Now I understand

Chris Floyd explained. He quoted the words of a liberal journalist, who after systematically making the case that the Bush Administration is guilty of war crmes, comes to the conclusion:

The Bush administration has been wretchedly mistaken in its conception of executive power, deceitful in its push for war with Iraq and appalling in its scheming to make torture an instrument of state power. But a healthy democracy punishes policy mistakes, however egregious, and seeks redress for its societal wounds, however deep, at the ballot box and not in the prisoner's dock.

Criminal behavior by government officials is to be dealt with only at the ballot box? It is an amazing notion, but it seems to be one shared alike by Democrats and Republicans in Washington, D.C.; it makes comprehensible their behavior. That is why everything from impeachment to holding officials to be in contempt of Congress is off the table.

Chris Floyd further writes:

The cognitive dissonance of this conclusion was so painful and severe that I had to read it several times to fully take in that it meant exactly what it said: Rutten believes with all his heart that the official practice of deliberate, systematic torture – a clear and unambiguous war crime which he himself has just outlined in careful detail – is ultimately nothing more than a “wretched mistake,” a “policy difference” that should not be “criminalized.” And how can this be? The answer is obvious, if unspoken: because it was done by the United States government – and nothing the United States government ever does can possibly be criminal, or evil. It can only be, at most, a mistake, a conceptual error, an ill-considered policy, a botched attempt at carrying out a noble intention.

I'm less sure of this argument; it could simply be that the politicians consider themselves to be a special breed of human being to whom the laws that apply to the rest of the United States do not apply. In favor of Floyd's argument is Senator Kit Bond's statement:

"I'm not here to say that the government is always right, but when the government tells you to do something, I'm sure you would all agree that I think you all recognize that is something you need to do."

i.e., we must believe in the authoritarian government that is not bound by laws, presumably because it is the United States government that can do no evil. Or perhaps because it is controlled by people who can commit no crimes, only make policy mistakes.

Last Sorry Bit

Glenn Greenwald:

UPDATE III: This article from Dow Jones, celebrating that the telecom industry is completely off the hook as a result of this bill, has the full quote from Sen. Bond, which is even better:

"I'm not here to say that the government is always right, but when the government tells you to do something, I'm sure you would all agree that I think you all recognize that is something you need to do," Bond said.

Even when the Government is wrong, even when it orders you to do something illegal, your role is not to question but to obey. That's what he is saying explicitly.

When Democrats took over the Congress, they issued a document vowing to "end the 'dead of night' special interest provisions that turn bills into special-interest giveaways" and proclaimed: "Lawmakers must have the opportunity to read every bill before they vote on it. It’s common sense."

Today, the House leadership has set aside a grand total of one hour to debate the FISA/amnesty bill today, and gave its members less than 24 hours from the time it was released yesterday until they have to vote on it today. That's the same bill which the NYT this morning calls "the most significant revision of surveillance law in 30 years." They're going to enact massive changes to our spying laws without having the slightest idea what they're voting on. All they know is that the President demanded them and, as Kit Bond says: "when the government tells you to do something, I'm sure you would all agree that I think you all recognize that is something you need to do."

Drink Deeply the Koolaid

Letter on salon.com

Here is the Bag...

....now, slowly, just breathe into the bag a few times... that's it. Few more times... you will be fine. Okay, here is the thing: if Congress passes a law saying something is legal, it’s legal. Got it? He never broke the law. What he did was legal, and now a Democratically controlled Congress agrees. Done deal, get over it. And, every wonder why Bush smiles a lot these days? It’s because his legacy will be huge… Consider: Bush has: (1) Kept the country 100% safe for over 6 years now, (2) defeated Al Qaeda, (3) defeated the Taliban, (4) freed 30 million people, (4) won the war in Iraq, (5) started a democracy right next door to Iran which ultimately will cause the downfall of the Mullahs in Iran... all, while presiding over an economy that has stayed out of recession for almost 7 years. Yes my friends on the left, history works in funny ways…. Okay, here is the bag again… breathe…

-- seeker92672

[Read seeker92672's other letters]

Permalink Thursday, June 19, 2008 05:32 PM

Epitaph for the Democratic Party

Glenn Greenwald:

I'd like to underscore the fact that in 2006, when the Congress was controlled by Bill Frist and Denny Hastert, the administration tried to get a bill passed legalizing warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty, but was unable. They had to wait until the Congress was controlled by Steny Hoyer, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to accomplish that.

Long Story Made Short

The warrantless wiretapping that the annual Human Rights Report issued by the US Department of State blasts when it occurs in Russia or Zimbabwe has been going on under the Bush Administration, and the Democratic Congress is about to ratify that and retroactively immunize the Bush Administration and the telecom companies from any real examination of their actions.

The fig leaf of judicial review that they're putting in the bill they're trying to pass is as follows - if the Administration made a claim that warrantless wiretapping is legal, then that settles the question; i.e., the only question before the courts would be - had the Administration made such a claim? The courts would not be able to render a judgement as to whether any law was broken by the warrantless wiretapping program.

To add insult to injury - the way they're going to get this bill passed is to not use all the procedural methods that the majority can use to stop such a bill; for instance the Majority Whip will not issue a whip. What the Democratic leadership will do is allow just enough Democrats to join with Republicans to pass the bill; the rest of them will vote against, and then represent to the voters that they opposed the bill. They really think we're stupid!

The attempted antidote is here. Contribute if you can.

For the story in detail, see Glenn Greenwald, here, here and here.

Our Soviet States of America

Glenn Greenwald:

Speaking of which, as Steny Hoyer and Congressional Democrats attempt this week to legalize George Bush's warrantless eavesdropping powers and immunize lawbreaking telecoms, it's worth noting the company we keep in that realm, too. In 2001, the U.S. State Department issued a truly amazing report on Russian human rights abusees, complaining that Russian "authorities continued to infringe on citizens' privacy rights." What was the basis of that complaint? The State Department said that Russian regulations that:

require Internet service providers and telecommunications companies to invest in equipment that enables the [Foreign Security Service] to monitor Internet traffic, telephone calls, and pagers without judicial approval caused serious concern.

"Serious concern." Worse, said our Report, in Russia "there appears to be no mechanism to prevent unauthorized [Government] access to Internet traffic without a warrant"!

In 2006, the State Department's report on Russia contained one of the most amazing passages I've read in all the time I've been writing about political issues. This is really -- honestly -- what the State Department said in condemning Russia. I highly recommend reading this a few times, especially in light of what the Congress is preparing to do this week:

The law states that officials may enter a private residence only in cases prescribed by federal law or on the basis of a judicial decision; however, authorities did not always observe these provisions.

The law permits the government to monitor correspondence, telephone conversations, and other means of communication only with judicial permission and prohibits the collection, storage, utilization, and dissemination of information about a person's private life without his consent. While these provisions were generally followed, problems remained. There were accounts of electronic surveillance by government officials and others without judicial permission, and of entry into residences and other premises by Moscow law enforcement without warrants. There were no reports of government action against officials who violated these safeguards.

What kind of monsters would spy on their own citizens without warrants even when the law requires warrants, and then not even punish those who broke the law? Russian Communist KGB thugs -- that's who would do such a horrible thing, our State Department complained in 2006. Note, too -- as our Congress attempts to legalize warrantless eavesdropping here -- that our State Department complained about Russia's surveillance abuses even though the law there permits such spying "only with judicial permission."

