Lotus - Surviving a Dark Time

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is John Belushi?

JEOPARDY!
Saturday Night Lives for $600

In the fall of 1976, this star of Fletch became one of the first cast members to leave the show.

The power of protest, the strength of mass nonviolent action, the public courage of personal conviction taken to the streets.

On Monday, Ukraine President Leonid Kuchma called for a new presidential election "to maintain peace and accord." He's offered no details, but the firewall in front of a new election has been breached.

And today, the man who officially won but is accused of having done it by fraud, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, said he would accept a new election and offered to not run again, provided that his rival, Viktor Yushchenko, does the same.

And in another significant shift, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who openly supported Yanukovich during the campaign and twice congratulated him on his victory, was quoted by German Chancellor Gerhardt Schröder's office as saying that he was prepared to accept the results of a new election.

(Putin was feeling some domestic heat of his own:

Mr. Putin's most prominent liberal critics, including Irina M. Khakamada, Boris E. Nemtsov and the chess champion Garry Kasparov, issued an open letter today urging Mr. Putin to accept Ukraine's choice, which, in their view, is Mr. Yushchenko.

"The leadership of Russia must respect the choice of the Ukrainian people even if this choice conflicts with some personal but difficult-to-explain preferences of the Kremlin," the critics wrote in the letter, read on the Ekho Moskvy radio station.)

What's more, regional leaders in the eastern, Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine, who had threatened to hold a referendum on autonomy, backed down.

It was undoubtedly developments like these that prompted Yushchenko to immediately rejects Yanukovich's proposal as well as his offer

to appoint Mr. Yushchenko prime minister and consider amendments to the Constitution that would share power between the country's starkly divided blocs.

"The election was falsified," Mr. Yushchenko said in televised remarks. "As long as this problem is not solved, all the other problems are secondary."

Yanukovich is looking increasingly isolated but he hasn't folded his hand, premising his offers on a court finding that the election results were invalid. Still, it's very likely that, at some point, some sort of compromise is going to be forced on the parties. Perhaps what we'll find is that instead of President Yanukovich offering the office of prime minister to Yushchenko, we'll have President Yushchenko offering it to Yanukovich.

The difference is the power of the people.

According to Netcraft, an Internet services company based in Bath, England,

[t]he Republican Party appears to again be blocking Internet users from outside the United States from visiting its official web sites, with www.gop.com, www.rnc.org and www.GeorgeWBush.com all dropping traffic that originates outside North America. The timing and implementation of the blocking ... suggests an ongoing interest in traffic filtering unrelated to the recent election.

In the week prior to the election, the Bush campaign site instituted such blocking, claiming unspecified "security concerns." The restrictions were eventually lifted on November 7, five days after the election. But on November 24, the site switched networks

and began having its domain name server (DNS) requests handled by the RNC's server, and redirecting traffic to the RNC's main site, gop.com. ... Since Nov. 26, the rnc.org, gop.com and GeorgeWBush.com domains all show an identical pattern of failed requests from stations in London, Amsterdam and Sydney, while Netcraft's four U.S. monitoring stations show no performance problems.

Supposedly the campaign site was hit with a Denial of Service attack on October 19, sparking the security concern. I guess for an administration that responded to 9/11 by treating all Arab and Muslim males as suspected terrorists, responding to such an attack by blocking the entire rest of the world from your website seemed entirely reasonable.

...didn't we just get told by your boss that this was an Iraqi decision?

Baghdad, Nov. 30 (Washington Post) - The top U.S. diplomat in Iraq said Tuesday that security conditions would improve enough here in the coming months to allow national elections to proceed in January as scheduled, and he suggested that the country's minority Sunni Muslim community would likely abandon plans to boycott the voting once it became clear it would not be postponed.

Speaking to foreign reporters over lunch at the U.S. chancellery here inside the secure green zone, U.S. Ambassador John D. Negroponte gave the clearest indication yet that the Bush administration would not allow a delay in the Jan. 30 elections, which U.S. officials have called an essential step in establishing the first broadly accepted government in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein. His comments served as an unequivocal U.S. response to more than a dozen Sunni Muslim organizations, who in recent days have threatened to boycott the voting and potentially undermine its legitimacy in the eyes of many Iraqis.

The Bush administration won't allow it? Who the hell is actually in charge here? Or did we just get reminded of the answer?

From AP for Tuesday:

Thousands of U.S. soldiers are preparing an operation against Taliban insurgents to preempt an expected spring offensive which could upset plans for Afghan parliamentary elections, a senior American general said in an interview Tuesday. ...

He said the aim is to tighten the Afghan-Pakistan border by sending special forces on raids against rebel leaders.

Still, violence continues to plague the south and east, where militants are strongest. A roadside bomb killed two U.S. soldiers in Uruzgan province last week, and American officials say militants continue to cross to and from neighboring Pakistan. To reinforce the frontier, [Maj. Gen. Eric] Olson said the U.S. military would establish several new camps close to the border. He said Afghan forces would also reposition "along and astride" routes used by militants. And he promised to strengthen cooperation with Pakistani forces across the border.

