CNN - Obama heads to Mexico amid escalating drug violence

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Obama heads to Mexico amid escalating drug violence

President Obama travels to Mexico on Thursday as the United States' neighbor to the south continues to wrestle with increasingly deadly drug wars.

Obama recently announced a crackdown on border violence and on the smuggling of cash and weapons into Mexico -- a step that could mark an end to a blame game over where responsibility for the violence lies.

On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the president recently designated three Mexican organizations, which he says are involved in drug trafficking, to face hefty financial sanctions under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act. The law, signed by President Bill Clinton in December 1999, authoritizes the president to impose penalties against foreign drug kingpins -- and organizations that do business with them, according to the Treasury Department.

"Today's action underscores the U.S. government's support for [Mexican] President [Felipe] Calderon's courageous attack on the cartels and our attempt to attack the financial underpinnings of Mexico's cartels believed to generate billions of dollars annually," Gibbs said. "With today's actions the Department of the Treasury will be permitted over the months and years ahead to block or seize any assets, accounts or securities under U.S. jurisdiction of those belonging to these cartels or who act on their behalf."

The president's action comes ahead of his trip to Mexico -- along with attending the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago later this week -- where drug violence will undoubtedly be debated.

It's traditional for the new U.S. president to go north and south early on. Obama traveled to Canada in February.

Authorities on both sides of the border blame powerful drug cartels for escalating bloodshed. Analysts have said the bulk of the violence takes place along the U.S. border, particularly in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua and Tijuana -- as well as on Mexico's western coast.

The Pentagon and the director of national intelligence have both warned recently of the national security threat that an unstable Mexico poses to the U.S. Congress also has addressed the violence, holding eight hearings since coming back into session two months ago.

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox on Wednesday downplayed analysts' warnings, saying the worst-case scenario is "far, far, away."

As for who is to blame for the surge in drug cartel violence, Fox refused to point fingers, saying both sides share responsibility -- Mexico, for its role as a producer and trans-shipment point for illegal drugs, the United States for its insatiable appetite.

"We don't have to blame each other," said Fox this morning, "what we have to do is work together. Meet the challenge and solve the problem."

During his administration, from 2000 to 2006, Fox launched a crackdown on the drug lords -- what he dubbed "the Mother of All Battles." The program put thousands of people in jail, but he was criticized for leaving a power vacuum among the cartels, which erupted into the violent turf wars that rage to this day.

Mexico's ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhan, said on CBS's "Face the Nation" Sunday that some of the sources of the violence are on the U.S. side of the border.

"You need 'two to tango'. And as Mexico seeks to shut down the flow of drugs coming into the United States from Mexico, from South America, we need the support of the United States to shut down the flow of weapons and bulk cash," he said.

Sarukhan called the Obama administration's willingness to accept co-responsibility "a very encouraging sign."

"I think that the fact that the Obama administration is seized with the importance of this issue is a clear indication that they understand that, to defang the drug syndicates in Mexico, we have to eliminate two of their most powerful sources -- bulk cash from the United States into Mexico and illicit weapons."

It's a point that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton agrees with.

"Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade," she said on March 26."Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians. So, yes, I feel very strongly we have a co-responsibility."

During her trip to Mexico, Clinton emphasized that the United States has already appropriated $700 million in aid to Mexico, and Congress wants to see how the administration is applying it before sending more.

Sarukhan said Clinton's visit to Mexico in March -- along with other top administration officials -- has "started to push the ball in the right direction."

But Sarukhan warns that the key issue right now is how the U.S. can help crack down on guns and cash flowing to the Mexican drug cartels.

"We have seen a dramatic rise of assault weapons being seized in Mexico. There's a direct correlation between the expiration of the assault weapons ban and our seizures of assault weapons."

Despite the violence, Mexican officials say the country is safe and that tourist areas -- such as Cancun and Acapulco -- have a large security presence.

In a speech in mid-March, Calderon said 93 percent of the 6,500 deaths attributed to organized crime in 2008 occurred among the criminals. Most of the rest were law enforcement authorities, officials have said. Few civilians are killed, the president said.

