, signed a peace treaty with Israel. The new government is rethinking that relationship and at the same time meeting resistance by Bedouin tribes in the Sinai Peninsula, adjacent to Israel. An attack on Iran would push Egyptian public opinion over the brink against Israel.

Pakistan, which has refused to recognize Israel and is the holder of a hundred or so nuclear weapons, would condemn an Israeli attack on a fellow Muslim nation. Since the US would be seen to be part of an Israeli attack, this would further sour US-Pakistan relations. Pakistan’s internal troubles may keep it from taking an active role in a war, but a war can be a way to distract a population from internal troubles.

China and Russia have protected Iran from sanctions in the United Nations Security Council. An attack by Israel would be seen by those two nations as having support from the US and could have the effect of driving them closer together in opposition to the US.

The probable effects of hardening Iran’s intentions to get nuclear weapons and spreading a nuclear arms race to the rest of the Middle East have been covered in many of the news stories.

More generally, Israel already suffers from its image as an aggressor against the Palestinians. An attack on Iran would intensify that image and remove sympathy for Israel in many nations across the globe. Although Israel’s military is far stronger than others in the region, after it is damaged by an Iranian counterattack, it would be more vulnerable militarily and would have less sympathy from the rest of the world as well.

Or Will This Prove Decisive?
Finally, a wild card. Perhaps politics is a larger part of all the talk than I’ve taken it to be.

By Yossi Verter in Haaretz:

A senior member of the opposition explained this week why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wouldn't attack Iran: "Bibi likes to talk big but he isn't a man of belligerent action. I am not disparaging him. In both his terms [in office], he never started a war or launched showy operations or unnecessary adventures, aside from opening the Western Wall tunnel, and that's something he regrets to this day. Is he going to be all macho on Iran, of all things, when he knows how destructive this would be?

"But his main motivation not to attack is that he would likely lose his seat as a result. First off, the Iranian installations will not be destroyed. In the best case they will be damaged. The project will be delayed by at most two or three years. The Iranians will have extra motivation to complete it. The world will not be able to prevent them.

"The price of oil will skyrocket. The Europeans will want to kill us; they won't back us. We will be completely alone. And we'll see just how the Americans will act, especially if President Barack Obama is re-elected in November.

"What will happen here? The whole region will go up in flames. Thousands of rockets will fall on Israel. In the initial days, hundreds of them will fall on Tel Aviv. Then we'll be in a war that goes on for months. The economy will crash. Tel Aviv will become a frontier town, and what will Netanyahu have to show for it? A quickly recovering Iranian nuclear project? Condemnations and boycotts? Terror attacks on Israeli targets abroad?

"After all, elections are due to be held in a year. In the wake of all that destruction, will he be re-elected? Will Likud win the people's trust again?"

Maybe the power of politics and the need to get re-elected will prevail. We can only hope.

Update: Two very valuable articles: a historical perspective on Russia's relationship with Iran and a thoughtful discussion of why we don't know how a war is likely to affect international relationships.
__________________________________
* The report also cites Israel’s estimate of when Iran is likely to have a nuclear weapon:

The Israeli time frame as to when Iran will have a Nuclear Weapon is between 2009 and 2012, whereas the U.S. time frame is after 2013. Israel states that Iran should not be allowed to obtain any nuclear capabilities that could eventually allow it to produce nuclear weapons. Israel views Iran as an Existential Threat and must be dealt with in the immediate future.

Photo of Nuremberg in ruins from the Holocaust Museum.

Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner.

Sunday Song

More of Rupert Murdoch's Lackeys Arrested in Britain

Senior editors and reporters at The Sun were arrested today, "over allegations of inappropriate payments to police and public officials," as The Guardian delicately puts it. Murdoch is on his way to London.

Investigations into wrongdoing by Murdoch's news empire have been resulting in arrests since last summer.

That empire includes Fox News. No arrests there yet.