That is, continue to do the same things you've been doing all along. Meanwhile, you say the Taliban - who've been "defeated," what, six, seven times now? - are preparing an offensive which we have to "preempt."

Jeez, if this is success, what would failure look like? Oh, yeah, we know that too, don't we?

Or, put another way: Never give up, never surrender. From today's Washington Post comes this:

Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb and Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik announced that they are seeking recounts in two more battleground states: New Mexico and Nevada.

The third-party candidates, who already have requested a recount in Ohio, won few votes in both states. But a Cobb spokesman said they were concerned that reports of Election Day problems at the states' polls were being ignored.

Cost is apparently not the issue it was in Ohio because some foundation is helping out.

Why do it if you think it won't change the outcome (which it probably won't)? Simple: They stole the election in 2000. I believe they were fully prepared to do it again in 2004. This may well not change anything now, but it may make it harder for them to try the same things next time. So it well might change things in the future.

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is Dublin?

JEOPARDY!
Saturday Night Lives for $200

His classic characters on SNL included the Killer Bee, Joe Cocker, and the Samurai Warrior.

Updated I keep saying I'm trying to, like the man said, "keep hope alive." It's hope that gives us the strength to carry on and the courage to go beyond what we otherwise think we can. So good news is something to be welcomed. And here is a bit of such news, from AP for Monday:

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a challenge to the only state that allows gay marriages, declining to hear an appeal aimed at overturning the Massachusetts law that prompted a national debate on the legality and morality of same-sex unions.

The decision ended the legal fight over a 4-3 Massachusetts high court ruling last November giving gay couples the right to marry. ...

Liberty Counsel, the Florida-based conservative group that filed the challenge to the Massachusetts law, argued the state Supreme Court ruling violated the U.S. Constitution because state judges had made a decision more properly decided by elected legislatures.

The high court rejected the appeal without comment.

Yes!

Notice it wasn't even a group of Massachusetts residents but a bunch of out-of-staters coming in and - doggone it all! - trying to tell the people of Massachusetts what to do! Outside agitators! Interfering with our state's rights, our state legal process, our state constitution! Who do they think they are, messing with our local way of life?

Apparently, in the minds of conservatives "states' rights" is a rather elastic concept that often expands in areas such as gun control, environmental protection, labor organizing, and civil rights but contracts in areas such as gay marriage.

There is still a long battle ahead.

Gay marriage is opposed by a majority of Americans, according to an AP-Ipsos poll. The poll taken Nov. 19-21 found that 61 percent oppose gay marriage and 35 percent support it.

People are about evenly divided on whether gays should be allowed to form civil unions, which would give them many of the same legal rights as marriage, other polls have found.

An even split on "civil unions" and over 1/3 supporting marriage. How long ago would those numbers have seemed impossibly out of reach?

Footnote: As could be predicted, the Shrub team fell all over itself with brainless pandering.

"Activist judges are seeking to redefine marriage for the rest of society, and the people's voice is not being heard in this process," said presidential spokesman Scott McClellan. "That's why the president is committed to moving forward with Congress on a constitutional amendment that would protect the sanctity of marriage."

"Uh, excuse me, Scotty," someone damn well should have asked, "but could you explain to us how the president concluded that people wanting to get married undermines marriage?"

Update: I was wrong about something: There were some people in Massachusetts involved in the suit. Ten members of the 159-seat State House of Representatives and one of the 40 members of the State Senate signed on to the suit. May their political careers rot.

I suspect that there is more going on than the usual ethnic-religious split between Sunnis and Shiites in the recent call for a delay in the Iraqi elections scheduled for January. This goes beyond the Sunni scholars of the Muslim Clerics' Association calling for a boycott or the threat of the Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni political party, to boycott the elections if they go ahead as now planned.

Consider that on Friday, CNN reported that among those who signed the call for the delay were

- Adnan Pachachi, an influential, moderate Sunni leader and former presidential candidate, who is seen as an Iraqi elder statesman and is closely allied to Washington. His level of respect is such that he was the UN' preferred choice for the Iraqi presidency.

- Three interim government ministers.

- Representatives from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the two main Kurdish groups. Their involvement is significant because they have been allied with the US, they are secular parties, and the Kurds' own regional elections were also scheduled for January 30.

In addition, CNN reported the next day that Rasim al-Awadi, secretary-general of the National Accord Party - Iyad Allawi's party - had also signed the call.

A total of 17 political parties and groups signed the petition, which joined Sunni parties with secular parties for the first time.

Not surprisingly, Reuters reported on Friday that

42 Shi'ite and Turkmen parties, including the influential Dawa Party and Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), said a postponement [of the election] would be illegal.

Now, at first sight, this still appears to be much the same schism as has concerned some people for some time: On the one hand, a long-suppressed Shiite majority, looking forward eagerly to "democracy," understood not to mean "majority rule with minority rights" but "majority rule, period." On the other, Sunni and Kurdish minorities look forward with dread to the same prospect.