In that same speech, Calderon ridiculed those who say Mexico is unsafe.

"It is absolutely false, absurd, that anyone indicate that Mexico does not have control over one single part of its national territory," he said. "I challenge anyone who says that to tell me what part of the country they want to go to and I will take that person there."

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who serves on the board of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said in a recent CNN.com commentary that the U.S. needs to examine gun control in order to tackle the violence in Mexico.

"While the Mexican drug war has the media and Washington abuzz, there has been little mention of our role in supplying the terrorists: We need to realize that the Mexican drug cartels are arming themselves here because our gun laws have loopholes so large that criminals and gun traffickers can easily drive gun-laden trucks through them," wrote Townsend, a former lieutenant governor of Maryland and daughter of late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. "This crisis is not happening because our border is loose," she wrote. "It is happening because our gun laws allow guns to be sold by unlicensed sellers without background checks required by the Brady Bill, military-style assault weapons to be freely sold and corrupt gun dealers to thrive." Read more of Townsend's analysis

But in an opposing commentary on CNN.com, National Rifle Association President Wayne LaPierre argued that a crackdown on guns in the United States won't -- and should not -- be the answer.

"Of course, everyone's rooting for Mexican President Felipe Calderon's government to crush the drug cartels' stranglehold. But our rights are not what's wrong," he wrote. "Nobody can substantiate claims that U.S. guns cross the border 'by the thousands' or 'account for 95% of weapons used by Mexican drug gangs.' Because it's not true." Read more of LaPierre's views

Instead, LaPierre argues, the U.S. should simply "seal the border. Punish the guilty. And use existing gun and drug laws against violent drug syndicates here and in Mexico."

"But leave American freedoms alone," he added.

Reuters - Islamic firms seek bargains in the West

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Islamic firms seek bargains in the West

Wednesday, Apr 15, 2009 4:21PM UTC

By Lin Noueihed and John Irish

DUBAI (Reuters) - Sharia-compliant firms in the Gulf Arab region are eyeing bargains in Western markets hit by the global crisis but Islamic merger principles still need development, a partner at an international law firm said.

Having covered Islamic finance for 15 years, Neil Miller, head of Islamic Finance at Norton Rose, relocated from London to Dubai a few weeks ago to work on developing sharia-compliant mergers and acquisitions, project finance and other deals.

"A significant proportion of (regional business leaders) said they were looking to do an M&A deal sometime in 2009... There is quite a potential pipeline of work, how quickly that will actually materialize remains to be seen," Miller told a Reuters Islamic Banking and Finance Summit in Dubai.

"I'm not going to call the bottom (of the market). I don't think anybody is going to call it... But one thing about clients in this part of the world is they know how to find a bargain."

Miller said potential Islamic investors were likely to be seeking out bargains into the second or even the third quarter, ready to make purchases once global markets have settled.

Gulf Arab sovereign wealth funds and other state-linked investment vehicles have said since the financial crisis worsened last year, that they saw potential investment opportunities emerging from the turmoil.

Abu Dhabi's state-run International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC) has made several purchases in recent months including a 32.5 percent stake in Spanish oil company Cepsa <CEP.MC> and a 9.1 percent holding in German carmaker Daimler <DAIGn.DE>.

Asset-heavy sectors such as manufacturing naturally appeal to Islamic firms whose transactions must be linked to physical assets but Miller said clients from the region were interested in a number of sectors.

"In London, the sectors clients are talking about there are renewables, not greenfield but established, pharmaceuticals, healthcare," he said.

"They are interested in looking for businesses that are established in a niche, perhaps technology based, that they can acquire in the West. They'll also bring part of those businesses back to the region."

Islam bans interest, investing in prohibited sectors such as gambling, pornography and alcohol and stipulates that risk and reward be shared among all those in the business venture.

Demand from the world's 1.3 billion Muslims for investments that comply with their beliefs has soared, and assets compliant with Islamic law are estimated at $700 billion to $1 trillion.

But the Islamic finance sector is still in its infancy. International industry standards are still in the process of being established and a legal framework for more sophisticated Islamic products and transactions is still emerging.

