|
|
|
| |
| |
Monday, January 30, 2006
If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator. --- George Bush, December 18, 2000
I've always liked Katie Couric. A decade ago, when she was the MC of a publishing awards event, she presented me with an award and thanked me for my goofball speech. (Technological excellence? Me?) She lives in my 'hood and is nice to people who work in its stores. And as a young widow, she's a demon about preventing colon cancer; I got my first screening test because of her. But there's a new Katie on 'Today' now. She wears glasses. And does 'harder' segments. Maybe she's teeing herself up for that $20 million-a-year job as CBS news anchor. Or maybe it just gets old flirting with George Clooney. So, last week, Katie took on Howard Dean. The topic was Jack Abramoff. You have the facts, right? Abramoff was a Republican lobbyist who did more to corrupt Congress than anyone since the Teapot Dome Scandal. (Look it up). Some of his clients--Indian tribes who were in the casino business--gave to Democrats before he represented them; they gave less under his influence. As for his personal giving: l00% Republican. Not a dollar to Dems. These are the facts. They are inconvenient to Republicans, who like to think they swept into office to tidy up after that lowlife Clinton. And so the Republicans muddle the conversation. They say this is a bi-partisan scandal--hey, his clients gave to Dems--and they'll be delighted to craft new moral codes to make sure this never happens again (at least, not this exact way). The Republicans, in short, lie. And the people in the media who go along with their lie are even worse liars. Because the truth is, as they say, out there. Now comes Howard Dean. Katie adjusts her classes. And then this: DEAN: The other thing is the corruption scandals in Congress. Tom DeLay; all these folks involved in getting money--all of whom are Republicans--from Jack Abramoff. We need to, an overhaul of Congress in the worst way. COURIC: Hey, wait a second! Democrats took money—Democrats took money from Jack Abramoff, too, Mr. Dean! DEAN: That is absolutely false! That did not happen! Not one dime of money from Jack Abramoff went to any Repub—Democrat at any time . Katie has a source. She cites it. But wrongly. Dean corrects her. She says she'll get back to America on that. The next day, "Today" does just that. Who do they bring in? Tim Russert! Yes, the biggest White House kiss-ass on all of NBC. No. Wait. Didn't Chris Matthews--who's obviously gone Brokeback for Bush--just say, "I love the way he [Bush] leans into a lectern"? Okay. Make Russert the second biggest White House suck-up. And what does Russert do? Recites the Republican talking points. Now this is all very jolly and amusing, because this sort of thing happens all the time. And nobody cares in any way that you can tell. Just another day in the life of Mainstream Media. It's not like it's a secret: Most of these guys are whores who would rather tell a lie than risk losing their movie-star salaries. Anyway, it's not like they're real reporters--they just play reporters on TV. Is there anyone here who doesn't know where to go for Factual Information? (Oddly, it's not favorable to Bush. But then, neither is most of the world. Check this out: When the Olympics start, watch some of the flagwaving coverage on American TV. Then watch a foreign station. The difference will blow your mind--especially if it's an event "we" lose.) You want the truth about Iraq, you go to Informed Consent, Juan Cole's website. You want the truth about media, you go to MediaMatters.com. Politics is the obsession of DailyKos.com and Eschaton. And for what it all means, there's JamesWolcott.com. Bloggers. All bloggers. You want truth--that is, assertions with factual documentation attached--you go to bloggers. You want to sleep through life, that's why God invented TV. It's no one's fault. People are busy. They don't connect the dots. Like these: As I write, on a January afternoon in New York, it's 61 degrees. Today, Exxon announced the biggest quarterly profit in U.S. history. A top scientist was the lead story in the New York Times yesterday; he says the government doesn't want him to talk about global warming as if it's a fact. At Davos, the talk was of a 10-year window before the planet is seriously, irreversibly hurt. And on Madison Avenue, people smile in the sun. "Lovely day," they say. Indeed it is. And a few more years of this, and the streets will look like Venice. Over the weekend, I read Milton Mayer's 1955 book, "They Thought They Were Free". It's a study of Germans in the years before World War II. None of the 10 people he interviewed--and befriended--were hate-filled Nazis. Far from it. They didn't know. And didn't care. In fact, there were ministers who, every Sunday throughout the war, preached against the Nazis. They were local. They were beloved. No one bothered them. Which is, Mayer discovered, how Nazism worked. It took only a small number of committed fascists to move the program along. The people in the middle--no one asked anything of them. In 1938, a Polish Jew shot the German Councilor of Embassy in Paris. A week later, he died. The Nazis were prepared. The word went out to small towns. Kronenberg, for one, a university town of 20,000. Twenty uniformed SA guards entered a bar and instructed a handful of Nazi supporters to burn the synagogue. A handful. That's all it took. No one's burning American synagogues. But they're jumping up and down in the White House--the most unpopular White House in decades, in polls mean anything--when the airwaves bristle with constitutionally protected hate speech. The only thing worse than Hamas? According to Sean Hannity, it's liberals. Let's see: Hamas wants every Jew dead. Liberals want...? And now CNN has hired a hater of its own.... People think fascism is about hating Jews or racial purity. Wrong. It's about a system that works for business. Big business. The government isn't powerful in itself --- it's the bitch of business. And, hey, people like order. And institutions like the church are.... quaint. The only people who are unhappy are the people who, as Martha Stewart liked to say on her version of "The Apprentice," don't fit in. Our government has failed to protect us from the next 9/11--port security is a joke, the government computers are broken toys. As far as I can see, the only reason there's been no attack is because Bin Laden is doing so well without one. But you can be sure that the men and women charged with our defense will blame Democrats and Liberals if Bin Laden strikes again. That's how they work. The big lie. The big lie is old news. The story this week--a little story, easy to overlook--is that we now know Katie and Matt (to say nothing of Tim and Chris) will go along with them.