Finally, in August of 2007, Zimbabwe passed a law allowing its President to eavesdrop on telephone conversations with no warrants -- exactly what our Congress is about to do -- and this is what opposition leaders in that country said about that new law:

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Friday signed into law the controversial Interception of Communications Bill, which gives his government the authority to eavesdrop on phone and Internet communications and read physical mail.

The legislation has drawn outspoken opposition from the political opposition and civil society organizations as trampling on the civil rights of Zimbabweans.

Spokesman Nelson Chamisa of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change faction of Morgan Tsvangirai called it an addition to "the dictator's tool kit" . . .

Secretary General Welshman Ncube of the MDC faction led by Arthur Mutambara called it a "final straw to the curtailment to the liberties of Zimbabweans."

Human rights lawyer Otto Saki told VOA that the law interferes and undermines the enjoyment of rights enshrined in the constitution and is a sign Mr. Mugabe wants to consolidate his power by "any means necessary or unnecessary."

But in reply to that uproar, the Mugabe government had what one must admit was a good response:

But Communications Minister Christopher Mushowe said Zimbabwe is not unique in the world in passing such legislation, citing electronic eavesdropping programs in the United States, the United Kingdom and South Africa, among other countries.

That's the company Steny Hoyer and the Blue Dogs in Congress are working hard this week to ensure we continue to keep, as they devote themselves to legalizing warrantless eavesdropping and immunizing corporations that broke the law. The details of the campaign to stop that will be posted here shortly.

The House Majority Leader is a liar

Details here.

The Reason for the Iraq War

Thanks to skyrocketing oil prices, many oil companies again enjoyed record profits in 2007. Chevron Corporation posted a company-best $18.7 billion in profit, while Royal Dutch Shell PLC reported a near-best $31.3 billion. Exxon­Mobil Corporation, the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, posted a 2007 net income of $40.6 billion, the single largest annual profit in U.S. corporate history.

The long-term future of oil companies may not be so bright, however. ExxonMobil reported a decline in oil and natural gas production in 2007, and many companies are finding it hard to replace their reserves.Not only have the largest oil fields already been developed, most of the promising prospect areas are controlled by state-owned oil companies, which hold 80 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves.

From WorldWatch.Org

The Iraq War was an attempt to reduce that 80 percent significantly.

What the Constitution is about

A very good post.

Excerpts to give the summary:

The Constitution is a creation of We the People. It is not something that has been imposed on us from a higher authority. We are that higher authority. We are the sovereign. All three branches of government created under the Constitution have only those powers that we have granted to them and no more. ...

A Constitutional question is never, and can never be, about creating rights. I repeat, the Supreme Court does not, cannot, "create" or "extend" rights. The Court is not God, and it does not have the power to bestow rights on anybody.

To the contrary, and, as we first recognized in our Declaration of Independence, everyone on earth already holds every inalienable right that exists....

...The Supreme Court is vested with the authority to decide what power We the People consented to give. The Court decides what the Constitution means, what the law is. This is the concept of judicial review and the legacy of Marbury v. Madison. It is the Court's unique function to determine whether it, or either of the other branches, has been granted the power, by We the People, to act in a particular circumstance.

...It should be obvious that the Constitution, as the source of all governmental power, must necessarily apply to all governmental action. The crime of Bush's enemy combatant detention program is that Bush claimed the power to act outside the Constitution. Such power simply does not exist.

...How did we get so confused? In part, I blame the Bill of Rights. It should never have been adopted. Beware of lists. Lists can provide useful examples to explain an underlying, abstract concept, but all too often the concept gets lost in the debate over which examples to include and which to exclude from the list. The list becomes exhaustive instead of illustrative. This was the danger Hamilton warned us about when he argued that a Bill of Rights was unnecessary and potentially harmful.

...We have failed to heed Hamilton's warning. The idea that because specific protections exist, the government necessarily holds the power to affect the protected rights took hold. That misconception, in turn, led to the idea that if the Constitution doesn't afford specific protections, the government is free to act. Both are baseless, ignorant conclusions stemming from the fundamental misconception that the Constitution exists to protect individual rights. It does not. The Constitution exists to delineate the power of our government to act.

...

The proper focus on governmental power is also obscured by the analysis we undertake to determine the scope of that power. Where the government does have the power to act, the scope of that power is limited by balancing the competing interests of individual rights vs. the common good. Our rights are not absolute. They may be infringed, or even denied, when necessary to promote the common good through the legitimate exercise of governmental power. Finding the fulcrum point for that balancing act depends on the nature, scope and relative importance of the individual right being affected and the competing societal interest being furthered by the government's action. In short, you can't determine how far the government can go in its exercise of legitimate power until you determine which individual rights are being impacted and to what degree. It is an exercise in labeling and classification, NOT an exercise in creating or denying rights.

Perhaps the most egregious example is Roe v Wade. Everyone understands that Roe created a right to privacy. That's simply wrong. The right to privacy has always existed. Roe decided the extent to which the government can interfere with that right in the course of exercising its legitimate power to regulate abortion. Whether they called it the right to privacy, or the right to dominion over one's body, or the right to expel tissue from one's uterus, is irrelevant. What was important was whether the individual's interest in not being subject to governmental interference outweighed society's interest in regulating the individual's behavior. But that analysis was lost in the debate over whether to include the "right to privacy" on the magic list. It is discussions of this sort that have shifted the focus from the exercise of power to the protection of rights.

Viewed from a frame focused on the existence of power, the Bill of Rights is more accurately a list of specific limitations on the exercise of governmental power. This is not a distinction without a difference. It is a shift in focus, and the different frames can and have lead to dramatically disparate results.

Ballet

Twenty-two ballet companies, three hundred dancers, one photographer with a Canon 5D and 70-200mm f/2.8 LIS. The results!

Why the war in Iraq?

For years, I've been saying that the only way to understand the Iraq war – a war that hurt, rather than advanced, American interests – is to see it as a successful covert action carried out by the Israelis and their American collaborators. The "Clean Break" scenario, launched by American "advisers" to then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, laid it all out in 1996. That was the theory, the practice of which is revealed in second section of the Senate intelligence report. It's no accident that two individuals involved in creating that seminal blueprint for the "transformation" of the Middle East, Doug Feith and David Wurmser, are intimately connected with the activities examined in the Senate report.

Justin Raimondo, antiwar.com

I'm Voting Republican

More info.

Obama

Youtube of the day:



Commentary.

My comment: What Obama says about what we would do if we saw Abraham raising his knife on child Isaac, and why we would do it is an argument that is accessible to any fundamentalist. Apart from that Obama says what we've known for years.

On the Media

Dan Rather, on why the US media spouts government propaganda:

Let me say, by way of answering, that quality news of integrity starts with an owner who has guts. In a news organization with an owner who has guts, there is an incentive to ask the tough questions, and there is an incentive to pull together the facts -- to connect the dots -- in a way that makes coherent sense to the news audience.

But it is rare, now, to find a major news organization owned by an individual, someone who can say, in effect, "The buck stops here." The more likely motto now is: "The news stops... with making bucks."

America's biggest, most important news organizations have, over the past 25 years, fallen prey to merger after merger, acquisition after acquisition... to the point where they are, now, tiny parts of immeasurably larger corporate entities -- entities whose primary business often has nothing to do with news. Entities that may, at any given time, have literally hundreds of regulatory issues before multiple arms of the government concerning a vast array of business interests.