"In sharia-compliant M&A it is extremely difficult to introduce the leverage, and if the market is honest with itself, there have been very few, if any, transactions that have managed to do the leverage in a satisfactory sharia-compliant way," he said.

"My aim is to explore with the scholars and practitioners whether there are more acceptable ways of doing these things ... There hasn't been any diligent research into alternative methods.. It is going to be an interesting and challenging task to find more ways of doing this."

(For summit blog: http://summitnotebook.reuters.com/)

CNN - Hitmen's bloody reign all about logic, trafficker says

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Hitmen's bloody reign all about logic, trafficker says

There are no welcome signs on the approach to Camargo.

It's a hardscrabble Mexican border town and home turf for "Los Zetas," a gang of hitmen and corrupt former special forces cops on the bankroll of the Gulf Cartel.

Local journalists explained if we went there we'd be getting "tangled up in the hooves of the horse." They said Zeta gunmen recently smashed one reporter's fingers with a hammer as a warning to the media to stay away.

The plaza was deserted -- for a few minutes at least. Then the throb of engines broke the Sunday morning peace. Scores of pickup trucks with heavily tinted windows began circling. Occasionally a window would crack open. We were clearly being watched.

A black SUV pulled up alongside the soda stand. One of the occupants stepped out. First I saw the ostrich skin cowboy boots, then the highly polished 9 mm pistol strapped to his side. It was loaded with a longer-than-usual ammunition clip, custom-made to pack extra bullets. It was a brazen flaunting of Mexican law to carry a gun that way.

No words. Not even a stare. But his message seemed unequivocal. Our visit to Camargo lasted just 20 minutes. Taking the strong hint, we immediately left town.

Much as we wanted to explore the underbelly of the drug war raging in Mexico, it was clear the capos, or bosses, and their hired guns were in no mood to talk. Their business thrives best in the shadows. Our best chance of getting some insight was to track down a cast of peripheral characters who live in the gray areas, somewhere between the extremes of right and wrong.

The hospitality was little better in nearby Miguel Aleman. Customers, even an argumentative drunk, fell silent as we ordered a beer in a dingy cantina. A couple of tired-looking prostitutes retreated to a far corner. They may have been down on their luck but they knew talking to outsiders wasn't worth the cost. Here the Zetas are well-known for enforcing their law of silence at gunpoint.

Along this stretch of the border Los Zetas are kings. From here their bloody reach stretches far across Mexico and deep into Central America. They run immigrant smuggling, drug trafficking, prostitution rackets, video piracy and local politics.

In the glitzy industrial city of Monterrey, we met a marijuana dealer smoking his own merchandise in the bathroom of a dance club.

The man, whom we can't name for his safety, explained how he had been recruited at gunpoint two years earlier by the Zetas to be what they call a "landowner" (terrateniente in Spanish) -- in charge of cocaine distribution in a handful of neighborhoods.

He said Zeta gunmen bundled him into a truck and with assault rifles aimed at his head they gave him three options -- pay them $100,000, begin working for them or die.

Over the next few days, he says the same gunmen scared off or killed rival drug dealers, leaving him in charge of what he said was a $4,000-a-day business.

It all ended, he said, when Mexican soldiers kicked down his door. He was never detained but his cover was blown. Local Zeta commanders thanked him for not ratting on them by giving him permission to retire from the business.

But recently he's gone into business for himself selling $2 bags of pot. He realizes working independently of the Zetas may be fatal.

"Maybe I'm stupid or something, but I don't know how to do anything else. If they catch me it's simple, they'll kill me. It's just not allowed to work freelance," he said.

An old friend of mine in Monterrey knew the marijuana peddler well and vouched for his story. He never made good on his promise to give us a recorded account. He went on a 24-hour drug binge. When we caught up with again him he was smoking crack, sweating profusely and paranoid his former paymasters would exact revenge.

Mexico's tit-for-tat vendettas look like uncontrolled chaos.

Mob assassins are no longer content with efficient execution-style killings. Sinaloa cartel hitmen regularly place pig masks on the faces of their Juarez cartel victims. And in a grim seasonal touch, killers in Juarez decapitated a cop and placed a Father Christmas hat on his severed head.