From TalkLeft.com: Section 605 of the House version of the Patriot Act renewal legislation. It calls for the creation of a Federal Police Force. Your imperial presidency at work. "A permanent police force, to be known as the 'United States Secret Service Uniformed Division,'" empowered to "make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence" ... "or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing such felony."
Monday, January 23, 2006
Question at the Miss America pageant: What about the planned nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain? Crystal Wosik, who was named Miss Las Vegas and Miss Nevada: "It has to go someplace, and that was the best-built facility in the country." Question: And if people die? Wosik: "We just have to take one for the team." ---- The Las Vegas Review Journal
It's Roe v. Wade Day, time for our annual check on the status of women in America. Are they property of the State yet? Not quite. Whew. Another year of--relative--freedom. In my set--you know: educated, amoral verging on Godless--we're breaking out the good stuff tonight and toasting the persistence of reason. Too bad the right-to-lifers can't all come; they could use the sense of well-being that a good Bordeaux and a Frenchified chicken can provide. "Live and let live"--it's not such a radical idea. Some people ought to try it. Like, say, the 20-odd percent of Americans who reject abortion in all forms. (The same percentage--and, I'll bet, the same people--that thinks Saddam was Osama's college roommate and that the devil made any dinosaur bone that looks more than 6,000 years old. Funny how these things work, isn't it?) They hate abortion, but they sure don't seem to mind other forms of killing. You sure don't see them, for example, mourning the state-mandated murder of that woman in a Texas hospital not long ago. But then, that woman was not only terminal, she was poor and African; God had abandoned her long ago. Roe was a great decision for women in the same way as the 13th Amendment was for blacks--it conferred full personhood on them. I'm not sure if that's what infuriates the "pro-life" crowd, or if those holier-than-me folks really do think abortion is murder. They froth so, it's hard to make out what they're saying.... (In her blog, Loose Canon doesn't even bother to do the heavy lifting on Roe; she mostly quotes the National Review, Marvin Olasky and Chuck Colson. Just the right sourcing, doncha think? I mean, if anyone understands women, it must be right-wing men.) So I guess it falls to me--a serial husband, who helped raise a couple of kids and watched my current and final wife go through hell to produce one of our own--to talk some sense. If Roe were just about abortion at the national level--if abolishing Roe meant that each state could make its own laws about abortion--I wouldn't be so absolute in my support. But the right has made such a big deal over Roe that it's become a symbol. Of what, I'm not quite sure, so greatly have the "right to lifers"--the irony is so great this needs always to be in quotes--fetishized the fetus. The thing is, this obsession with the fetus as a full-fledged person is quite recent. Surprised? Check this out: In the early 7th Century, the Church began codifying what it considered sexual sins and abortion made the list, but was well behind the "sins" of birth control, oral sex, and anal sex. In fact, the punishment for oral sex was at least 7 years of penance, while the punishment for abortion was a mere 120 days.
In the centuries that followed, Popes came on the scene with widely varying viewpoints--changing and re-changing the rules as the mitre passed on. Significantly, Pope Innocent III in the early 1200s ruled that the fetus had no soul until it was "animated" (the "quickening," when the mother can feel the fetus' movements, usually around the 24th week). In his ruling--and this is significant--a monk was found not guilty of homicide for aborting his lover's unborn child under this argument. Pope Sixtus V in 1588 made all abortions illegal, but was reversed again by Pope Gregory XIV, codifying abortions at up to 16 ½ weeks as not equivalent to the killing of a human being, as no soul was present. Even St. Thomas Aquinas himself--arguably the most influential theologian in Roman Catholic Christianity--did not consider a fetus human until the quickening.
This was the way it was for the most part until 1869. That's when Pope Pius IX declared all abortion to be homicide. That's right, for nearly the entire history of Christianity, the Catholic Church was officially tolerant of first-trimester abortion. The change was well after the Enlightenment, after the Civil War, and into the modern scientific era. In fact, it was only as recently as 1983 that all vestiges of the distinction between the "fetus animatus" and "fetus inanimatus" were quietly purged from Canon Law. (Yes, that was 1983... only 23 years ago.) Well, you say, things change. Science, for example, helps us know more. Sorry, non-start there. The people who hate Roe also hate science. But not, I would wager, as much as they hate women. For me, that's what this debate is all about. First it was the blacks, then it was the women. It's easy enough to play the real-estate game so blacks don't live in your neighborhood, but women, dammit--they're everywhere. And you need them, not just to have your babies, but for recreational sex. (No women, you're gonna have to ride up 'Brokeback Mountain'.) Why these pro-lifers require women to be second class citizens is beyond me, but it's quite clear they believe the only word they want to hear from women is "yes." (Well, maybe "thank you.") That's why returning abortion to the state level is not a great idea. Consider the mood in Ohio, as reported by the Cincinnati Enquirer: A Cincinnati legislator's bill to ban abortion in Ohio drew widespread support here Wednesday from a dozen groups eager to trigger a review of Roe v. Wade by what they see as an increasingly conservative U.S. Supreme Court.