These are entities that, as publicly held and traded corporations, have as their overall, reigning mandate: Provide a return on shareholder value. Increase profits. And not over time, not over the long haul, but quarterly.

...I could continue for hours, cataloging journalistic sins of which I know you are all too aware. But, as the time grows late, let me say that almost all of these failings come down to this: In the current model of corporate news ownership, the incentive to produce good and valuable news is simply not there....

via GregMitch, dkos

Bill Moyers (via dkos, too). If you watch any Youtube today, let this be it.

On Respect for Women

Clinton's campaign ripped open a hole in our culture and forced us to look inside. And what we found was a simmering cauldron of crude, sophomoric sexism and ugly misogyny that a lot of us knew existed but didn't realize was still so socially acceptable that it could be broadcast on national television and garner nary a complaint from anybody but a few internet scolds like me. It was eye-opening, to say the least.

Digby

Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke...She will need her sisterhood.

Gloria Steinem, quoted in the Youtube posted here

Clinton is very much a product of the generation that accepted a certain amount of humiliation as the price of progress. She wrote in her autobiography that when she ran for president of her high-school class against several boys, one of them told her she was “really stupid” if she thought a girl could be elected president. She lost, and later, the winner asked her to head a committee “which as far as I could tell was expected to do most of the work.” She swallowed hard, accepted and, she admitted, really liked organizing all the school parades and dances and pep rallies.

This is one of the things you have to admire about Hillary Clinton. She still enjoys the work.

Gail Collins, NYT

The Limits of Dissent

The Preamble to the Constitution reads:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

From here extract the phrase "a more perfect Union". This forms the framing that any criticism must follow to enter the political mainstream in the US. Any other framing is marginalized, kept off the air, not considered "serious". Doesn't matter what the reality is, doesn't matter whether we're sliding down an abyss. Torture, indefinite detention and suspension of habeas corpus, illegal wiretapping, the gutting of the rule of law - none of these stir any passion in the people at large, because they violate the underlying mode of thought. "We are perfect and can only become more perfect".

The Assault on Freedom

Jacob G. Hornberger explains:

The enemy-combatant doctrine constitutes the most direct and dangerous threat to the freedom of the American people in the history of our country. Prior to 9/11, terrorism was considered by almost everyone a federal criminal offense. If anyone, including an American, was accused of terrorism, the government had to secure a grand-jury indictment against him and prosecute him in U.S. district court. In that proceeding, the accused would be entitled to all the rights and guarantees enumerated in the Bill of Rights, such as the right to counsel, right to due process of law, right to trial by jury, right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, right to confront witnesses, and right against self-incrimination.

The fact that terrorism has historically been considered a criminal offense was reflected, for example, in the federal criminal prosecutions of convicted terrorists Ramzi Yousef, one of the architects of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Timothy McVeigh, the man who bombed the Oklahoma City federal building. Indeed, even in the post–9/11 era, the government has prosecuted one of the 9/11 co-conspirators, Zacarias Moussaoui, in federal district court, as well as other terrorist suspects in Michigan, Florida, and elsewhere.

What was revolutionary about President Bush’s treatment of José Padilla was that for the first time in U.S. history, the government was claiming the power to treat suspected terrorists in two alternative ways: (1) through the normal federal-court route; and (2) through the enemy-combatant route. It would be difficult to find a more perfect violation of the age-old principle of the “rule of law,” the principle that holds that all people should have to answer to a well-defined law for their conduct rather than to the discretionary decisions of government officials. With the post–9/11 option to treat suspected terrorists in two completely different ways, each with markedly different consequences, the president and the Pentagon converted the United States from a “nation of laws” to a “nation of men.”

Another revolutionary aspect of the enemy-combatant doctrine was how the discretionary power to treat suspected terrorists, including Americans, as enemy combatants was acquired by the president and the Pentagon. Despite the assumption of this monumental power by the executive branch, there never was a constitutional amendment authorizing it. Initially, there wasn’t even a law enacted by Congress granting such power to the president. Instead, the president simply announced that as a result of 9/11 and his “war on terrorism,” he and the military now possessed the power to treat anybody suspected of terrorism – American or foreigner – as an enemy combatant.

War Impending

I came away from the trip with a heightened expectation of a US/Israeli strike on Iran or other associated step to increase tension in the region. People on both sides seem to be openly placing their bets on that basis (Geagea) and fearing it as a serious possibility (Hezbollah and Syria). Jumblatt and Hariri were more cagey on the issue but my impression was that they are hoping for it, possibly expecting it, but politically smart enough not to openly indicate as such. My assessment of the broader situation is that hard-line elements in the West have only a few months to change the domestic and international political map by escalating US involvement in the Middle East. Otherwise there is a strong, and I believe for them unacceptable, danger of an Obama presidency that could reduce US involvement in the Middle East. This in turn could precipitate a collapse of the imperial system they are working so hard to implement, based around networks of individuals and interests binding the US, Britain, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and their more minor pawns in the region. They will surely do everything in their power to avoid this scenario. " Kieran Wanduragala

Full story here.

Slovakian Kestrels

Photoessay - Life of a Kestrel, on fredmiranda.com

Bushywood

"'Kick ass!' [Bush] said, echoing Colin Powell's tough talk. 'If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can't send that message. It's an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal.

"There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!'"

Read about this quote, and what Tom Engelhardt has to say about this.

On Luttwak and Apostate President

The NYT Public Editor weighs in about whether Obama is a Muslim apostate, and what was widely seen as Luttwak's call to Muslim fanatics to attempt an assassination.

The Times Op-Ed page, quite properly, is home to a lot of provocative opinions. But all are supposed to be grounded on the bedrock of fact. Op-Ed writers are entitled to emphasize facts that support their arguments and minimize others that don’t. But they are not entitled to get the facts wrong or to so mangle them that they present a false picture.

Did Luttwak cross the line from fair argument to falsehood? Did Times editors fail to adequately check his facts before publishing his article? Did The Times owe readers a contrasting point of view?

The answers the Public Editor gives are Yes, Yes, and Yes.

Shipley, the Op-Ed editor, said he regretted not urging Luttwak to soften his language about possible assassination, given how sensitive the subject is. But he said he did not think the Op-Ed page was under any obligation to present an alternative view, beyond some letters to the editor.

I do not agree. With a subject this charged, readers would have been far better served with more than a single, extreme point of view. When writers purport to educate readers about complex matters, and they are arguably wrong, I think The Times cannot label it opinion and let it go at that.

I regret this is not enough to save my subscription to The New York Times, because the Op-Ed editor still thinks No, No and No to the questions above.

PS:
Matthew Yglesias:

But of course if I were the editor of an op-ed page, I would think that one of my goals was to publish articles that inform, rather than mislead, my audience. The actual op-ed editors at the NYT and Washington Post have, however, made it abundantly clear over the years that they see misleading their audience as fine -- hence men like Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer get hired as columnists.

It does, however, make you wonder what these institutions are for. As means of acquiring information, they're useless -- the editors are indifferent to whether the author's purpose is to inform or to mislead. As entertainment, they're not very entertaining -- even a terrible movie like Crystal Skull is more fun than an op-ed column. Are they important profit centers for the failing businesses in which they're embedded? That seems unlikely.