Mainstreaming teh Crazy

In an attempt to give both sides equal time, Brian Resnick today looks into the question of fluoride in water supplies. As he admits, it's the Tea Partiers who are bringing up this pollution of our precious bodily fluids, which might supply a clue to his question

But why is politicized opposition to fluoride happening now?

Or one may consult General Jack D. Ripper in the video clip above from "Dr. Strangelove" (1964)

It's really not that hard. The year of "Dr. Strangelove" was the year of Barry Goldwater. The fifties had been full of the commie-fluoridation connection. It's harder to make that connection since the fall of the Soviet Union, but that really doesn't matter if you're dissociated enough from reality.

Bits and Pieces - February 8, 2012

42,000 year old drawings of seals, from Spain. The oldest human drawings found so far. via The Agonist.

Where are the leaks on the Obama 2013 budget?

In case you still harbor any respect for Congress, check out this and this.

The state of California has cut off all its funding for libraries.

No, radical muslims have not been a problem in the US for quite some time now.

If Israel weren't freaking out over Iran, I'd be spending more time on Syria. A group of people are arguing for military intervention in the civil war going on there now. That argument was just shot down in the United Nations Security Council by China and Russia. Although those two countries' reluctance to support this kind of intervention has pretty obviously been connected to the debacle in Iraq, this is the first time China has said so explicitly. And here's a statement that more or less approximates my thinking on the subject.

Bits and Pieces - February 7, 2012

My partner reappears and plunges the blog into darkness. I think he is waiting for the muse to inspire something even more beautiful than what we've had in the past.

Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere: the contagion of revolution. A lot to think about.

Why the free market is the wrong way to fund medical research.

Nuke your house using NukeMap.

On the Beaches

A new round of EPA grants totaling almost $10 million will help states monitor and assess the state of their beaches — something that’s sorely needed, according to the Surfrider Foundation’s State of the Beach report findings, which explains the challenges of tracking the condition of beaches around the country.
The EPA is also launching the new BEACON website to provide timely information on beach conditions, advisories and closures.
Inconsistencies in testing, closure and advisory standards, notification procedures and even the terminology used in regulations varies from state to state, creating a confusing picture for consumers. The federal BEACH Act was aimed at elimination some of the inconsistencies, but it will take time for jurisdictions to get on the same page.
In case you don’t live near a beach and you’re wondering what the problem is, the Natural Resource Defense Council’s 2011 Testing the Waters report indicates there were 24,091 beach closings and advisories in 2010 — the second-highest number since the NRDC started tracking stats 21 years ago.

Here (via). 

Manchurian Tea Partier

Romney as Tea Party Perfect:

...if he ends up in the general-election race, Romney’s campaign will rarely mention the tea party. While throwing occasional red meat to the conservative faithful, he will generally repackage himself as a centrist who knows how to grow the economy and create jobs. Some voters and commentators may even conclude that the “true Romney,” the moderate Romney, is reemerging and that he simply pandered to the right during the primaries. 

Don’t count on it. Research shows that presidents strive to carry out the promises they make during campaigns. If Romney defeats Obama, he could take office backed by a Republican-led House and Senate, which would quickly send radical-right bills to his desk. A President Romney would sign them all — the Ryan budget eviscerating Medicare and Medicaid, a permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts, harsh immigration crackdowns, the gutting of ObamaCare. Whatever his deep-down beliefs, he would be determined to overcome any lingering conservative skepticism.

Cempedak

Photo: VoDeTan2 Wikimedia Commons

Photo: EquatorialSky Wikimedia Commons

Komen for the Cure Destroys Its Brand

by defunding Planned Parenthood, so that poor women can once again live in the shadow of breast cancer.

It seems that somehow (WTF?) Komen hired a wingnut patriarchialist (woman, yes) a while back, and she took her opportunity last week.

Angry Black Lady has more, including how to let Komen know of your displeasure.