At a Statehouse news conference marking this week's 33rd anniversary of the landmark 1973 decision, opponents called on the Ohio General Assembly to debate a bill banning all abortions. Introduced nine months ago by Rep. Tom Brinkman, R-Mount Lookout, House Bill 228 would make it a felony to carry out abortions or transport a woman across state lines to have one. It would allow abortions only to save the life of a mother. Get that? A woman's body is not her own. Once she is "with child," the State rules. Leave the state pregnant and come back skinny? Felony. (I don't know how they'd enforce this. Will women have to show their passports at airports, bus and train stations? Will there be checkpoints at border crossings between states? Or will the State simply insert a chip in its pregnant women that can't be removed until childbirth?) How about a pregnant woman who smokes on the street? Or drinks in a bar? If the fetus is as sacred as some people seem to think, those are criminal acts. In which case, we ought to pass laws that define the fetus as a citizen. (But only the poor fetuses will have to pay taxes, of course.) This sounds silly. But the thing about freedom is, it's an all-or-nothing proposition. A woman can't be just a bit unfree. A woman's body is her own. Period. What she chooses to do with it is between her and her doctor--and between her and her God. I can understand why a man might want to insert himself in that constellation. Why a man might even want to take the place of an Almighty God in a woman's eyes. What confounds me is the women who believe this stuff. How I wish they could come for dinner tonight. Twenty minutes of logic and a little wine, and they might see things differently.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
The Republican Party has been hijacked by religious fanatics, who are out of touch with mainstream America. Think of the recent comments by Pat Robertson--a religious fanatic by any measure--that the United States should assassinate a democratically elected leader in Venezuela, and that Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine punishment because Sharon wished to trade land for peace. Since the Republican Party has been utterly unable to stand for something positive, they have created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation, and have pandered to religious fanatics not to vote for something they believe in, but to vote against their fellow Americans with whom they disagree. Those among us who would use religion and politics to divide rather than unite Americans should be ashamed. -- Paul Hackett, Iraq veteran and Democratic candidate from Ohio
No one is faster with the remote than Mrs. U., and she reaches warp speed fast when the President's face appears on the screen. As a result, we can go for quite a long time without hearing or seeing George Bush. But there was some extended footage of Bush on 'The Daily Show' the other night, with the President explaining for the German Chancellor and the rest of us how there was this thing called "diplomacy" and how useful it might be in dealing with Iran. It was--for those of us who try to deal only with the printed or blogged word--an unsettling moment. Yeah, he looked dismissive and patronizing. And contemptuous that he had to be there at all. And disengaged. But that's too facile. No one is more dangerous than a cornered animal. And by a lot of metrics, Bush is cornered. The war, the deficit, Medicare, Jack Abramoff--there are a lot of explanations for his low approvals rating. Bush did not, however, look cornered. He looked same old same old: a frat boy who's having his term papers written by the house wonk--and who's getting away with it. This time, however, the dissociation between what he looked like and what's happening in the world is wider than when we last checked. And it was worrisome. Is Bush just the stupidest, laziest guy ever to be President? Is he...crazy? Or is what we saw the other day no reason for alarm because, at the end of the day, he's really just a front? I'm feeling seasonally....clueless. Feel free to weigh in.
On the other hand, this is a President who would like to frame the limits of dissent. Last week he said, "So I ask all Americans to hold their elected leaders to account, and demand a debate that brings credit to our democracy--not comfort to our adversaries." You grasp that last phrase is code. Wikipedia tells us: Article Three [of the Constitution] defines treason as only levying war against the United States or "in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort," and requires the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act or a confession in open court for conviction. The President is not a sloppy speaker. I mean, he is--but only when speaking impromptu. This was scripted. Was he threatening to indict those who color outside his lines as traitors? So I ask you--and don't forget, your phone may very well be among the millions illegally tapped: Did you say anything incriminating? Could you have given Aid and Comfort to our enemies? Or are you one of those nice sheep who feels very, very protected by our government?
The hearings were a snore. They were supposed to be. Alito had been brilliantly prepped, and he wasn't about to say anything revealing. Indeed, the thing was so scripted I'm tempted to think his wife's tears were premeditated. What didn't the White House want Alito to reveal? That he's a hard-core rightie, who not only would overturn Roe v. Wade in a heartbeat but could generally be counted on to field anything hit his way by a white man with a government title or a badge. You've read about some of his egregious rulings. Here's one you may have missed --- a civil rights case, commentary by Martin Garbus: The decision was 10-1. Alito was the one. It was the entire sitting bench of the Third Circuit voting against him. I have never seen so lopsided a vote. Conservative judges, as well as liberal judges, excoriated Alito.
In this case, Barbara Sheridan, a head captain at the Hotel DuPont, said she was fired because she complained of sexual harassment. A jury agreed and awarded her substantial damages.
After Sheridan complained, the hotel started to keep meticulous records on her that were never kept on any other employee. They recorded, over a six-month period, every time she was a minute late, and they went to people she dealt with and recorded only her negative remarks.
Alito, in opposition to the ten judges, wanted to reverse the jury finding and dismiss her case--he chose to accept the employer's version of the facts rather than the employee's--attributing to Hotel DuPont reasons for firing her that were never told to her before she lost her job, but were offered as a rationale for the first time in court. Nonetheless, he praised the law she was suing under, noted it was a great advance and should be easily applied.