Lorenzo De' Medici

National Gallery of Art, with details

Art

From the National Gallery of Art. Sorry, I lost the artist information. Maybe you can find it at the link.  I have a vague memory of a last name beginning with G.  This was somewhere in the Italian 13-16 century galleries. The serenity of the face captivated me.

The How and Why of Bush

H.L. Mencken:

As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

Your alienable rights

More on the modern American (and in this case Republican) theme that the government owns the people: via digby. The bigger story is that the Republicans are rushing to put similar rules in effect in Missouri, a key swing state, and where, without such rules, Obama can be expected to bring out a huge number of first-time voters. So much for government of the people, by the people, for the people, it is no different from Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny

"All the discourse here is about immigration," Arizona ACORN organizer Monica Sandschafer observes. "But we're really talking about Arizonans who are Americans and whose legal right to vote is being denied. And while Latino citizens are hit hard, we're finding that all Arizonans are at risk of being disenfranchised by this requirement."

Perhaps no one knows that as well as 97-year-old Shirley Freeda Preiss. She was born at home in Clinton, Kentucky in 1910, before women had the right to vote, and never had a birth certificate. Shirley has voted in every presidential election since FDR first ran in 1932, and proudly describes herself as a "died-in-the-wool Democrat." After living in Arizona for two years, she was eagerly looking forward to casting her ballot in the February primary for the first major woman candidate for President, Hillary Clinton. But lacking a birth certificate or even elementary school records to prove she's a native-born American citizen, the state of Arizona's bureaucrats determined that this former school-teacher who taught generations of Americans shouldn't be allowed to vote.

"I have a constitutional right to vote, don't I?" she asks with her soft Southern drawl. "I didn't get to vote because of a birth certificate. What am I going to do now?"

Her strong-willed 78-year-old son, Nathan "Joey" Nemnich, a World War II veteran, is infuriated. "I'm pissed. She's an American citizen who worked her whole life and I want her to vote," he says. He went down to the local Motor Vehicle Division to get her an Arizona ID and register her to vote, armed with copies of his mother's three drivers' licenses from her previous home in Texas, along with copies of her Social Security and Medicare cards. All that wasn't good enough for the state of Arizona. "The sons of bitches are taking away our Constitution," Nemnich says.

In Arizona and now as seems likely in Missouri, Kafkaesque rules blend with right-wing ideology to block American citizens like Shirley Preiss from voting, collateral damage in the Republican-led war on democracy. "I was very disappointed," she says of the state's roadblocks to voting. "It's not acceptable. I've always voted."

Engelhardt on our security

Read this through.

Lenin and Trotsky

Modern neocons are intellectual descendants of Trotsky. Trotsky/Lenin are two faces of the same coin. What Lenin wrought in Russia, the neocons have brought about in the US of A.

Back in the USSR:

“The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged,” the Post reports.

The drugs? Haldol, which is used with schizophrenia patients. Ativan, a tranquilizer. Cogentin, a muscle relaxer helpful with Parkinson’s patients.

“Haldol gained notoriety in the Soviet Union, where it was often given to political dissidents imprisoned in psychiatric hospitals,” the Post said. Then the story quoted a specialist who pointed out — as if it needed to be pointed out — that giving these drugs to people who are not psychotic “is medically and ethically wrong.”

Often, deportees were given a “cocktail” of all three drugs at once. And they were given the shots many times — in detention, on the runway, on the plane, while changing planes.

Since this morally depraved practice not only violates any sense of decency that we might still have left as a country, but international law as well, it is interesting to note that during plane-changing layovers on the ground in Belgium and France, the nurses were not allowed to give their patients “booster shots.” They had to wait until they were back on a plane.

According to the Post, our government has been discussing deportee drugging for a long time. By the end of the Clinton administration, it had decided that it could be done “only if a federal judge gave permission in advance.”

Even after 9/11, the government was still “wary about drugging detainees.”

But Bush and Cheney rushed to the rescue. In early 2003, “They handed the job of deportation to the Department of Homeland Security’s new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE.”

The appropriately-named agency, according to an internal policy memo, decided that a detainee “with or without a diagnosed psychiatric condition who displays overt or threatening aggressive behavior… may be considered a combative detainee and can be sedated if appropriate under the circumstances.”

And guess who got to determine what might be considered “combative”?

Today, more than 250 druggings, at least 83 deaths and two lawsuits against the U.S. government later, the rules may have been changed. Or they may not. And by the way, ICE has never asked for a court order.

As if Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib weren’t enough, now we’re taking a page from the bad old Soviet Union. What’s next? Bush and Cheney flying to Myanmar to see how it’s done over there?

Friedman's Foreign Policy

Glenn Greenwald summarizes NYT columnist Thomas Friedman's ideas on foreign policy:

That's what passes for Serious Foreign Policy commentary in America -- the Most Serious commentary, actually. World War III has started! We need to be like Tony Soprano, threatening everyone with our big baseball bats. Those Muslims -- we can just pick the targets indiscriminately -- need 2-by-4s across their heads to get the message. And the message we need to convey with our baseball bats and 2-by-4s -- still -- is "Suck. On. This."

If you didn't get it, here's a further excerpt:

Friedman spent months before the invasion of Iraq continuously supporting and cheering it on based on righteous appeals to the transformational values of freedom and democracy. But once the invasion was complete, he unmasked himself, acknowledging in that NPR interview that the real purpose of the invasion was that the U.S. had to send a message to Muslims generally and "sometimes it takes a 2-by-4 across the side of the head to get that message."

That admission was accompanied by Friedman's 2003 "epiphany" on The Charlie Rose Show that the invasion of Iraq was "unquestionably worth doing" because "looking back, I now feel I understand more what the war was about." Only once the deed was done did he magically realize that the real purpose of his war was not, after all, that "a more accountable, progressive and democratizing regime" in Iraq would "have a positive, transforming effect on the entire Arab world" -- as he continuously claimed while convincing Americans to support it.

No, instead, it turns out that the real purpose of invading Iraq, what made it "unquestionably worth doing," was that we needed to invade some Muslim country -- Iraq was just one of many that would have sufficed -- in order, using his words, to "take out a very big stick" and say: "Suck. On. This." That comes from one of the most revealing (and most repellent) three minutes of commentary one can find, illustrating the real face of the Friedman-led American foreign policy class...

Bush's Bogey

From a Keith Olbermann Special Comment:

Then came Mr. Bush's final blow to our nation's solar plexus, his last reopening of our common wounds, his last remark that makes the rest of us question not merely his leadership or his judgment but his very suitably to remain in office.

"Mr. President," he was asked, "you haven't been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?"

"Yes," began perhaps the most startling reply of this nightmarish blight on our lives as Americans on our history. "It really is. I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander in Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as — to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

Golf, sir? Golf sends the wrong signal to the grieving families of our men and women butchered in Iraq? Do you think these families, Mr. Bush, their lives blighted forever, care about you playing golf? Do you think, sir, they care about you?

You, Mr. Bush, let their sons and daughters be killed. Sir, to show your solidarity with them you gave up golf? Sir, to show your solidarity with them you didn't give up your pursuit of this insurance-scam, profiteering, morally and financially bankrupting war.

Sir, to show your solidarity with them you didn't even give up talking about Iraq, a subject about which you have incessantly proved without pause or backwards glance, that you may literally be the least informed person in the world?