But in a sidewalk cafe in Guadalajara, "Jose" explains there is a clearly defined set of narco-rules that must be followed. A small-time Latin American cocaine trafficker I've known for years introduced me to Jose.

Jose is old school. He tells me he's been in the cocaine trade since the early 1980s almost since it began, has worked internationally and done a stretch in prison

"From the outside it might look like the cartels are just going around killing people. But on the inside there's a code of conduct, rules. You might not want to kill somebody but you have to because it's all about respect," he said. "This cannot work if there's no respect. Above all, the capos use logic to solve the problems."

Jose added that he believed groups of corrupt officials and law enforcement officers were using the militarization of the border region not as a means to crush the drug cartels but as a way of forcing them to pay a bigger slice of the drug profits as bribes.

"The authorities and the cartels use the rule of 10. By that I mean for every 10 kilos of cocaine we move, we have to give three to the authorities and keep seven for ourselves," he explained. "When times are bad the authorities may arrest somebody or grab an entire consignment and that's a way for forcing up their percentage take."

Jose's assertion might seem like feverish conspiracy theory if it weren't for the growing list of Mexican officials, ranging from local cops and foot soldiers to generals and men at the highest levels of law enforcement, who've been busted for allegedly profiting from the drug trade.

In November, Mexico's former drug czar was detained on suspicion that he may have accepted $450,000 a month in bribes from drug traffickers. He had been in charge of the attorney general's office that specializes in combatting organized crime.

Tomorrow, Penhaul looks at the gang's dead triggermen and the lives they left behind.

CNNMoney.com - Is Facebook losing its glow?

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Is Facebook losing its glow?

It's been a busy couple of months for social networking site Facebook. CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared on the cover of FORTUNE (dressed in a tie, no less) and shared with us his plans to turn Facebook into the next digital communications platform. Soon thereafter he landed on Oprah Winfrey's couch to offer a tutorial on the site he'd initially built four years ago. In March the company launched a redesign that a vocal group of users roundly criticized. A few weeks after that chief financial officer Gideon Yu resigned unexpectedly, prompting bloggers to speculate that the company must be readying itself for a public offering.

Meanwhile the site has kept adding users at a rapid clip (the redesign has not kept newcomers away), and analysts are starting to raise questions about just how much Facebook is spending on infrastructure to maintain the large site.

It is hard to know much about Facebook's financial situation, because the company is privately held, and its management team has long been reluctant to address the issue of profits. Until now, executives and investors alike have said they place a priority on adding users and getting them to spend more time on the site. In my February interview with operating chief Sheryl Sandberg, she made it clear that the company was very focused on making money specifically so that it could continue to fund its user growth. And early board member Jim Breyer, who put in $1 million of his own money and $12.7 million from an Accel Partners fund, told me he wasn't demanding or even expecting immediate economic returns, saying profitability is "a key focus but there has never been a very specific time table."

Indeed, the company has a deep well of capital to fund its business. It has raised more than $400 million in financing so far. Its largest investor is Microsoft, which paid $240 million in 2007 for a 1.6% stake in the company, giving Facebook a valuation of about $15 billion. Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing also invested $120 million at the same valuation. (The company's internal valuation as of last June was $3.7 billion.)

But analysts posit that the business itself is becoming increasingly expensive to run. Facebook reports users are uploading more than 850 million photos each day and more than eight million videos. That's a lot of server space.

(And Facebook may not be able to make a return on all those new users. Some 70% of the site's members come from overseas, and many of them hail from countries where there is no real potential for drumming up advertising dollars.)

Will Facebook's 2009 revenues be enough to fund this growth? In 2008, the company brought in an estimated $280 milion. Most of that came directly from banner ads, and a substantial chunk was still coming from a deal with Microsoft in which the Internet behemoth sold traditional banner ads, which cost as little as $0.15 cents per one thousand ads shown to users.