But Alito wanted to use Barbara Sheridan's case to do more. He wanted to change the burden of proof in civil rights discrimination cases--make the employee prove racial, gender or age discrimination, rather than placing the burden on the company to prove they had a valid reason for firing her. That seemingly small procedural change would reverse the result in well over 90 percent of discrimination suits.
The ten-member court would not go along with Alito's view of the facts or law; they found the hotel's testimony fraudulent, not worthy of belief, and unanimously said Alito's view of the law would make race, gender, disability or age anti-discrimination statutes meaningless. Hmm. Maybe there was another reason his wife wept.....
If you didn't know better--and you'd have to be an insider to know better--you would think that there's no relation between what newspapers print and the pressure put on any one paper. But what if pressure is put on lots of papers, in a concerted effort? Firedoglake.com connects the dots: How does the GOP keep them all [newspapers] in such abject subservience? An article from the Knight-Ridder news service shows the extremely organized pressure they bring to bear on anyone who deviates from their party message:
On Dec. 1, Knight Ridder's Washington bureau sent a story analyzing the record of Judge Samuel Alito to our 32 daily newspapers and to the more than 300 papers that subscribe to the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service. Written by Stephen Henderson, Knight Ridder's Supreme Court correspondent, and Howard Mintz of the San Jose Mercury News, the story began:
"During his 15 years on the federal bench, Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito has worked quietly but resolutely to weave a conservative legal agenda into the fabric of the nation's laws."
Assisted by Washington bureau researcher Tish Wells, Henderson and Mintz spent nearly a month reading all of Alito's 311 published opinions, which are available in a commercial database or in the archives of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, where Alito has sat for 15 years.
Henderson and Mintz cataloged the cases by category--employment discrimination, criminal justice, immigration and so on--and analyzed each one with help from attorneys who participated on both sides of the cases and experts in those fields of law. They interviewed legal scholars and other judges, many of them admirers of Alito.
They concluded that, "although Alito's opinions are rarely written with obvious ideology, he's seldom sided with a criminal defendant, a foreign national facing deportation, an employee alleging discrimination or consumers suing big business."
You might find this neither surprising nor controversial. Alito, after all, was nominated by a president who said that his ideal Supreme Court justices were Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the high court's most reliably conservative members.
You'd be wrong.
Within days, the Senate Republican Conference circulated a lengthy memo headlined, "Knight Ridder Misrepresents Judge Alito's 15-year record."
Their talking points in place, they sent out the foot soldiers:
Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a leader in the Alito confirmation process, sent a letter to the editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, a Knight Ridder paper, denouncing the story as "neither objective nor accurate." The Inquirer published it on Dec. 7.
Trot out some "expert" and demand equal time:
The White House offered an opinion piece by Jeffrey N. Wasserstein, a former Alito law clerk who identified himself as a Democrat and said his former boss "is capable of setting aside any personal biases he may have when he judges." Knight Ridder/Tribune distributed it to all of our papers and its subscribers on Dec. 11.
Get the hacks into the act:
A conservative columnist, whose glowing tribute to Alito is now featured in television advertisements supporting the nominee, declared the Knight Ridder story "illiterate."
Then when anyone brings it up, cite all your previous bullshit as proof irrefutable that the story has no merit:
The controversy erupted again this week at Alito's confirmation hearings. After Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., referred to the Knight Ridder story, Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., introduced a critique of the story by the Republican staff of the Judiciary Committee into the record of the hearings. Kyl said the story, "has, to my understanding, been rather completely discredited." The first paragraph of the Republican critique, however, said the story was based on "dozens" of Alito's opinions, creating the false impression that Henderson and Mintz didn't examine the judge's entire body of published work. And the next thing you know, pretty much everyone's walking in lockstep. They're really clever, aren't they?
You know you're getting somewhere when trolls appear on your message boards. The liberal blogger handbook expressly warns--wait, I've got to look it up; oh yeah, here it is, page 10--"Do not feed the trolls." But every once in a while, a troll will get my blood pumping. And I respond. This time, it was last week's post about the woman who was killed by the state in Texas because she was terminally ill and couldn't pay for her care. A reasonable response would be: "How could George Bush have signed this bill into law when he was Governor--he's all about the culture of life?" A troll would say--and did: "Well, look, his source was DailyKos.com." First, let me defend Kos. Unlike the wingnuts on the right, activists on the left like to support their arguments with facts. But trolls are so sure that everything on our side is made up--maybe because so much on their side really is made up--that they can't even see the link on Kos to a news source: Channel WFAA, Channel 5 News, in Ft. Worth/Dallas. Not very likely that's a leftist station. Some other sources: -- CBS TV in Dallas/Ft. Worth. -- Slate.com, once owned by Microsoft, now owned by the Washington Post. Kos didn't make it up. The woman had no money. The doctors decided she had no future. No home would take her. So they killed her. Spin that, trolls.
I met Martin Wolff through this blog. He wrote and I responded, and he wrote back, and soon enough, we were pen pals. Not only did I gain a virtual friend, I had the good fortune to be in a dialogue with a very sharp guy who had more to teach me than I had to teach him. That didn't become fully clear until Martin mentioned that he had recorded a CD of sacred Hindu chants. Out of curiosity, I asked for a copy. My expectations were low. Yours would be as well. A guy from Jersey privately recording music from a tradition thousands of miles and years distant--what are the odds he's great? He is great. There's no look-at-me in his voice. Martin dissolves into the chants, and becomes them, and then it's over. I emerge, blinking, delighted by the lack of ego. So I interviewed Martin--he's way smart about the God thing--and wrote him up, pointing with pride to his CD, Shakti~Bhakti.