Sir, to show your solidarity with them, you didn't give up your presidency? In your own words "solidarity as best as I can" is to stop a game? That is the "best" you can do?

Four thousand Americans give up their lives and your sacrifice was to give up golf! Golf. Not "Gulf" — golf.

And still it gets worse. Because it proves that the president's unendurable sacrifice, his unbearable pain, the suspension of getting to hit a ball with a stick, was not even his own damned idea.

"Mr. President, was there a particular moment or incident that brought you to that decision, or how did you come to that?"

"I remember when [diplomat Sergio Vieira] de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man's life. And I was playing golf, I think I was in central Texas, and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, it's just not worth it any more to do."

Your one, tone-deaf, arrogant, pathetic, embarrassing gesture, and you didn't even think of it yourself? The great Bushian sacrifice — an Army private loses a leg, a Marine loses half his skull, 4,000 of their brothers and sisters lose their lives — and you lose golf, and they have to pull you off the golf course to get you to just do that?

If it's even true.

Apart from your medical files, which dutifully record your torn calf muscle and the knee pain which forced you to give up running at the same time — coincidence, no doubt — the bombing in Baghdad which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello of the U.N. and interrupted your round of golf was on Aug. 19, 2003.

Yet CBS News has records of you playing golf as late as Oct. 13 of that year, nearly two months later.

Mr. Bush, I hate to break it to you 6 1/2 years after you yoked this nation and your place in history to the wrong war, in the wrong place, against the wrong people, but the war in Iraq is not about you.

PS: The President also "sacrificed" candy.

A Peek into the Right Wing Blogosphere

Here.

Enemy of Freedom

If legislation works out as various nutcases want, Americans will have to prove to the Federal Government their right to work.

A bill by Heath Shuler, a North Carolina Democrat, and Tom Tancredo, the Republican anti-immigration extremist from Colorado, would require each of the 7.4 million employers in the United States to participate in E-Verify — and to fire anyone, citizen or otherwise, who cannot prove that he or she has the right to work.

This inverts the usual civil liberties principle that by default, the citizens are right, the Government has to prove its case to punish or inconvenience them.

The problem is that the American sheople are likely to go along with this, as they continue to squander their precious heritage.

--
PS: Think about it. Your "inalienable rights" now depend on your name being in an electronic database system somewhere; your rights will be in jeopardy whenever the system is down, or if someone hacks into it. And you are relying for your liberties on a government that cannot maintain a "no-fly" list.

This country is not your country, it is the Government's country. You are permitted to live here, work here or vote as a special privilege granted by to you by the Government. The Government is here to make the world safe for democracy and can do anything, from suspending habeas corpus and torture to using unreliable electronic voting machines to further its God-Given Purpose. Criticizing the Government is anti-American and unpatriotic and may result in the suspension of your privileges.

Tulip

Posed photograph of purchased cut flowers. Still have a way to go to make them really pop.

Garden roundup

Some of the things in the garden on May 11:




One of the few varieties of Clematis that I found that can do well in the shade. First flower of the season, and as you can see, more are threatened.

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New experiment for this year. Fuchsia and amethyst something in hanging coco pots. Notice how bowed the iron stand is in the second picture. (It is deceptively straight in the first picture.) Comes from listening to the shop assistants.

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White azalea - always a challenge to get the right exposure. I didn't quite get it right.

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A small bush of orange azalea that I had thought I had killed through neglect. I guess the call of spring was too strong.

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The rhododendron towards the front has not yet bloomed.

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Various views of rhododendron.

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On the other side of the rhododendron is a light pink azalea...

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...and then these azaleas.

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Another view of the whole thing.

Green cities

Atrios quotes a story of a man who drives 200 miles to work and back every day, because of the problem of finding affordable housing in a good neighborhood.

Guettinger lives on Arena Way in rural Livingston, where he moved a few years ago with his wife and kids because he couldn't bear the thought of his sons growing up in an unsafe Bay Area neighborhood.

A great improvement in quality of life comes from not having to spend so much time on commuting. Less commuting also means less gasoline consumed.

It is interesting that fixing our greenhouse gas problem will to some extent require fixing the chronic crime problem in our cities. I think this will prove to be a general rule that a greener earth requires fixing problems of poverty, crime, homelessness.

Another point - amply evident to someone who has observed India, but forgotten by the compassionate conservatives in the US - is that to enjoy what you earn in peace and safety and without the constant fear of being robbed or worse, you need the people around you to also be earning and productive to a similar level as you. Inequality, especially of the extreme sort, is a great downer on quality of life. A billionaire can have his bodyguards of course, but the rich-but-not-plutocrat-types should reflect on this, if they want to enjoy life outside little fortified enclaves.

Live Ecstatically!

Read Arthur Silber.

PS: in a spirit of wonder, see photograph #7 on this page.

The Crucifixion of Jeremiah Wright

The Crucifixion of Jeremiah Wright - I am in strong agreement with this and am disappointed, e.g., in Digby.

A question

Arthur Silber points out that the very Wall Street that has defied the EEOC (Equal Employment & Opportunity Commission) and not hired black stockbrokers is strongly in support of a black President; and asks the question - why?

He quotes Pam Martens thusly:

We are asked to believe that those kindly white executives at all the biggest Wall Street firms, which rank in the top 20 donors to the Obama presidential campaign, after failing to achieve more than 3.5 per cent black stockbrokers over 30 years, now want a black populist president because they crave a level playing field for the American people.

A honest person might vote for Obama as the least bad of bad choices; but not as someone who will bring about real change. A.S. writes:

I urge you to keep in mind the full meaning of the following from [Chris Floyd's] post: "even minute mitigations in the operation of vast power structures can translate into real benefits for many ordinary people, simply due to the scale on which such structures operate." If you choose to support one party over the other because of those "minute mitigations" that "can translate into real benefits for many ordinary people," that's fine -- but intellectual honesty ought to compel you to recognize the great danger you're courting. That danger lies in "the scale on which such structures operate." We are talking here about the massive power of government on a huge scale. A government that has the power to save you also has the power to kill you. When power is institutionalized on a gigantic scale of this kind, as it now has been in the United States, it is easy enough to flip the switch from a policy you abhor to one you approve, depending on who holds power at any given moment. But government is not run by some impartial, unbiased, God-like and fictitious force: it is run by individual human beings. One person may flip the switch in a way you think is wonderful; the next person in control may flip it back again, and slaughter another million people.

You may think that this system is not going to change in the foreseeable future or in your lifetime, so it is better to have at least semi-decent human beings in charge of it. In some circumstances and with regard to certain issues, I might even agree with you. But be clear about the nature of the system you are thereby supporting: one of immense power, that can cut down any one of us if even a single individual in a critical position decides to do so. And given the issues on which the two parties agree at present, I see nothing to recommend the Democrats over the Republicans. They both stand for endless war and global interventionism; they both stand for authoritarianism on the domestic front.... For me, all other issues recede into insignificance. If you make a different decision, at least be honest about the nature of your choice. That's all I ask.

An appeal from a dkos diarist

The west is ripe for a democratic revolution, and

Nobody here cares that Obama is black. Don't let the predilictions of some Midwestern machinists convince you we do. Obama's blackness isn't going to stop him from being our next president. If you harbor some deeply felt suspicion that it will, I submit to you that the principles of our party demand you keep those feelings to yourself and cast your vote for him as if you were color-blind. If we really our a country of racists, then we deserve John McCain. At least give all of us whiteys a chance to prove that we're not. History says we probably don't deserve that chance, but I'm asking for it anyway.