But I still suspect it's both that and a step beyond. Pachachi's deep involvement (the meeting was held at his house) says this was a carefully-considered step, which could presage further cooperation between Sunnis and Kurds in the future. More importantly, what was Awadi doing there? Does this indicate dissent with Allawi's party? Or is it perhaps a bit of positioning for a post-election, perhaps post-Allawi position in the party?

I admit I don't know. But it does appear clear to me that events have moved one step past the expected Shiite-Sunni divisions.

Did you ever think you would be cheering on Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi? Neither did I. But they are among the states filing amicus curiae briefs in a case before the Supreme Court about medical marijuana.

Washington (AP, November 29) - Attorneys for the Bush administration and two California women sparred Monday before the Supreme Court over the use of marijuana as a legitimate medical treatment.

Justices are considering whether sick people in 11 states with medical marijuana laws can get around a federal ban on pot. ...

Besides California, nine other states allow people to use marijuana if their doctors agree: Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington. Arizona also has a law permitting marijuana prescriptions, but no active program. ...

Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, conservative states that do not have medical marijuana laws, sided with the marijuana users on grounds that the federal government was trying to butt into state business of providing "for the health, safety, welfare and morals of their citizens."

Now, the argument should give us pause because it's really a states' rights claim, which as we well know can be (and has been) used for various nefarious purposes, but it is still true that there are yet some things traditionally regarded as within the realm of state control and I think there is a very serious question of the feds' authority to punish someone who grows their own pot for their own use, who neither sells it nor transports it across state lines, and who has permission under their own state's laws to do what they're doing.

In fact, Bloomberg News notes that

[t]he court ruled in 1995 that Congress couldn't make it a federal crime to possess a gun in a school zone, and in 2000 the justices struck down a provision that let rape victims sue their attackers in federal court.

In those cases the court said Congress's authority to regulate interstate commerce didn't cover local, non-economic acts.

So now we'll see if what's good enough for gun owners and rapists is good enough for seriously sick people.

Interestingly, the government attorney in the case, Paul Clement, doesn't seem to have spent a lot of time arguing the feds jurisdictional powers. He just kept on about "marijuana BAD." About the closest he came, based on news reports, was his argument that California, from where the case at hand arose, may be allowing people to subject themselves to health dangers from doing the evil weed. (Which could be an argument for federal action on the grounds that states were failing to protect "the health, safety, welfare and morals of their citizens," which if I understand correctly was a legal basis for the validity of federal civil rights laws that did not involve interstate commerce: the feds could step in if the states failed their duties.)

But for the most part, Clement harped on supposed dangers, assumed and unproved social harms, and the supposed uselessness of medical marijuana.

"Smoked marijuana really doesn't have any future in medicine," he said. ...

The Bush administration argues that Congress has found no accepted medical use of marijuana and needs to be able to eradicate drug trafficking and its social harms.

Now, first of all, I'm not sure where we get the idea that Congress and/or Paul Clement are the final arbiters of what is medically useful. Second, since we're not talking about trafficking here, there's no need even to argue that because it's utterly irrelevant. But something else about Clement's statement struck me: Smoked marijuana has no future in medicine, he said. Not marijuana, smoked marijuana. So does this mean that if some huge pharmaceutical company patented the active ingredients, formed them into a pill available by prescription at the usual insanely large markup, that would be okay? Certainly, his statement leaves that option open, doesn't it?

Footnote: Apparently, the usual suspects are braying about "sending the wrong message" and

several justices repeatedly referred to America's drug addiction problems.

Did anybody involved have the gumption to say to those justices "And just what does addiction have to do with marijuana?" And what is this "wrong message" we'd be sending? "Hey, you, too, can grow your own dope and smoke it, too! All you have to do is be dying from cancer or AIDS, in constant pain from brain tumors, or going blind from glaucoma! A snap!"

Yeah, I bet that'll send the rates of the use of heroin and barbituates and other actually addictive drugs skyrocketing.

Extra added footnote: For more information on both medical marijuana and why marijuana use shouldn't be treated as a criminal matter at all, check out The Science of Medical Marijuana and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is the finger?

FINAL JEOPARDY!
On the Map

A house of parliament called the Dail Eireann meets in this world capital.

Two things, it seems, are driving the conflict over the disputed presidential election in Ukraine: One is an ethnic division between the more industrialized, Russian-speaking east and the more rural west. (Sort of like the so-called "red-blue" divide except even more intense and geographically focused; none of those purple maps there.) The other is that people seem to be, as I noted before, serious about their democracy and not willing to either fold or look for "healing" in the wake of fraud. (Unlike certain unnamed major parties here, which don't even seem enthusiastic about examining charges, much less taking to the streets over them.)