Monday, January 09, 2006
I decided to worship beauty the way some men turn back to the religion of their fathers. --Leonard Cohen
Work in an office? Then you may have a fair idea how much sexual heat is generated during the average workday. And not all of that steam is fantasy escaping the body. Some of it is low-grade sexual harassment--just enough to get a reaction, not enough to provoke a lawsuit. So here is Gene Shalit, on the 'Today' Show, reviewing 'Brokeback Mountain.' Jack, who strikes me as a sexual predator, tracks Ennis down and coaxes him into sporadic trysts. But sporadic is not frequent enough for Jack. He wants Ennis full time. He whines, he pleads, he shouts that when they're apart, he's desolate. Jack cannot absorb Ennis' implied response: Better desolate than never. Predator? The guy waited a year or three, then sent a postcard! But you know how it is with gays--when they have desire, they're predators. When you and I have desire, of course, it's because we're in love.
So I watched the first hour of 'Book of Daniel.' Sure seemed like a religion-tinged version of 'Desperate Housewives.' Man, that show had everything. A wife whose reflex is to reach for a martini shaker. An Episcopal priest with a Vicodin crutch. A kid who deals weed (to pay for software that will help her art career!), another who's gay, a third who's bonking dad's best friend's daughter in the back of the family car (a Volvo, natch). Oh, and embezzlement. And an attempt to get the money back from the embezzler--the priest's brother-in-law--through the good offices of a Catholic priest who is, no fooling, Italian. But the embezzler had a heart attack in a hotel room--I'm fuzzy here, but I think he was with a prostitute when he expired--and it turns out he wasn't the embezzler at all. Revised theory: it's the priest's sister-in-law and the embezzler's secretary. A lesbo love plot? At that point, I zoned out. Call me old-fashioned, but there are shows--'Law & Order' comes to mind--that find one story compelling enough to fill an hour. Shows like 'Book of Daniel' have ADD. They operate on the theory that if they move randomly and quickly enough, you'll be mesmerized. Well, I was. Mostly by the loathsome plotting and writing. Like the moment when the Bishop (Ellen Burstyn, for the love of God!) reminds the priest who she is by reciting a bit of her resume. Way back when I taught screenwriting at NYU, I believe that was called "exposition"--and it was rewarded with a failing grade. I did, however, like Jesus. He was warm and ironic--like Willem Dafoe, but in a good mood. I felt bad for him, having to deal with nimwits like this cast. But nothing seemed to faze Him. He's got compassion for all His children, it seems--even the writers I would condemn to hell. Maybe He'll get a show of His own?
I want so badly to write about Big Ideas. But I feel--this week, anyway--that I need to present some dark facts about Iraq. Because if our "march to victory" takes about three steps more in the direction it's going, it's entirely possible that full-scale civil war will break out. And then we could be facing the 2006 equivalent of the evacuation of Saigon. The White House and most of our media are not dealing with this scenario--they like you to be the last to know. I prefer you to know the worst so you aren't paralyzed by surprise. First, today's news. From The New York Times: A series of brazen attacks in the heart of Baghdad's heavily fortified government zone continued today as two suicide bombers disguised as high-ranking police officers blew themselves up outside the Interior Ministry, killing at least 14 officers and wounding 25.
The attack came during a parade to mark Police Day that was attended by the Iraqi ministers of the interior and defense and by the American ambassador, an official of the Interior Ministry said. What this means: The insurgents attack with impunity. They have no difficulty finding suicide bombers who are good enough actors to play the parts of senior government officials. Our security is inadequate--we can't even protect ourselves on territory we allegedly control. Then this, from an American on the scene, who writes to Juan Cole: I am an American currently working in Baghdad for a news organization. I've been here numerous times over the past 15 years.
The current security situation here has gotten much worse since the elections. We had a security briefing yesterday right after a fellow journalist was abducted. Besides the usual reminders to keep a low profile and going over our own unique security measures and procedures as to what to do in any given scenario we were told that there's a high probability of all out civil war.
Iraq has been in a low level civil war since the end of 2003 that has been increasing in intensity ever since, but now our security team is telling us that should all-out war break out most, if not all of us, may have to be evacuated to safety in a nearby country. Instead of the scores of Iraqis dying each day as do now, thousands a day could perish. Most Sunnis have given up hope of getting adequate representation in the new Iraqi government and radical elements in the Shiite parties want to exact revenge on the Sunni for supporting Saddam over the years. Shiite death squads roam the city at night (in police and army uniform no less) dragging all the male members of a Sunni family out into the street and executing them in front of their women folk. Sunni insurgents (not in uniform) do the same to Shiite families in areas claimed as theirs.
The Sunni insurgents, it seems, are now determined to bring the new government to its knees by cutting off fuel supplies to Baghdad. The city’s supply of gasoline nearly dried up last week and local authorities literally shut the city down by banning all privately owned vehicles from the streets. They claimed it was to help hunt down the kidnappers of the Interior Minister’s sister but the real reason seems to be to reduce the demand for gas until supplies could be replenished. Electricity in most Baghdad neighborhoods has now been further reduced to as low as 1 hour per day. The black market rate for fuel for generators has doubled again and in many areas even that has run out. At this rate the city will go dark by the end of the month. Iraqi troops are reluctant to escort fuel trucks into Baghdad and American troops have their hands full escorting their own convoys.
