Matt Ortega

Noah Shachtman wrote about an incredibly disturbing military report that recommends secretly recruiting, or even paying, sympathetic bloggers to function as attack dogs on policy opponents and spread specific information.

Since the start of the Iraq war, there’s been a raucous debate in military circles over how to handle blogs — and the servicemembers who want to keep them. One faction sees blogs as security risks, and a collective waste of troops’ time. The other (which includes top officers, like Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. William Caldwell) considers blogs to be a valuable source of information, and a way for ordinary troops to shape opinions, both at home and abroad.

This 2006 report for the Joint Special Operations University, “Blogs and Military Information Strategy,” offers a third approach — co-opting bloggers, or even putting them on the payroll. “Hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering,” write the report’s co-authors, James Kinniburgh and Dororthy Denning.

A military spokesman claimed that the report was an academic exercise.

“The comments are not ‘actionable’, merely thought provoking,” he tells Danger Room. “The views expressed in the article publication are entirely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views, policy or position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, USSOCOM [Special Operations Command], or the Joint Special Operations University.”

These practices are better known by their academic terminology: “political persecution” and “propaganda.”

Former Vice President Al Gore is the face of a new, ambitious 3-year, $300 million campaign against climate change to emphasize the urgency behind the cause. In an interview with 60 Minutes‘ Leslie Stahl, Gore stated that there will be some odd pairings appearing together in future bipartisan television commercials.

“Now, the rest of the future ads are going to stress this bipartisan coalition that’s coming together on this with some surprising pairings,” Stahl said.

“Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich, two people who don’t agree on very much at all,” Gore remarked.

“They’re going to do an ad together?” Stahl asked.

“Are doing an ad together,” Gore pointed out.

And other unlikely couples, like Pat Robertson and Al Sharpton, are also doing an ad.

To pay for the campaign ad blitz, Gore will be putting the profits from the documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth to good use.

“Now, we’re told that this ad campaign is going to cost a barrel of money. How are you paying for this?” Stahl asked.

“Well, Tipper and I - thank you again -have put all of the profits from the movie and the book that we would have otherwise gotten, ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ to this,” Gore said.

“All the profits?” Stahl asked.

“Correct. All that we would have received, absolutely,” Gore said.

Watch the first of the new advertisements:

César Chávez would be 81 today — a holiday in eight U.S. states (Arizona, California, Colorado, Michigan, New Mexico, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin.)

In my birth place of Oakland, California, residents held a march in his honor, starting at 9:30am at the intersection of 98th Avenue and Industrial Boulevard. Students in Oakland joined in the march. San Diego marchers took to the streets in Southern California.

Sacramento students at Hiram Johnson High School walked out of class to protest that Chávez’s birthday is not a school holiday.

Nearly 300 turned out in Salinas to march.

Members of the SEIU Local 921 Latino Caucus will honor Chávez in San Jose tonight at 5pm.

Similar ceremonies and marches are being held across the country where Latinos reflect on the life, work and legacy of a true leader.

At the local San Francisco alternative, BeyondChron, Randy Shaw, who is publishing a book on how his work has continued to shape progressive politics, penned a column honoring the nation’s “most honored Latino.”

Congressional Democrats renewed their efforts to make Chávez’s birthday a federal holiday. Eight years ago, California became the first state to recognize the occasion. Two years in a row, however, Republicans have thwarted their efforts.

Below is a graffitied mural honoring Chávez in Los Angeles. (Photo from the LAist.) It reads:

Bernal writes down the quote, adding “and Woman” at the end: “When we are really honest with ourselves, we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us. So it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of men we are…only by giving life do we find LIFE. The strongest act of manliness is to sacrifice ourselves for others. God Help us to be MEN [and Women]” — Cesar Chavez

In recent years, Hispanics from the American Southwest have discovered roots that were only the subject of rumor. From the Boston Globe in December 2004:

He tested the DNA of his relatives, along with some of the parishioners at Albuquerque’s St. Edwin’s Church, where he works. As word got out, others in the community began contacting him. So Sanchez expanded the effort to include Hispanics throughout the state.

Of the 78 people tested, 30 are positive for the marker of the Cohanim, whose genetic line remains strong because they rarely married non-Jews throughout a history spanning up to 4,000 years.

Michael Hammer, a research professor at the University of Arizona who is a specialist on Jewish genetics, said less than 1 percent of non-Jews possessed this marker. That fact, along with the traditions in many of these families, makes it likely they are Jewish, he said.

It was through the New Mexico DNA Project that my father tested positive for this marker and our family confirmed rumors that we were descendants of conversos, Spanish Jews that converted during the Spanish Inquisition following the Alhambra Decree issued by the Spanish monarchs, King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I.

Read more »

Baseball is back. (It just so happens that March 31, 1995 marked the end to the longest strike in Major League Baseball history.)

Last week, the Oakland Athletics and Boston Red Sox split a pair at the Tokyo Dome in Japan.

Back in the States, the Washington Nationals christened their new ballpark in style with a walk-off home run by third baseman Ryan Zimmerman to down the Atlanta Braves, 3-2. Just as ESPN’s Jayson Stark claims that the Braves are back for a “Return to Glory.” (President Bush was met with boos by the Washington crowd when he came out to throw the first pitch. He managed to get the ball to the catcher but his mechanics were way off.)

Since moving to Washington, D.C., I have looked forward to the return of America’s past time as well as attending games in the Bronx and Beantown when Oakland comes to the East Coast in July (@NYY), August (@BOS) and September (@BAL).