Tens of thousands continue to fill a tent city in Kiev. The opposition has demanded that President Leonid Kuchma fire Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, the purported winner over Viktor Yushchenko in the November 21 balloting, and threatened to block Kuchma's movements if he fails. The Parliament has passed resolutions calling the election invalid and declaring no confidence in the Central Elections Commission. Those resolutions are not legally binding but they are politically important.

Perhaps most significantly, the BBC reported on Friday that

[j]ournalists on Ukraine's state-owned channel - which had previously given unswerving support to Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych - have joined the opposition, saying they have had enough of "telling the government's lies".

Journalists on another strongly pro-government TV station have also promised an end to the bias in their reporting. The turnaround in news coverage, after years of toeing the government line, is a big setback for Mr Yanukovych. ...

A correspondent on the state channel, UT1, announced live on the evening bulletin that the entire news team was going to join the protests in Independence Square. She said their message to the protesters was: "We are not lying anymore".

Now seriously, ask yourselves, really think about this: Can you think of one time, a single instance, just one time when a reporter or anchor on network TV news, some member of our so-called free press, said flat out "the government is lying to you?" Just once? I don't mean the fanatical right-wing asshole talking heads, I mean something that was supposed to be giving news, not opinion. Can you think of a single time? If so, please tell me about it. Because I don't know of one.

Yanukovych's forces are starting to hit back. The legislature of his native region, Donetsk, voted 164-1 to hold a Dec. 5 referendum on autonomy. Autonomy would require a change in the constitution, but raising the specter of increasing regional splits and on-going conflict if the election is overturned may be intended as a means to pressure the opposition to give in.

Meanwhile, Kuchma started dropping hints that he is considering what are usually euphemistically called "sterner measures."

Kuchma, who backed Yanukovych, criticized the blockades [of government offices] Sunday as a "gross violation of law" that "would be unacceptable in any nation." He made his comments during a meeting of his National Security Council, parts of which were broadcast live on Ukrainian television.

"Compromise is the only way to avoid unpredictable consequences," Kuchma said.

"Unpredictable consequences" has an ominous ring coming from him. Nonetheless, for the moment the protests will continue. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling on the election on Monday. I don't think it will end the conflict no matter what it rules, but either side will use it as a club to beat the other. This is not over and I very much doubt it will be over after Monday.

Footnote: One amusing note is that, according to the Beeb's article,

[e]ven the sign-language presenter said that in an earlier bulletin, she had rejected the pro-government script and informed her viewers instead of the allegations of vote-rigging.

So the news reader is there, giving the government line, and there she is, signing away about charges of vote fraud. Must have been quite a thing to see for anyone who could hear but knows sign language.

Again, thanks to Left End of the Dial.

You've undoubtedly heard about the stickers various school districts have been putting on science textbooks to curry favor with right-wing fundamentalists who deny the reality of evolution because it conflicts with their Biblical literalism. One from Cobb County, Georgia, reads

This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.

Now, first off, it should be noted that the sticker shows a deep ignorance about evolution: Evolution is not about the origin of life but about the development and change in life forms once life emerged on Earth. They are two different subjects.

But leave that aside for the moment. Jumping off from Cobb County's sticker, Colin Purrington, Associate Professor of Evolutionary biology at Swathmore College, has come up with some more warning stickers for textbooks. Definitely worth a look. And a printout.

Footnote: For those who get told evolution is "only a theory," the proper answer is that there is nothing "only" about a theory. As Paul Ehrlich put it,

Scientific hypotheses are, in one way or another, tested against nature - the "real world" that all scientists conventionally agree is "out there." Only when hypotheses are sufficiently tested and bind together information from relatively diverse areas that previously had not been connected do they properly become theories. But that is the opposite of the popular understanding of the term; it's scientific meaning is much closer to that of the word "fact" in common parlance. Theories embody the highest level of certainty for comprehensive ideas in science. Thus, when someone claims that evolution is "only a theory," it's roughly equivalent to saying that the proposition that the Earth circles the sun rather than vice versa is "only a theory." Evolution is, in fact, a very useful theory.

(Quoted at Evolution: Fact and/or Theory? - a useful antidote to the poison of creationism and so-called "intelligent design," which is just creationism in it's Sunday best.)

Put another way, in science, a theory is a hypothesis confirmed by observation and experiment to the point where it does not require further demonstration and the burden of proof is on those who would deny its accuracy. In the case of evolution it is no longer enough (and hasn't been for some time) to say we don't know every detail or haven't found every transitional fossil. The basic principle of change over time in interaction with environment stands unchallenged by anything but pure assumption. Saying evolution should be doubted or questioned because questions remain is exactly - and I do mean exactly - like saying the existence of gravity should be questioned because scientists looking to unite gravity with quantum mechanics believe the force of gravity should be mediated (transmitted) by gravitons, which no one has ever found.

The details of evolution provoke spirited debate among scientists. The fact of evolution does not. And anyone who tries to tell you different is not doing science. Period.