Most US casualties are a result of trying to protect US military supplies. You can forget about the US military escorting civilian fuel convoys. So it all comes down to the Iraq army’s ability to get fuel into Baghdad and I don’t have much confidence they will succeed. What this means: Well, imagine your city with an hour of electric power a day and just enough gas at the pump to get you home. And then imagine that a foreign army is rolling through your city in convoys. Their cause: your freedom. You'd buy that, right? And, in case you missed this on Friday afternoon (when all the bad news is released)....again, from The New York Times: A secret Pentagon study has found that at least 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to their upper body could have survived if they had extra body armor. That armor has been available since 2003 but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials.
The ceramic plates in vests currently worn by the majority of military personnel in Iraq cover only some of the chest and back. In at least 74 of the 93 fatal wounds that were analyzed in the Pentagon study of marines from March 2003 through June 2005, bullets and shrapnel struck the marines' shoulders, sides or areas of the torso where the plates do not reach.
Thirty-one of the deadly wounds struck the chest or back so close to the plates that simply enlarging the existing shields "would have had the potential to alter the fatal outcome," according to the study, which was obtained by The New York Times. What this means: At least 74 Marines died from American negligence. That is, we knew there was a problem and we knew there was a solution, and we chose to do....nothing. And indeed, we may still be doing nothing. Except, of course, making our troops feel as if no one cares about them. The President has plenty of trouble as it is--his insistence that he can decide to ignore any law he chooses could well be grounds for impeachment. (Not that there are men and women in Congress courageous enough to launch impeachment hearings.) Now we may add criminally negligent homicide to the charges. I still believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant, so I racked my brain to think of a way--beyond blogs, that is--to get real facts like these to the public. And came up with an open letter to George Soros: Please buy CNN. If you can think of ways to wake up our slumbering fellow citizens, feel free to share. Or maybe there's something else. I just read Michael Daly's article about a mother who bought her son body armor for Christmas. Cost: $3.000. She was at her job with the city controller's office when her son telephoned from their house on Staten Island to say that UPS had made the delivery. "He called me, 'Oh, I got it! It's beautiful! Oh, look at this stuff!'" she recalled. "He wanted to try it on. I said, 'This is your Christmas present.' He said, 'Okay!'"
She arrived home to see him appear in full armor. "He comes all dressed up like he's going to the prom," she said. "He's standing there all straight and proud. He said, 'It's comfortable. It fits me good.' He's spinning around, saying, 'Do you see any holes?' He said, 'Look, I can carry my hand grenades.'"
The mother felt the need of a chair. "I'm sitting in my chair thinking, 'I can't believe this is happening,'" she recalled. Here's how crazy it is. The mother can file Form 2902, "Claim for Reimbursement and Payment Voucher for Privately Purchased Protective, Safety or Health Equipment Used in Combat." She can get back $1,100 through a program the military began after Congress insisted. The armor comes from Diamondback Tactical. Think I'll call them this week. Maybe it's time for the readers of this column to buy some poor soldiers the protection that will--literally--save their lives.
You will recall the President's hypocrisy in the Terri Schiavo case extended all the way to a Texas statute that he signed into law during those easygoing years in the Governor's mansion. Last year, I wrote about the case of a Texas child--also brain-dead--who was taken off a respirator in Houston because her family couldn't pay for hospital care. Well, now it's happened again--this time to a woman who was fully conscious. From Daily Kos: Tirhas Habtegiris, a young woman and legal immigrant from Africa, was CONSCIOUS and responsive when removed from a respirator and allowed to die. Let me rephrase that: She was killed by doctors who removed the ventilator keeping her alive. And this action was fully legal under Bush's "economic considerations" law. Her body was ravaged by cancer, but she was alert. She was responsive.
"They handed me this letter on December 1st. and they said, we're going to give you 10 days so on the 11th day, we're going to pull it out," said her brother Daniel Salvi.
Salvi was stunned to get this hand-delivered notice invoking a complicated and rarely used Texas law where a doctor is "not obligated to continue" medical treatment ....
She wasn't white. Politicians did not speculate on her diagnosis via video tape. Conservative religious zealots did not picket the hospital. She didn't have insurance. Ventilator treatment is expensive. Baylor did not want to incur any more expenses. So they removed a conscious woman from a respirator.
Tirhas still responded and was conscious. She was waiting one person. "She wanted to get her mom over here or to get to her mom so she could die in her mom's arms," says her cousin Meri Tesfay. Ten days was not enough time, they say, to get a mother from Africa to America. Ain't Texas grand? Don't you just love "the culture of life"? (And don't you wonder why it's the pro-choice liberal who cares about these people?)