Bush's "Cruel Joke"

Bush repeated the conventional wisdom that India is responsible for the world food shortage, via the growing demand from its burgeoning middle class.

Arab News points out:

But Bush’s analysis has no takers in India. Figures released by the US Department of Agriculture for 2007 say each Indian eats only 178 kg of grain in a year, while a US citizen consumes 1,046 kg. Likewise, milk consumption per person per year is 36 kg in India, while in the United States is 78 kg. While each American consumes 45.5 kg poultry meat per year, an Indian takes in only 1.9 kg. Besides, while the US per capita grain consumption rose from 946 kg in 2003 to 1,046 kg in 2007, India’s per capita consumption remained static during this period.

Bush's remarks were termed by the Indian Defence Minister as a "cruel joke".

I've collected various reactions here:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/5/01711/17237/345/509182

Bush has the analytic and research power of the entire Federal Government at his hands and ought not to make such statements. His own Department of Agriculture contradicts him. National Public Radio story quoted an economist (sorry I forget his name) saying that the food trade figures for China show that China is not responsible either.

But the idea that increased consumption in India and China has resulted in the world food shortage is uncritically accepted as true by far too many people.

Friedbrain strikes again!

Thomas Friedman, of Moustache of Understanding fame, has reemerged at the NYT, after spending the last several months on a book shortly to be inflicted on the public.

Today's column is seemingly ok. Friedman tells us that his months of travel have led him to believe:

...if there is one overwhelming hunger in our country today it’s this: People want to do nation-building....They sense something deeper — that we’re just not that strong anymore....millions of Americans are dying to be enlisted — enlisted to fix education, enlisted to research renewable energy, enlisted to repair our infrastructure, enlisted to help others.

There are two problems with his article, however.

The first is that all this nation-building angst arises, in part, because we can't bomb Iran, the full quote is:

They sense something deeper — that we’re just not that strong anymore. We’re borrowing money to shore up our banks from city-states called Dubai and Singapore. Our generals regularly tell us that Iran is subverting our efforts in Iraq, but they do nothing about it because we have no leverage — as long as our forces are pinned down in Baghdad and our economy is pinned to Middle East oil.

The second is that there is the usual values pablum:

We are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three decades, the Asian values of our parents’ generation — work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means — have given way to subprime values: “You can have the American dream — a house — with no money down and no payments for two years.”

Nothing in America today prevents the vast majority from working hard, studying, saving, investing and living within one's means. How cultivating these values will fix education, infrastructure, energy availability, or our inability to bomb Iran is unclear. How these values feed into a thirst for nation-building is not explained. And just where does one enlist for these values?

Friedman's stuff is substance-free, no different from this kind below, except with better packaging:

Nobody says you must laugh, but a sense of humor can help you overlook the unattractive, tolerate the unpleasant, cope with the unexpected, and smile through the day

Self-confidence gives you the freedom to make mistakes and cope with failure without feeling that your world has come to an end or that you are a worthless person.

Life is not what it's supposed to be. It’s what it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference.

We rate ability in men by what they finish, not by what they attempt

Every success is built on the ability to do better than good enough

Leadership is not magnetic personality/that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not making friends and influencing people /that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.

The more chance there is of stubbing your toe, the more chance you have of stepping into success.

Atomic Tragedy

(via dkos): Pictures of Hiroshima
Warning: You will be upset by these pictures.

Photos of Hiroshima from the Robert L. Capp Collection

The Robert L. Capp collection at the Hoover Institution Archives contains ten never-before-published photographs illustrating the immediate aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing. These photographs, taken by an unknown Japanese photographer, were found in 1945 among rolls of undeveloped film in a cave outside Hiroshima by U.S. serviceman Robert L. Capp, who was attached to the occupation forces. Unlike most photos of the Hiroshima bombing, these dramatically convey the human as well as material destruction unleashed by the atomic bomb. Mr. Capp donated them to the Hoover Archives in 1998 with the provision that they not be reproduced until 2008. Three of these photographs are reproduced in Atomic Tragedy with the permission of the Capp family. Now that the restriction is no longer in force, the entire set is available below. Please contact Sean L. Malloy (smalloy@ucmerced.edu) if you have any information that might help identify the original photographer.

Photographers encounter the police state

In the US and Europe, photographers have become subjects of suspicion for police, security types and regular citizens.

Via Rajan Parrikar: this.
From the BBC: this.
From fredmiranda.com: this.

On Iran

Pepe Escobar describes Iran, without the usual filters of the American media.

US involvement in nuclear proliferation

This K. Subrahmanyam article in the Indian Express (via Ram Narayan)

About A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani "Nukes 'R Us":

According to the former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers (a disclosure he repeated during his visit to the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses two months ago), Khan had been allowed to go free by the Dutch authorities, after his arrest twice in 1975 and 1986, on the intervention of the CIA.

The same article on why Iran decided to go nuclear:

Iranian efforts to acquire a clandestine nuclear-weapon capability go back to 1987. At that time, Iran was fighting the last year of its eight-year war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Saddam’s aggression was supported by the United States and many Arab countries. The Muslim Ummah, the world over, did not condemn Saddam’s aggression and his use of chemical weapons on Iran, or the hundreds of missiles he sent raining on that country. The Indian government of that day did not worry about Shia feelings. When Iran took the issue of the use of weapons of mass destruction to the United Nations, the US and European countries sat on their hands and took no action against Saddam. At that stage, Iran approached Khan to help it with the uranium enrichment programme.

This is your brain on TV news

Turn off the TV "news."

Just turn it off. Turn. It. Off. If someone offered you a bowl of writhing maggots soaked in warm sweat, would you say, "Oh, why thank you for the delicious mid-day maggot treat!"

No, but one could be forgiven for thinking you might if you watch the TV news, because you do the same thing to your brain when you consume this audio-visual slop in a tin cup.

Chris in DC

Maverick is Bull

John McCain talks a good talk, but is one of the most unprincipled and deceptive politicians around.

Here are some examples:

On Torture.

On campaign finance.

On standing up against the "race card" in politics.

Since I had thought McCain was a genuine item until the story in the last link during the 2000 primaries, here is another telling.  

Moon at 300 mm

The moon at 300mm (cropped).

Magnolia

Meant to be a record of the garden.

Millenial Realignment

The direction of American politics for the next forty years may be determined in the upcoming Presidential election.

In their type of politics, Obama is at the leading edge of the millenial generation - while Clinton and McCain are at the trailing edge of the boomers' generation. Obama, win or lose, may convert the majority of the millenial generation - the largest American generation yet - into committed Democrats.

On Genetically Modified Crops

Via dkos:

THE GREAT GM CROP MYTH EXPOSED
Sunday, 20 April 2008
By Geoffrey Lean

Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis.

The study - carried out over the past three years at the University of Kansas in the US grain belt - has found that GM soya produces about 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent, contradicting assertions by advocates of the technology that it increases yields.

Professor Barney Gordon, of the university’s department of agronomy, said he started the research - reported in the journal Better Crops - because many farmers who had changed over to the GM crop had “noticed that yields are not as high as expected even under optimal conditions”. He added: “People were asking the question ‘how come I don’t get as high a yield as I used to?’”