...Rep. Ernest Istook (R-A cave somewhere), the man who wanted to have authority to look at everyone's tax returns then tried to dodge responsibility when he was caught - and who is also engaged in a foul attempt to kill Amtrak by punishing its supporters.

Via TalkingPointsMemo comes a link to the November 24 issue of The Hill, which tells us that Rep. Isakook

dispensed a little appropriator’s justice, punishing 21 Republicans who wrote him a letter in support of $1.8 billion for Amtrak.

Istook, chairman of the Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury and Independent Agencies, drastically reduced, or entirely excised, the transportation earmarks that those lawmakers were expecting to receive, making good on a little-noticed threat he issued in a letter last February.

When members of the House wrote to Isakook supporting a call for $1.8 billion for Amtrak, he replied by sending a "Dear Colleague" letter said their support for Amtrak funding,

"even if submitted in a separate document, must and will be weighed against your other requests, and I will consider it as a project request for your district."

He made no other attempt to contact those members before their funding was cut, and many of them did not learn of his actions until after the bill passed.

That he's making a blatant attempt to intimidate members into not supporting Amtrak was not even denied by his office.

"Last year, they had 32 members sign the letter, and this year it was only 21, so some people got the message," [spokeswoman Micah] Ledorf said, adding that she expects even fewer public supporters for Amtrak funding in next year’s process.

Several of the Republicans whose projects he killed are considered vulnerable and this certainly will not help them maintain support in their home districts - which means his selfish, conceited, over-the-top, high-handed thuggery is actually risking the GOPper majority in the House.

There has been some speculation about whether their dominant position will lead the rightists to overreach, as has happened many times before to dominant parties. I suppose this could be a sign of it, one where the right wing of the GOPpers feels so much in control it doesn't even have to pay attention to its own party's (by comparison, at least) moderates. So it will be interesting to see if in the wake of these two incidents the GOP House leadership will take any steps to rein in Isakook - which it appears they should do for their own, if not the country's, good.

Labels: Amtrak

Now we hear that Bush was "targeted for assassination by Marxist rebels" during his visit to Colombia. "No evidence" has been recovered of plots that "don't seem to have advanced very far," but so what?

"The administration of George W. Bush is everything that Marxist rebels hate in a U.S. government," journalist Toby Muse in Bogota, Colombia, told CNN.

Yeah! Terrorists hate him! Marxists hate him! (I thought we were supposed to believe there weren't any more Marxists, but what the hey, for old times' sake.) That's our guy! Brave and resolute in the face of terrorism and assassination! Yeah!

Remember what I said a couple of weeks ago about kiss the boot? Remember?

Thanks to Left End of the Dial for the picture. 

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is sauerkraut?

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Good Eats for $2000

Relax, this body part is not an ingredient of the small sandwich named for it.

Tell me if you can imagine a more perfect example of the Shrub teams approach to knowledge than this, for CNN for Friday:

President Bush's re-election insures that more federal money will flow to abstinence education that precludes discussion of birth control, even as the administration awaits evidence that the approach gets kids to refrain from sex.

Congress last weekend included more than $131 million for abstinence programs in a $388 billion spending bill, an increase of $30 million but about $100 million less than Bush requested. Meanwhile, a national evaluation of abstinence programs has been delayed, with a final report not expected until 2006. ...

"We don't need a study, if I remember my biology correctly, to show us that those people who are sexually abstinent have a zero chance of becoming pregnant or getting someone pregnant or contracting a sexually transmitted disease," said Wade Horn, the assistant secretary of Health and Human Services in charge of federal abstinence funding.

I'll accept that's true. It's also not the question. The question is if programs to push abstinence, particularly those that push abstinence in the absence of information on safe sex and contraception, do a damn bit of good. And even the administration admits it has no clue, with Horn saying "the research is not as adequate as it needs to be."

Well, the depends on what he means by adequate. Certainly there is research, research that should be adequate to open minds, but since it rejects the administration's narrow-minded, closed-eye view, it's inadequate for the purpose to which Horn would put it.

Independent researchers said in 2002 there is no reliable evidence whether [abstinence] programs are effective in reducing teen sex, pregnancy or the transmission of disease. ...

Advocates for Youth recently compiled state evaluations that found little change in teens' behavior since the start of the abstinence programs [in 1997]. The states evaluated are: Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington.

Leslee Unruh, president of National Abstinence Clearinghouse in Sioux Falls, S.D., said those state programs are not true abstinence programs because they talk about delaying sexual activity, but not specifically waiting until marriage.

Which is a laughable argument, because if the programs couldn't even convince the teens to delay sex (which is certainly a reasonable conclusion from the finding that there was "little change" in their behavior), what in hell makes anyone think that a "true" abstinence program could convince them to avoid sex altogether? It shows the desperation of their position and the paucity of their logic.

Oh, by the way, the folks that did that 2002 report have been updating their findings for HHS.

A second report was supposed to be released earlier this year, but has been pushed back, said HHS spokesman Bill Pierce. The final installation is expected in 2006.

Interesting.