You've loved so many of his movies. "Star Wars," of course. "The Magnificent Seven." That first great Clint Eastwood western, "A Fistful of Dollars." And, most recently, "A Bug's Life." No, Akira Kurosawa didn't really direct those movies. But he wrote and directed the films that inspired other directors to make those movies. ("Inspired" is polite; in some cases, the films other directors made were close copies of Kurosawa's stories and themes.) And the films that Kurosawa did make--"Rashomon" and "The Seven Samurai," most notably--are sufficiently miraculous for critics and audiences alike to regard him as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. Akira Kurosawa died in 1998 at the age of 88, having directed thirty feature films. Thirty thousand Japanese attended his funeral--including 5,000 people from the Japanese film industry itself. They knew: no one like him before, no one like him coming along. His memoir is Something Like an Autobiography. It's as remarkable as his films.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Arctic sea ice is melting fast. There was 20 percent less of it than normal this summer, and as Dr. Mark Serreze, one of the researchers from Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center, told reporters, "the feeling is we are reaching a tipping point or threshold beyond which sea ice will not recover." That is particularly bad news because it creates a potent feedback effect: instead of blinding white ice that bounces sunlight back into space, there is now open blue water that soaks up the sun's heat, amplifying the melting process. --Bill, McKibben, in The New York Review of Books
The good news about a holiday week is that--if you're lucky--you get time to read and listen to music and see movies. I hope you had that opportunity. I did all of that, and I feel as if my heart and brain are now burning premium fuel and putting out more horsepower. The other news about a holiday week--and maybe this is not so good--is that you get to think. I know I did. Maybe you had some moments of pure reflection as well. If so, feel free to share. In any event--poor you--I'm going to take you through what I thought. The genesis of the sermon that follows is a question I got from Jocelyn, an old friend and regular reader. She read last week's rant--but, hey, it could have been the week before, or the week before that; this song does get old--about the unprecedented level of criminality the Bush Administration has already produced, with much more to be revealed, and the hopelessness of the war we're "winning" and the disgusting way our Congress taxes the very people most likely to be crushed by a bad economic bounce, and she wrote: BUT WHAT TO DO? This obviously makes me SICK SICK -- but Jesse, what to do as a person with a small voice...Tell us what to do... That was my koan for the week: What would I have you do? The first advice is personal: Focus on what is important to you. The last two words are key. What is important to you may not be what's important to anyone else. No matter. It's your life. Put your energy where your heart lives. Until this week, what was most important to me was the war in Iraq, because it is a cancer that has to be removed so we can--please God--come to our senses and start to heal. One way to do that is to make sure the Republicans steal no more elections. (Warning: I'm giving up euphemism for the New Year. In the real world, elections do get "stolen." In the real world, what the President has recently admitted is "impeachable" and "criminal." In the real world, you don't have to wear high leather boots to be a "fascist." In the real world, when you mouth the party line, you're not a pundit, you're an "operative" or--a word I like better--a stooge. Too blunt for you? Not "nuanced" enough? Then don't let the door hit you on your way out.) Beyond your personal cause, I see this as the common cause of all spiritually evolved people--political change. Not because I am a snarky pol operating under cover of spirituality, but because there is an important spiritual document in our country, and it is being systematically violated. Yes, the Constitution, which we would do well to regard as a sacred text. (Our fathers did. Indeed, many of them died to protect it.) So the first public task, in my view, is to do everything you can to defeat the Republicans, regain Democratic control of Congress and begin to restore some balance among the three branches of government. Specific acts you might undertake: 1) Encourage everyone you know who isn't registered to sign up to vote--as a Democrat. 2) Remind every Republican of the home truth: The Republican officeholder or candidate who insists he/she is an "independent" is either lying or kidding himself/herself. There is no such thing as a Republican "moderate" or "independent." The Republican leadership demands absolute loyalty. Express a "moderate" opinion, and you're road kill. So don't let Republicans tell you how they "respectfully disagree" with the President's agenda--once they're in Washington, they toady like the rest of them. I also favor direct protest against the war. Write your Congressperson and Senator and put it bluntly: If you support the war, you lose my support. I will work for your defeat. Etc. It also helps to know the facts. And, more often than not, I have used this space to provide them. But as my friend suggests, knowledge doesn't make you powerful--just more frustrated. For example, the President has recently admitted that he authorized a program of warrantless spying on American citizens. Despite opposition from his own Department of Justice--Attorney General John Ashcroft, no great defender of constitutional rights, refused to sign off on the legality of Bush's program--he insists that what he did was legal. And that he'd do it again--hell, he's doing it right now. And that he didn't lie when he said these wiretaps could never occur without a warrant. And, most of all, that we needed this program to listen to Al Qaeda members living and plotting in America. Small question: Al Qaeda members were living in America. And we've taped them for three years now. And arrested...no one? Or the "cookies," the mini-programs dropped into your computer--without your knowledge--to trace your Internet activity. These were inserted "by accident"? How could that happen? And when do they expire? 2035. Think you'll still be using the computer you're using today in 2035? Simply: an evil and stupid program. I could go on--and, below I do. (For this week's revelations, skibble down to: "If this is 'winning,' what would losing look like?") But over the holiday, I read Bill McKibben's essay (see link in 'Thought for the Week') on global warming. And I looked at Drudge and the news, and saw crazy headlines: record rain...floods...droughts and fires. Really, it was the Egyptian plagues. And so I find myself--on the evidence of my own eyes, not inspired by some theoretical position or a political cause--agreeing with McKibben: Climate change somehow seems unable to emerge on the world stage for what it really is: the single biggest challenge facing the planet, the equal in every way to the nuclear threat that transfixed us during the past half-century and a threat we haven't even begun to deal with. The coverage of Katrina's aftermath, for instance, was scathing in depicting the Bush administration's incompetence and cronyism; but the President--and his predecessors--were spared criticism for their far bigger sin of omission, the failure to do anything at all to stanch the flood of carbon that America, above all other nations, pours into the atmosphere and that is the prime cause of the great heating now underway. Though Bush has been egregious in his ignorance about climate change, the failure to do anything about it has been bipartisan; Bill Clinton and Al Gore were grandly rhetorical about the issue, but nonetheless presided over a 13 percent increase in America's carbon emissions. What can you do? Once again, the same conclusion is called for: Get rid of political whores who are puppets for industry. Give the boot to men who have sold out your kids' futures so the petroleum industry can book record profits. Got money? Learn all you can about new technologies, then invest in them. Do what you can to free your home environment--and, dare I say, your "lifestyle"--from the bloated excess that has become the American way. Turn off the TV and read a book. Spend more time with your kids. Cook a real meal. E.M. Forster says: "Only connect." Yes. To a point. But then I suggest you disconnect--cut loose from the present and live in the future. That is, the future you want. Not the one that's coming if the Powers That Be have their war--permanent war for scant resources, suppression of science in the name of religion. America is well on its way to being a second-rate power. Not for economic reasons. For moral and spiritual reasons. So it's up to us--as individuals, first, and then collectively--to be better than the creeps we see in the media. It's up to us to find ways to save ourselves and protect the planet. In the process, we may yet save our country. Once, on the sadly cancelled Tina Brown TV show, the topic was "9/11 fatigue." The idea was that we had heard so much about the terrorist threat we were numb to it. Then it was the turn of Ed Hayes, a New York lawyer, to opine. "I don't have this fatigue," he said. "In fact, I work out more these days." Tina asked why. "Because," Ed said, "the next time I might have to carry somebody." Right answer. We must all be more now--all that we can be, and then some--so we are ready for whatever future life deals us. That's why I work out three times a week. I play more with the kid, and read to her, and talk to her. I give money to Democrats with spines and to causes that do what our government should. And, as of now, I'm starting to read more about the environment. Hope that helps you, Jocelyn. And the rest of you too. As ever, all suggestions are welcome.