But the company has said that it is on track to beat revenue projections and make 70% more than it did in 2008. In the past year, Facebook has doubled its sales team to more than 130. And a quick scan of the source code for the site's ads would confirm Facebook's assertion that the Microsoft deal accounts for an ever smaller number of the ads the site serves up.

Facebook is in fact seeing positive results with a new ad format it launched last fall, the engagement ad. A good case study comes from Vancouver, Wash.-based pizza restaurant Papa Murphy's, which ran an ad offering a free pizza to anyone who "became a fan" of the restaurant on the Facebook page it created. Users received notifications in their newsfeed and then were directed to the Papa Murphy's Web site to get their pie.

More than 131,000 users became a fan of the national pizza franchise saw traffic to its site jump 253%. And within two weeks, 1,200 people had posted to the site's wall. As Facebook's user base grows, advertisers continue to experiment with these types of ads even as they're pulling back in other areas.

Facebook's popularity seems not to have diminished: the company says more than half of its 200 million active users log on every day. And users spent 178 minutes on the site last month on average, according to Comscore, up 5 % from the previous month.

With so much momentum, will Zuckerberg look to go publlic soon? When Yu left the company, the Wall Street Journal quoted Zuckerberg in an internal memo saying the company would look for a new chief financial officer "with public company experience who can help take us to the next stage in our growth." Indeed, Zuckerberg has always alluded to an IPO, turning down early acquisition offers from large Internet companies. But Zuckerberg isn't revealing his plan. Any speculation as to whether Yu's departure suggests Facebook is hastening its plans is just that: speculation.

Reuters - Somali pirates seize two more ships and attack third

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Somali pirates seize two more ships and attack third

Tuesday, Apr 14, 2009 1:20PM UTC

By Alison Bevege

ON BOARD NRP CORTE-REAL (Reuters) - Somali pirates hijacked two more cargo vessels and opened fire on a third on Tuesday in attacks that showed their determination to continue striking shipping in the area's strategic waterways.

The capture of the Greek-owned MV Irene E.M. and Togo-flagged MV Sea Horse were a clear sign the sea gangs have not been deterred by two raids in recent days in which U.S. and French special forces have killed five pirates.

NATO Lieutenant Commander Alexandre Fernandes said the Portuguese warship NRP Corte-Real had received a pre-dawn distress call from the St. Vincent and the Grenadines-flagged Irene E.M. as it traveled through the Gulf of Aden.

"There was only three minutes between the alarm and the hijack," Fernandes told Reuters aboard the warship. "They attacked at night, which was very unusual. They were using the moonlight as it's still quite bright."

The Greek merchant marine ministry said the Irene E.M.'s 22 crew were Filipinos. The East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme, which tracks piracy, said they were all unharmed.

The bulk carrier was sailing from Jordan to India. Its Piraeus-based owners were not immediately available for comment.

Hours later, NATO officials on the NRP Corte-Real said a second ship, the nearly 5,000-tonne MV Sea Horse, had also been seized about 77 nautical miles off Somalia.

They said it was hijacked by pirates on board three or four skiffs, but they had no other immediate details.

Separately, NATO officials said, another gang fired automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades at the Liberian-flagged 21,887-tonne Safmarine Asia. They said it managed to escape and that there was no word of any casualties.

Heavily armed gunmen from lawless Somalia have run amok through the busy Indian Ocean shipping lanes and strategic Gulf of Aden, capturing dozens of vessels, hundreds of hostages and making off with millions of dollars in ransoms.

SPECIAL FORCES

Until there is political stability onshore, experts warn, attacks on shipping will continue off its coast.

"Piracy is far more complex than any naval patrol," said U.S. analyst J. Peter Pham, of Madison University. "It will require more than just the application of force to uproot piracy from the soil of Somalia."

NATO officials said a Canadian warship had sent a helicopter to scout out what was happening on the Irene E.M.

"There are hostages so now we will shadow and monitor the situation," Fernandes said.

Foreign navies are patrolling the seas off Somalia. But the pirates have continued to evade capture, driving up insurance costs and defying the world's most powerful militaries.