Footnote: Horn said he's

not willing to wait for more evaluations, calling abstinence education "something that parents and children want."

Would that they would take that attitude about global climate change.

The Netscape news poll for Saturday had this question and results:

Are "moral values" playing too big of a role in the U.S. government?
Church and state need to stay separate - 55%
All decisions should be guided by morality - 42%
I don't know - 2%

Now, the numbers are meaningless and not the point here. (Self-selected polls are unreliable, those drawn from an audience very likely not representative of the general public even more so; what's more, Netscape never tells you how many people responded so you have no idea of the size of the sample. On the other hand, I'll say that some of the AOL polls might have some significance even if they are self-selected among a possibly unrepresentative audience; I figure when you start to get a sample size of 300,000 or 400,000, as some of their polls have gotten, you might have some fair indication of sentiment.)

The point here is the choices: Either church and state are separate or decisions are guided by morality. The net meaning of those choices is that morality = religion = morality. And I find that misleading, untrue, even offensive to me and others like me who don't base their ethical and moral principles on some God-figure. I'm an atheist. I have been told to my face that because I'm an atheist, I can't - not even don't, but can't - have moral values, that I must judge everything in terms of cold calculations of practicality and self-interest. I have been told to my face that "morality comes from God." I was even accused once of "affecting religion" when I spoke of the preciousness of life.

I'm content to let any regular reader of this blog judge for themselves if my lack of religious belief has left me devoid of concerns and commitments regarding right and wrong. I'll just say this: We should never be governed by or as a civil society embrace religious orthodoxy of any kind. But as I've said several times, some things you do just because they're right, not because they're profitable. If you ever feel constrained by necessity to do something you feel is wrong, it should be because you knowingly made that unhappy decision, not because the wrongness did not figure in it.

So my answer to the poll would be yes to both: Church and state should be and stay separate and morality should guide decisions. I see absolutely no conflict there.

Or a reaction, at least. Don't know how I missed this, but I did. From CNN for Tuesday.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office plans to investigate complaints of several systemic problems with this month's elections, a group of Democratic lawmakers said Tuesday.

The investigation comes in response to two letters written by lawmakers to the GAO which address numerous media reports of irregularities in the 2004 vote and call for those to be reviewed.

The GAO said it will not investigate every charge listed by the Democrats, but will examine "the security and accuracy of voting technologies, distribution and allocation of voting machines and counting of provisional ballots." ...

As part of the inquiry, the group said it will provide copies of specific incident reports received in their offices regarding the election, including more than 57,000 complaints provided to the House Judiciary Committee.

There have been cases where the GAO has been bullied into timidity by threats to its budget but it usually does reasonably independent investigations. We'll have to see what happens with this one - and keep an eye on attempts at intimidation by the GOP.

I've got some good news and some - well, actually it's good news both ways.

The good news is that the bill acting on the 9/11 Commission's recommendations to "reform" the intelligence services is dead for the time being. Good first because the central idea, the big proposal to combine the services under centralized control, is a really bad one: A case can be made that the intelligence services, assuming you're going to have them because governments need information to function properly, need reorganization - but putting so much control in a centralized office only increases the potential for intelligence to be cherry-picked for political ends, since there would be only one voice. In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the slight diversity of opinion, the varying shadings of doubt, were the only good things about the assessments. Under the new regime, even those shadings would disappear.

Good second because some of the other stuff added to the bill was just, well, bad. Bad as in stinky bad. Bad as in anti-civil liberties bad. Bad as in anti-privacy bad. Bad as in xenophobic bad.

Which brings us to the other good news: why the bill has stalled. From AP for Tuesday:

Defying President Bush, Reps. Duncan Hunter and James Sensenbrenner - who led opposition dooming legislation based on the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations - said they won't change their minds without Senate concessions.

Their joint opposition forced House Speaker Dennis Hastert to pull the bill. That is, the bill is stymied because House and Senate Republicans are banging heads. And it's a pleasing sound.

For Hunter, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, this is a turf battle. The Pentagon opposes the bill because it would lose its leading position in intelligence matters, and whatever limits the Pentagon's influence also limits that of Hunter's committee. So he'll resist it even if he has to resort to adopting DOD's ridiculous argument that the reorganization would result in soldiers' "being confused about the chain of command" - as if corporals and PFCs are going to be reading intelligence reports and struggling to decide it they conflict with orders from their commanders.

For House Judiciary Committee chair Sensenbrenner it's more anti-foreigner, as he refuses to yield to a demand from the Senate (and urging from Bush) to drop a provision changing asylum laws, which his paranoia claims are an open door for terrorists to enter the country.

What's fun about this is that it's already become personal.

"It'll be tougher now because the well got even more poisoned by the senators and their supporters thoroughly criticizing Duncan Hunter and myself by name on the talking head shows yesterday," Sensenbrenner told The Associated Press on Monday. ...