He grew a Monsanto GM soybean and an almost identical conventional variety in the same field. The modified crop produced only 70 bushels of grain per acre, compared with 77 bushels from the non-GM one.

This is of course, bad for solving world hunger; but is good for the future liberty of mankind.

Why the gap?

In Bob Herbert's column "Clueless in America" there is the following quote:

Mr. Golston noted that the performance of American students, when compared with their peers in other countries, tends to grow increasingly dismal as they move through the higher grades:

“In math and science, for example, our fourth graders are among the top students globally. By roughly eighth grade, they’re in the middle of the pack. And by the 12th grade, U.S. students are scoring generally near the bottom of all industrialized countries.”

What causes this gap in performance?

Re: Pravda

Read this, too (firedoglake commentary).

And this (Retd Col Lang).

And Glenn Greenwald.

These all represent the view point that the job of the media is to inform and that the government ought not to psy-ops its own citizens. There is a perspective that there is a "greater good" that is served in all of the propaganda, but finding and quantifying that "greater good" is impossible, and I'm not giving that perspective any time here.

Pravda

Thanks to David Barstow and the NYT for educating us about the United Soviet States of America: (via atrios)

Regarding TV analysts:

... To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

Dowd

Not sure this link is worth keeping, but saving it here for now.

Robert Reich

Eighty percent of Americans know the nation is on the wrong track. The old politics, and the old media that feeds it, are irrelevant now.
- Robert Reich

He also endorsed Obama.

Why?

Tom Engelhardt and William Astore write, that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, we had hoped to become "a normal country in a normal time".

But it never happened. Instead of normalcy, we remained hunkered down in Cheyenne Mountain. We continued to look fearfully out at the world, while arming ourselves to the teeth. We became wedded to the idea of bunkers and barriers, whether fortified fences along the Mexican border, imperial military bases along the peripheries of a burgeoning empire, or, on a micro scale, security gates patrolled by small armies of private guards to keep the "have nots" out of "have" communities. (To these, the ultra-rich have now added "panic rooms" in their mansions – tiny domestic Cheyenne Mountains secured by mini-steel blast doors, monitored by cameras, and stocked with provisions.) After the attacks of September 11, 2001, it was as if we had "buttoned up" and slammed shut the blast doors to Fortress America.

How did the planet's self-proclaimed "sole superpower" in its moment of triumph become such a fearful country? In our endless face-off with the Soviet Union, did we come to resemble it far more than we ever imagined? After all, instead of the USSR, it's now we who are fighting a difficult war in Afghanistan; it's now we who are deflating our currency with massive deficits for weapons of marginal utility; it's now we who put forward unilateral proposals for earth-penetrating, bunker-busting nukes; it's now we who are often seen as aggressors on the world stage.

Worst and Best at ABC

After the "shoddy, despicable" performances turned in by ABC anchors Gibson and Stephanopoulos at yesterday's Democratic Presidential debate, I wanted to remind myself that good work is done there too, e.g., Jan Crawford Greenburg, Howard L Rosenberg and Ariane de Vogue did this story on how the top folks in the Bush Administration are complicit in torture.

Given the subsequent collective inattention from the media to this story, we can safely say that these three bucked serious odds in getting their story to air.

Chickadee

Straight from the camera - resized only:



A crop (original of the crop is 1844 x 1229, but not sure how to get that into flickr)



EXIF doesn't tell the truth because Canon stacked extenders don't register.
300 mm f/2.8 + stacked 1.4x, 2x extenders - equivalent to 840mm f/8
Handheld, 1/60 second!!!! (this is where image stabilization comes into play). Non-enthusiasts may want to know that the old rule of thumb is that for such a focal length, I need to have a shutter speed of 1/840 seconds or faster. My upper arm was braced against my chest, but still, I'm not *that* steady.)

This is simply incredible, amazing technology!

PS: I'm thinking that just like the focal length recorded in the EXIF is no longer correct with stacked extenders, perhaps the shutter speed is also not correct. I'll try without extenders in similar light and see if a f/8 exposure really is 1/60 seconds. Since the sun is already setting, I'll have to try some other day.

Sri Ganesh!

As on a previous occasion, follow the breadcrumbs to see the EXIF data.

Ron Paul's Unanswerable Question

Congressman (and former Presidential candidate) Ron Paul:
(emphasis added; and read the whole speech for his other questions)

Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank you for calling this hearing on the current state of affairs in Iraq with General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Reviewing the presentations by our panel, I have noted with some concern that they seem more focused on justifying a future attack on Iran than reporting on progress in Iraq. Much of the assertions about Iran in Iraq seem illogical, others seem intended to inflame the situation with little justification.

Particularly, I am concerned about claims that a new enemy in Iraq has emerged with ties to Iran. First we were told that the enemy was Saddam Hussein and his Baathist Party. Then we were told the enemy was the "dead-enders" from Saddam’s former government. Then the prime enemy became "al-Qaeda in Iraq," a prime focus of the presentation by Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus last September. Now we are told that the new enemies are mysterious "Special Groups" that are said to have spun off from al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

If this phenomenon of constantly emerging enemies bent on destabilizing Iraq is accurate and our presence in Iraq keeps generating new enemies, perhaps the problem is the occupation itself. If this is the case, doesn’t it make sense that our departure from Iraq may actually have a stabilizing effect?

Paid for by our tax dollars

With Tax Day coming up, it is worth remembering what our tax dollars pay for; rather, what our President gets them spent on.

Bewert at dailykos.com gives us a good start:

The remains are received clad in a white shirt, white pajama type pants, and white
undershorts. Feces covers the clothing from the waist down....There is gauze dressing on the left wrist. No other evidence of medical intervention is noted.... The right chest wall has fractures of ribs three through seven anteriorly and ribs six through twelve posteriorly. The left chest wall has fractures of ribs two through nine anteriorly and ribs seven through twelve posteriorly. There are fractures of the lateral aspect of ribs nine and ten on the left side. There is a horizontal fracture through the mid-portion of the body of the sternum."

(from the final autopsy report of an Iraqi man who died hanging by his cuffed wrists from a door frame, gagged, and beaten to death by his US interrogators.)

There is a direct line from the John Yoo memos arguing that the President has the power to ignore the US War Crimes Act and international treaty obligations like the Geneva Conventions, to the National Security Council's Principals Committee including Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Tenet that met with the President's knowledge to "choreograph" interrogations, to the result above.

There is a second line of culpability from the Congress that overwhelmingly supported the 2006 Military Commissions Act that in many cases grants retroactive immunity to US government officials for violations of the US War Crimes Act.

----
Fafblog's Giblets put it this way (on Inauguration Day for the Bush 2nd term)

My fellow Gibletsians! On this day in history! Now is not a time!

Today Giblets is re-coronated Lord High Emperor Giblets of Everything. Long live me! But also: long live Freedom. It is delicious and to my liking and soon Giblets will spread it throughout the world!

Can you doubt the freedom-spreadery of Giblets? Giblets has decreed Iraq to be free and now it is! Oh sure, not in the petty "liberal democracy with equal protection under the law" sense. But in the "infested with terrorists" sense it's as free as they come! Once Iraqis were tortured and killed by an evil dictator. Now they are tortured and killed by freedom! Their genitals are shocked with the electrodes of liberty. They are mowed down by the machine guns of independence!

