Sharon’s Likud Party votes against his plan for withdrawl from Gaza:

With about half of the votes counted, the plan was being defeated by a margin of 62 percent to 38 percent. About 40 percent of Likud’s 200,000 members voted Sunday. Sharon had warned before voting that if he did not get the support of the party, Israel would probably face new elections. After the exit poll results began coming in, Sharon said in a statement: “I respect the results. My intention is to continue to lead the country to the best of my ability, my conscience and public obligation. It is not an easy mission, but it is my intention to do it.”

…In an interview Friday with Israeli Channel 2, the prime minister said: “If … the plan is not passed, that will lead us to elections, new elections that would be very bad for Israel, absolutely superfluous, especially in light of our economic situation today.”

Puck Albright writes to BET:

Last week, I noticed that some ‘editor’ at BET had made the decision to cut some of the words out of Kanye West’s song “All Falls Down” for his video. One such editorial cut was very interesting to me. In the lyric “drug dealer buys Jordans, / crackhead buys crack / and a white man gets paid / off of all of that,” BET chose to delete the words “drug,” “crackhead” and “white.” Do you also find that choice problematic? Particularly coming from a station that purports to serve a Black viewership? Is there something wrong with saying the word “white” now? Certainly, Kanye West knew precisely what he meant by that lyric, and so do his fans. So who misunderstood at BET? BET should be looping Kanye West (and other positive influences) twenty-four hours a day, but instead they are censoring them. How ironic!

So long as “Success in Life” is on, and Kanye West cannot talk about where Black peoples’ money goes in his videos, Black Entertainment Television is something strange indeed. And I mean strange in the same way that the Invisible Man thought the Battle Royal was strange…

Stephen Lerner at Blog for the Future:

Globalization and Wal-Martization are both driven by the same powerful impulse: the search for the lowest wages and highest profits, complete with their harmful effects on workers, communities, the environment, and our countries.

It’s about time someone did this (via Seditious Libel):

When thinking about the recent turmoil, it’s important to remember three things: One, people don’t behave like [computer programs/billiard balls/migratory birds], so attempts to treat them as such inevitably look foolish. [Computer programs/Billiard balls/Migratory birds] never suddenly [blow themselves up/shift their course in order to fit with a predetermined set of beliefs/set up a black market for Western DVDs]. Two, [country in question] has spent decades [as a dictatorship closed to the world/being batted back and forth between colonial powers/torn by civil war and ethnic hatred], so a mindset of peace and stability will seem foreign and strange. And three, [hope/freedom/capitalism] is an extraordinarily powerful idea.

There’s really a tremendous convergence between what people significantly to the left and significantly to the right of Thomas Friedman seem, rightly, to think of him: He manages to write a lot and say relatively little. He reads too much into his own anecdotes and pithy platitudes. And he gives people an excuse to avoid taking sides on difficult issues by instead remarking, “I just find Thomas Friedman invaluable…”

Want to track offshoring as it happens? Check out this site from the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers.

From the Times:

The suggestion by Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski that the reservists acted at the behest of military intelligence officers appears largely supported in a still-classified Army report on prison conditions in Iraq that documented many of the worst abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad, including the sexual humiliation of prisoners.

The New Yorker magazine said in its new edition that the report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba found that reservist military police at the prison were urged by Army military officers and C.I.A. agents to “set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses.”

Happy May Day to all.

Break thy slavery’s want and dread;
Bread is freedom, freedom bread.

Change for America highlights the tragic irony in yesterday’s news.

Macedonia makes clear that it’s not “Old Europe”:

Macedonian police gunned down seven innocent immigrants, then claimed they were terrorists, in a killing staged to show they were participating in the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism, authorities said Friday. Police spokeswoman Mirjana Konteska told reporters that six people, including three former police commanders, two special police officers and a businessman, have been charged by police with murder. If convicted, they could be sentenced from 10 years to life in prison.

“That was an act of a sick mind,” Konteska said after a two-year investigation. “They … ordered the brutal murder of the seven Pakistani men.”

One of Bush’s contributors faces a setback in its campaign to steal him another election:

California has banned the use of more than 14,000 electronic voting machines made by Diebold Inc. in the November election because of security and reliability concerns, Kevin Shelley, the California secretary of state, announced yesterday. He also declared 28,000 other touch-screen voting machines in the state conditionally “decertified” until steps are taken to upgrade their security.

Mr. Shelley said that he was recommending that the state’s attorney general look into possible civil and criminal charges against Diebold because of what he called “fraudulent actions by Diebold.”

More compassionate conservatism:

Legislation that could be used by doctors and nurses who object to homosexuality to deny gays treatment or prescription drugs is now being considered in six states.

Just in case there was any confusion about where our government’s priorities lie:

The Treasury Department agency entrusted with blocking the financial resources of terrorists has assigned five times as many agents to investigate Cuban embargo violations as it has to track Osama bin Laden’s and Saddam Hussein’s money, documents show.