"It was tough to begin with. It will be even tougher after the Senate plus (GOP House Intelligence chairman Pete) Hoekstra had a press conference where they badmouthed Duncan Hunter and me, and everybody got on the talking head shows and pilloried Congressman Hunter and me," Sensenbrenner said.

So the Senate GOP leadership is pissed at the House GOP leadership, the House GOP leadership is pissed at the Senate GOP leadership, and Bush is probably pissed at both of them for not managing to come up with something he can parade around.

There was nothing left but recriminations on Monday, with most of Congress heading home for Thanksgiving and Bush still on an overseas trip. No meetings of the bill's negotiators have been planned.

Cool.

Footnote: Ex-Secretary of the Navy John Lehman told CNN

"[t]his is the classic confrontation you see in Washington that they can sell tickets for.... Because the president now has been challenged directly by the leadership of the Congress and by the lobbyists and by the bureaucracy. Now he's got to show who's in charge."

And I'm on the phone to Ticketmaster.

Wednesday's Washington Post reported that the Ohio Democratic Party has announced that it's supporting the efforts of the Green and Libertarian Parties to get a recount in the state.

The organization, whose decision is expected to give more legitimacy to the recount push, complained that Ohio voters faced long lines at the polls Nov. 2, that some voting machines malfunctioned and that some absentee ballots were never delivered. ...

The Democrats are not helping to pay for the recount but will keep close tabs on legal decisions that affect it and place observers in each of the state's 88 counties to monitor the tabulation.

The Kerry campaign said it intends to monitor the proceedings for irregularities. "We didn't ask for it," said Dan Hoffheimer, the campaign's legal counsel. "But since it's apparently going to happen, we want to make sure it gets done right."

That's it: Cave the night of the election and don't express any interest in investigating fraud or other irregularities affecting voters, but when someone else does it for you, jump right in with press releases to show your "concern" and share the credit - but don't put in any money and make clear you "didn't ask for it."

Yeah! That's the Democratic Party I know!

I noticed recently that I had been dropped from the link list of a blog I read on a fairly regular basis. I assume, based on other evidence, that this was in reaction to some posts sharply critical of Israel which I had put up shortly before. I regret the loss of the link (and I still read the other blog) but the truth is, I don't see how Israel can continue to claim any significant moral superiority in the face of cases such as this one. It involved a 13-year old girl named Iman al-Hams and occurred near the southern border town of Rafah on October 6. This report is from The Independent (UK) for this past Wednesday:

Israeli soldiers continued firing at a Palestinian girl killed in Gaza last month well after she had been identified as a frightened child, a military communications tape has revealed. ...

It shows that troops firing with light weapons and machine guns on a figure moving in a "no entry zone" close to an army outpost near the border with Egypt had swiftly discovered that she was a girl.

In the recorded exchanges someone in the operations room asks: "Are we talking about a girl under the age of 10?" The observation post, housed in a watchtower, replies: "It's a little girl. She's running defensively eastwards, a girl of about 10. She's behind the embankment, scared to death." ...

The tape records the commander as telling his men, after firing at the girl with an automatic weapon and declaring he has "confirmed" the killing: "Anyone who's mobile, moving in the zone, even if it's a three-year-old, needs to be killed."

Now, in fairness, I will say that the commander who "confirmed" the murder is being prosecuted for "exceeding his authority." But not, however, for murder or even manslaughter since it supposedly couldn't be proved that the two shots he put into the wounded and possibly still alive girl were what actually killed her. Which means whoever did actually fire the fatal shot(s), whoever it was, will walk.

He's also charged with obstruction of justice because he lied to cover himself: He told senior commanders

that he came under fire from Palestinian gunmen 300 yards away as he approached the girl and shot at the ground to deter the fire.

The point here is that version was accepted uncritically by those commanders until soldiers present at the incident went to the press to complain.

Even more the point is that this is not an isolated incident at the border stations. While shooting terrified 13-year old girls at point-blank range is, happily, still unusual, the daily violence, degradation, and humiliation of Palestinians at checkpoints has become part of the routine.

The Christian Peacemaker Teams have seen it. Consider this report from December 13, 2003:

The taxi fills up in Hebron and starts for Jerusalem. At the Etzion checkpoint, CPTer Greg Rollins introduced me to my seatmate - a Palestinian professor of molecular biology who is supervising a group of graduate students working in a genetic engineering lab at Hebrew University.

He translated for us the parts of the conversation that we couldn't understand at the next checkpoint. In the initial questioning at the checkpoint, the Israeli soldier asked our driver for the new newspaper on the dashboard. The driver refused, so the soldier said, "OK, then pull over there to the side and wait."

After about ten minutes, our driver noticed a ranking police officer. Our driver told him, "Those soldiers are making me wait here because I wouldn't give them my newspaper." The officer called the two soldiers and came to our van. In front of the soldiers, the officer began his lecture to our driver: "If a soldier asks you for your paper, you give it to him. If he asks you for your undershorts, you give them to him, then claim for them later. At the checkpoint, the soldier is God, and anything he says to you, you obey. Now, give him the newspaper. OK, now you sit here till he's ready to talk to you." ...