For instance: If there was a plan for the war two years ago, why did we just hear about it last fall? Well, because there was no plan after all. As The Washington Post revealed:
Peter D. Feaver, a Duke University specialist on wartime public opinion who now works at the White House, helped draft a 35-page public plan for victory in Iraq, a paper principally designed to prove that Bush had one.
Why didn't the plan tell us that victory does not include water or electricity for the Iraqis? Because we only care about "democracy," not about how people actually live. Ready to be shocked? From The Washington Post: The Bush administration does not intend to seek any new funds for Iraq reconstruction in the budget request going before Congress in February, officials say. The decision signals the winding down of an $18.4 billion U.S. rebuilding effort in which roughly half of the money was eaten away by the insurgency, a buildup of Iraq's criminal justice system and the investigation and trial of Saddam Hussein.
Just under 20 percent of the reconstruction package remains unallocated. When the last of the $18.4 billion is spent, U.S. officials in Baghdad have made clear, other foreign donors and the fledgling Iraqi government will have to take up what authorities say is tens of billions of dollars of work yet to be done merely to bring reliable electricity, water and other services to Iraq's 26 million people.
"The U.S. never intended to completely rebuild Iraq," Brig. Gen. William McCoy, the Army Corps of Engineers commander overseeing the work, told reporters at a recent news conference. In an interview this past week, McCoy said: "This was just supposed to be a jump-start." So...if it wasn't to boost power and water, where did our money go? From 14 percent to 22 percent of the cost of every nonmilitary reconstruction project goes toward security against insurgent attacks, according to reconstruction officials in Baghdad. In Washington, the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction puts the security costs of each project at 25 percent.
U.S. officials more than doubled the size of the Iraqi army, which they initially planned to build to only 40,000 troops. An item-by-item inspection of reallocated funds reveals how priorities were shifted rapidly to fund initiatives addressing the needs of a new Iraq: a 300-man Iraqi hostage-rescue force that authorities say stages operations almost every night in Baghdad; more than 600 Iraqis trained to dispose of bombs and protect against suicide bombs; four battalions of Iraqi special forces to protect the oil and electric networks; safe houses and armored cars for judges; $7.8 million worth of bulletproof vests for firefighters; and a center in the city of Kirkuk for treating victims of torture. In essence, we diverted the reconstruction money to beef up an Iraqi army that won't fight, to defend the limping power plants--and to treat victims of a torture program that, we insist, doesn't exist. And the result: In two of the most crucial areas, electricity and oil production, relentless sabotage has kept output at or below prewar levels despite the expenditure of hundreds of millions of American dollars and countless man-hours. Oil production stands at roughly 2 million barrels a day, compared with 2.6 million before U.S. troops entered Iraq in March 2003, according to U.S. government statistics.
The national electrical grid has an average daily output of 4,000 megawatts, about 400 megawatts less than its prewar level.
Iraqis nationwide receive on average less than 12 hours of power a day. For residents of Baghdad, it was six hours a day last month, according to a U.S. count, though many residents say that figure is high. You will read elsewhere--you need go no farther than Little Mary Sunshine; I mean Loose Canon-- that we are "winning" the war. You might take a moment and post a question on her message boards: "How do these figures fit in with your concept of 'victory'? Or are the figures lies because they don't come from sources you recognize as accurate?"
The message boards--yes, I read them--tell me that certain people don't like it when I refer to two classes of citizens: smart and stupid. Now, as you all surely know, I have nothing but compassion for those who are born less than smart. Or who have no advantages and can't get educated. Or who have no role models and fall in with bad company and find themselves hopelessly beached. No, I'm talking about people who actively choose stupidity--people who choose fairy tale religious doctrine over demonstrable science, people who blindly believe public officials even when they contradict themselves in a single speech. John Kenneth Galbraith said you could convince 25% of the American public of anything. Why? Because 25% of the American populace continued to support Richard Nixon after he resigned in disgrace. Twenty-five percent seems to be a magic number. As | | |
Home