We are not our fathers, or our fathers' fathers! These truths are self-evident! We the people!

There are good countries and there are bad countries. Good countries are free, like Pakistan and Russia and Afghanistan! Bad countries hate freedom and want to destroy it. Giblets is for turning anti-freedom countries into powerful new Freeocracies bursting with color and vitamins! Stand with Giblets and freedom shall annihilate its enemies!

Freedom is like a woman, or a well-aged cheese, or a monkey. It is available for tasting and purchasing in the lobby refreshment center. There will always be an England!

Freedom is on the march, and it is heavily armed. You cannot stop freedom! It has conquered many lands and grown drunk on the blood of those who oppose it! It will crush its enemies, see it driven before them, and hear the lamentations of the women! With Giblets to lead it, freedom will sweep over the world - no, the UNIVERSE!

Ass, gas, or grass! Three for $3.99! God bless America!

PS- from a comment on dkos:

In regard to cruelties committed in the name of a free society, some are guilty while all are responsible.
- Abraham Joshua Heschel

Trying to raise the dead

The President admits that he approved of torture - specifically, breaking the US law on war crimes. Most everyone yawns.

Progressive bloggers are outraged, saddened, angered (example).

Don't they know they're trying to resuscitate that which is already dead?

PS: Fafblog, Jan 25, 2006.

Kipling's IF

Copied from here:

[IF]

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

--Rudyard Kipling

Crab Apple

Made a mistake, but here it is anyway.

National Lawyers Guild on Yoo

NLG

"John Yoo's complicity in establishing the policy that led to the torture of prisoners constitutes a war crime under the US War Crimes Act," said National Lawyers Guild President Marjorie Cohn.

Congress should repeal the provision of the Military Commissions Act that would give Yoo immunity from prosecution for torture committed from September 11, 2001 to December 30, 2005. John Yoo should be disbarred and he should not be retained as a professor of law at one of the country's premier law schools. John Yoo should be dismissed from Boalt Hall and tried as a war criminal.

PS: I wonder what they will say about Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, Tenet, Cheney, Ashcroft?
From other reports on this story:

The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

Corporatizing Iraq

From this dkos diary, "Food as a weapon - the rape of Iraq", US Occupation Authority's Paul Bremer issued among other edicts, Order 81 to make Iraq a "model for Genetically Modified or GMO agribusiness." The effect?

If a large international corporation developed a seed variety resistant to a particular Iraqi pest, and an Iraqi farmer was growing another variety that did the same, it was illegal for the farmer to save his own seed. Instead, he is obliged to pay a royalty fee for using Monsanto's GMO seed.

Upon purchasing the patented seeds, farmers must sign the company's technology agreement (Technology User Agreements). This agreement allows the company to control farmers' practices and conduct property investigation. The farmer becomes the slave of the company.

Reality One is that the free market does not support GMO business. It needs government edicts and protections in order to work.

Reality Two is that the list of crimes committed by Bush and his minions is endless.

Reality Three is that Bush & co did not spring out of nowhere. People who think like them occupy high positions in government, in the courts, in the media, in business, in every walk of American life; all supporters of monarchy at home and colonialism abroad. Not in a crude and blatant way, but disguised in blather about "free markets" and "preemptive wars" and "threats to the homeland".

Goldfinch

This is what I get with 280mm (70-200mm + 1.4x extender):



This is a crop from the above:



Do you think I will benefit from a supertelephoto lens?

:)

Sony World Photography Awards

Bee provided these links to the Sony World Photography Awards finalists. Some great shots are included in there. Take a look!


http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/0,5538,30444,00.html
http://www.worldphotographyawards.org/home.asp?Lang=EN

Thanks, Bee!

Three Love Stories

,Three
,Two
,One.

One is rather different from Three and Two.

PS: Here's Negative Infinity - none at all.

America's Disgusting Media

Glenn Greenwald:

1. The media ignores what is important.

Think about it this way: if you were a high government official and watched as -- all in a couple of weeks time -- it is revealed, right out in the open, that you suspended the Fourth Amendment, authorized torture, proclaimed yourself empowered to break the law, and sent the nation's top law enforcement officer to lie blatantly about how and why the 9/11 attacks happened so that you could acquire still more unchecked spying power and get rid of lawsuits that would expose what you did, and the political press in this country basically ignored all of that and blathered on about Obama's bowling score and how he eats chocolate, wouldn't you also conclude that you could do anything you want, without limits, and know there will be no consequences? What would be the incentive to stop doing all of that?

2. Even so, it is biased.

One other point to note about all of this is that these fixations are as skewed as they are vapid. Barack Obama is an exotic elitist freak because he went to Harvard Law School and made $1 million from his book. Hillary Clinton can't possibly have any connection to the Regular Folk because her husband, who grew up dirt poor, became quite wealthy after being President. John Kerry was completely removed from the concerns of the Regular People because his second wife was rich.

By contrast, George W. Bush was a down-home, salt-of-the-earth Man of the People despite being the grandson of a U.S. Senator, the son of a President (who greatly magnified his riches in his post-presidency), and the by-product of an extremely wealthy, coddled life. Ronald Reagan was pure Americana despite spending most of his adult life as a very wealthy Hollywood actor (and converting his post-presidency into far greater riches still). And John McCain is as Regular a Guy as it gets, even though he dumped his first wife (the mother of his three children) after she was disfigured and disabled by a near-fatal car accident so that he could marry his much younger, much prettier, and extremely wealthy heiress-mistress, whose family riches have fueled his political career and sustained a life of luxury for almost three decades (that's how "McCain's Sedona ranch" -- i.e., his compound -- came to be).

It would be bad enough if our political press were obsessed with such trivialities. The fact that they do so in such a Republican-leader-worshiping manner makes it only that much worse, particularly given that it's this dynamic, more than anything else, that has determined the outcome of our elections.

--- As for me, the network channels - ABC, NBC, CBS long departed from my viewing list; CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and maybe I've forgotten some soon followed. Times, Newsweek and the like were casualties long ago. Currently only The New York Times enters my house.

Snippet

In a generally positive review in the NYT of the Honda Civic Si, "Practicality in a Spicy Sauce", Christopher Jensen writes:

Motor Trend magazine tested the Si sedan and found that it went from zero to 60 m.p.h. in 6.3 seconds, compared with 8 seconds for a regular Civic with a five-speed manual transmission. This may not seem like much difference, but consider: over a few years this could add up to several minutes of saved time.

Human Rights in Bangladesh

John Pilger writes about the world's shameful silence in the face of the unjust incarceration of Moudud Ahmed in Bangladesh.

Asif Saleh replies that Moudud Ahmed is also responsible for the degeneration of justice and human rights in Bangladesh, and that it is the world's silence over the human rights violations of ordinary Bangladeshis that is the real shame.

(h/t J.A.A.)

If you say so... (2)

Earlier post that examined a statement by Ibn Warraq.

Addition to earlier post:



Photo by Johan Spanner for The New York Times, captioned:

A Palestinian girl held a Koran and a fake rifle at a recent rally organized by Hamas in Gaza.

This and That

This and That means "odds and ends", as in this post by Bee. But in Vedanta, This and That are highly loaded technical terms. This means everything that is perceptible, everything that you can point to; That is everything else. Scientific materialists insist that This is all that exists. The central insight of the Vedanta is "That Thou Art".

All this and that would be lost in mechanical translation.