Snipers on a U.S. Navy destroyer freed an American ship captain on Sunday by killing three Somali pirates holding him hostage in a lifeboat, ending a five-day standoff. Two more pirates died on Friday when French commandos stormed a yacht that had been seized. A French hostage was also killed.

Some fear the bloody assaults by Washington and Paris to free their hostages may raise the risk of future bloodshed. The pirates have vowed to take revenge on U.S. and French citizens.

So far, the sea gangs have generally treated captives well in the hope of fetching big ransom payouts. Many poor and unemployed young Somalis see the gangs as a dazzling alternative to their hard lives, given the quick money to be made.

Most of the groups are based in villages and small towns along Somalia's long coast like Eyl, Hobyo and Haradheere.

Last year, the gunmen grabbed headlines with the world's largest sea hijack -- a Saudi Arabian supertanker carrying $100 million of crude oil -- and the seizure of a Ukrainian ship with a huge military cargo including 33 Soviet-era tanks.

But out of the international limelight, they have been striking regularly for years. They still hold about 260 other hostages, including nearly 100 Filipinos, on 17 captured ships.

Reuters - Netsuite software targets SAP, Oracle: source

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Netsuite software targets SAP, Oracle: source

Monday, Apr 13, 2009 7:54PM UTC

By Jim Finkle

BOSTON (Reuters) - NetSuite Inc, a maker of Web-based business management software for small- to mid-sized companies, has developed programs catering to large corporations, said a person familiar with the strategy.

The person, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the plan, said NetSuite wants to sell its software to divisions of large corporations that use traditional software from SAP AG and Oracle Corp.

NetSuite, which is barely profitable, needs to expand into the corporate market to fuel growth. Spending by large corporations accounts for the bulk of business applications software sales, which researcher Gartner estimates total about $89 billion a year.

The new programs -- dubbed "SuiteCloud Connect" -- allow corporate divisions to run their businesses on NetSuite's Web-based software, then easily roll up financial data into their parent companies' SAP and Oracle systems, the person said.

A spokeswoman for NetSuite, which is majority-owned by Oracle Corp Chief Executive Larry Ellison, declined to comment.

SAP and Oracle sell traditional software, which companies buy and run in their own data centers. The bulk of the world's biggest corporations either use SAP or Oracle.

That approach can be more expensive than buying a subscription to NetSuite's hosted, Web-based software, said Rebecca Wettemann, an analyst with Nucleus Research who has not been briefed by the company on the new product line.

"From a total-cost-of-ownership perspective, it never makes sense to run SAP instead of an on-demand solution, such as NetSuite," Wettemann said. "SAP is simply too costly on an ongoing basis."

Wettemann said she expects the new product to be well received by divisional technology managers interested in switching to NetSuite's software-as-a-service offering.

"NetSuite can go to everyone that has dragged their heels in going to SAP and Oracle and say 'Now we have an option for you that is much more in line with the scale of your business that solves the roll-up and reconciliation question," she said.

Analysts expect 11-year-old NetSuite to post its first profitable year in 2009 as the San Mateo, California-based company's revenue grows 15 percent to $176 million, according to Reuters Estimates.

The source who described the new NetSuite offering said the company will soon announce the connection software for SAP, but hold off on unveiling the product that works with Oracle.

NetSuite developed SuiteCloud Connect using tools known as application program interfaces, or APIs, that are already built into SAP and Oracle programs, as well as software from most vendors.

Those APIs are open to all programmers and have previously allowed NetSuite customers to develop their own integration software for rolling up financial data into the parent company's computer systems.

But SuiteCloud Connect offers a standardized set of tools designed to save businesses the time and expense of doing that customization on their own.

The programing was partially based on customization work done to help integrate Asahi Kasei Corp's SAP programs with subsidiary Spandex America's NetSuite software.

The Oracle connectors were partly based on know-how developed from Iron Mountain Inc's implementation of NetSuite at its Iron Mountain Digital division, according to the source.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle; editing by Richard Chang)

Glenn Beck

David Buckner just passed out on Glenn Beck live on FOX NEWS.

Portfolio Mobile - Krugman Sees Your Lenin and Raises You a Stalin

Krugman Sees Your Lenin and Raises You a Stalin





Maybe when the government starts regulating pundits, a capacity for experiencing cognitive dissonance could be one of the requirements?

Paul Krugman, paragraphs 7-8:

President Obama is being called a "socialist" who seeks to destroy capitalism. Why?...[O]nly because "liberal" doesn't seem to carry the punch it used to.

Paul Krugman, paragraph 10:Speaking of [Rush] Limbaugh: the most impressive thing about his role right now is the fealty he is able to demand from the rest of the right. The abject apologies he has extracted from Republican politicians who briefly dared to criticize him have been right out of Stalinist show trials.

I guess "conservative" just doesn't carry the punch that it used to.Related Links
When Stimulus Doesn't Scale
Krugman Hates Goolsbee
Extra Credit, Monday Edition





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Portfolio Mobile - Idle Chatter: Tribune, Glenn Beck, Kurt Vonnegut...

Idle Chatter: Tribune, Glenn Beck, Kurt Vonnegut...





-The bankrupt Tribune Co. has received a subpoena from the Labor Department, which wants to know more about the employee stock-ownership plan that enabled Sam Zell to buy the company while putting up little of his own money and paying minimal taxes. [WSJ]

-He'll make you laugh, he'll make himself cry: Glenn Beck is going on tour as a stand-up comic. [AP]

-All those marketers experimenting with paying bloggers and Twitter users to hype their wares may soon find themselves subject to new regulations imposed by the Federal Trade Commission. [Ad Age]

-Kurt Vonnegut is set to follow Michael Crichton as the latest dead author with a new book coming out. Of course, neither of them can hold a candle to Mark Twain, who has an all-new collection coming out this month despite the considerable handicap of being deceased these past 99 years. [AP]



-Magazine publishers have picked the middle of a recession as the best time to raise their cover and subscription prices. [NYT]Related Links
Zell's Sell
Tribune Co. Denies Playing Ball with Blagojevich
Report: Tribune Co. Files for Bankruptcy

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'Superman' artist Joe Shuster's lurid comic world exposed

Jeepers, Mr. Kent!

That's what a shocked Jimmy Olsen might say after seeing the hundreds of racy, violent and sadomasochistic cartoons by Joe Shuster, one of the creators of Superman, that have been unearthed by comic-book historian Craig Yoe.

Researching the secret origins behind America's favorite superheroes has revealed much in recent years, but never anything like this.

SUPERMAN'S STORY: Born of a real-life fatal robbery?

In the new book Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-Creator Joe Shuster (Abrams ComicArts, $24.95), page after page of lascivious panels are reproduced from underground comics that Shuster drew in the early 1950s when the artist was down on his luck. Titled Nights of Horror, the crude, stapled pamphlets of erotic horror were sold under the counter at drugstores for $3.

Within are naked women with whips, brutish men brandishing red-hot pokers, exotic torture and politically incorrect spankings. What makes the illustrations more than simply a curiosity of the times is the disturbing fact that many of the characters look exactly like Shuster's Superman and Lois Lane.

"Yes, they look like Lois and Clark," Yoe says. "Joe obviously had some very dark fantasies. There's a panel in an early Superman comic book where he has Lois over his knee and is spanking her. But certainly nothing of this depth or extremeness."

Artist Shuster and writer Jerry Siegel created Superman in 1938 but didn't benefit when the character exploded in popularity in the 1940s. By the 1950s, Shuster was barely working. He died in 1992.

It is not unusual for comic-book artists to handle sexier fare; MAD magazine's Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder produced Little Annie Fanny in Playboy for 26 years.

But Stan Lee of Marvel Comics writes in an introduction that the Shuster work is "startling" in that it caters to "the basest of man's character. It clearly indicates how desperate Joe must have been."

Says Yoe, who found the complete 16-issue run of the crude publication at a used-book store: "There are some who say I should have left this stuff buried and not ruin Joe's reputation. But this is a major body of work by the creator of the superhero. Some of the drawings are beautiful, showing the great craftsman that he was. There's even an innocence.

"I can't say I'd frame it and put it above my mantel, but it's a very important find for comic-book history and cultural history."