After a few minutes, the soldiers gave the paper back. Then they came around to the side door, opened it, and asked for everyone's ID. At that point, as our passports came forward with the Palestinians' IDs, the soldiers realized that they had two Canadians and two US citizens in the van along with the Palestinians. ...

"Richard Meyer?" I climbed out. "I have an appointment in twenty minutes at the US Consulate," I said to the soldier. "What should I tell them about why we are late?"

"Why didn't you come out right away when I called?" "You called for the Canadians first. I came when you called my name."

Then the soldiers had a short conversation with each other while they looked at Kristin Anderson's passport: "What can we do to get this pretty face out of the van?"

"Ask for her visa."

"But her visa's right here."

"OK, OK."

The soldiers gave us our passports back, we climbed back in, and we drove on. Just a twenty-five minute stop.

"It happens like that every other day," the other passengers said.

Israeli grandmothers have seen it - and have been hated for seeing it - as shown in an article in the November-December issue of Mother Jones magazine:

He Huwwara checkpoint just south of Nablus simmers with routine misery on a sweltering August afternoon. A long line of Palestinians wait to enter the West Bank’s largest city as Israeli troops regard them, stone-faced, from behind a barrier of concrete blocks and sandbags. The troops let the women and children through, but send those Palestinians who've not been granted travel permits - almost all young men - to a fenced-off detention area topped by a corrugated iron roof. The jora, or pit, is a West Bank purgatory: a pen where Palestinians often languish for hours until they have been cleared by Israel’s internal security arm, the Shin Bet. ...

Suddenly, two middle-aged Israeli women walk past the barricade, attracting a mix of curious and hostile glances from the soldiers. Wearing floppy sun hats, khakis, and tennis shoes, Menucha Moravitz, 54, and Roni Klein, 55, look more suited to brunch at a beachfront café in fashionable north Tel Aviv than to this dust-choked bottleneck deep inside the West Bank. ... "This is absurd," Moravitz says. "The soldiers have a list of wanted men, but they don't even bother to check it. It's easier to put young men in the holding pen for hours and deal with them when they get around to it." ...

[A]s conditions in the occupied territories have deteriorated, more and more women like Moravitz ... are joining the ranks of Machsom (Checkpoint) Watch. Founded in 2001 by three veteran women peace activists, the group's volunteer monitors now number more than 400, and their meticulously detailed reports of checkpoint abuses - published daily on its website - have become required reading for both the media and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). ...

Machsom Watch has exposed a pattern of abuses at the checkpoints that the group says feeds the rage that leads to the terrorism they're supposed to prevent. In late July, for example, a 26-year-old university student named Muhammad Cana'an was kicked, beaten, and shot in the arm by an Israeli soldier, apparently without provocation, at a checkpoint near Nablus. ... Two days later, several Machsom Watch women near Qalandiya checkpoint outside Ramallah reported that troops had stoned and smashed the windows of a Palestinian taxi. The army, under pressure from the group, imprisoned two of the soldiers - one for 56 days, the other for 42. ...

Even the IDF brass has come to regard Machsom Watch with grudging acceptance. ...

Not everyone in Israel speaks of Machsom Watch so evenhandedly. Nadia Metar, cochair of the Women in Green, an extreme right-wing group, says that Machsom Watch is a group of "fifth columnists who collaborate with the Arab enemy." Female Jewish settlers are mounting a campaign of harassment of Machsom Watch volunteers at the checkpoints. Monitors have been slapped, punched, and threatened in recent months. In each case, they say, Israeli police and soldiers have stood by and done nothing. In May 2004, two male settlers beat up the Arab-Israeli driver of the van that shuttles the women to the checkpoints and knocked out his false teeth. Daniella Weiss, the mayor of Kedumim, part of a cluster of ideologically hardline settlements near Nablus, admits organizing attacks and says she will carry out more. "I make a lot of effort to stop their activities," Weiss said. ... Asked if she was advocating more violence against Machsom Watch, Weiss replied, "Yes, indeed."

Even the soldiers themselves have seen it and some have come to admit to it: Roadblock (or Checkpoint) Syndrome is a book written by Liran Ron Furer, a former staff sergeant in the IDF, which describes his own experiences over three years as a guard at a checkpoint in Gaza. (The book is published only in Israel and available only in Hebrew; permission to translate it into English for international distribution was denied by Israeli authorities.) Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz (Israel) last December 11, had this account of the book and Furer:

He is haunted by images from his three years of military service in Gaza and the thought that this could be a syndrome afflicting everyone who serves at checkpoints gives him no respite. ...

Furer is certain that what happened to him is not at all unique. Here he was - a creative, sensitive graduate of the Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts, who became an animal at the checkpoint, a violent sadist who beat up Palestinians because they didn't show him the proper courtesy, who shot out tires of cars because their owners were playing the radio too loud, who abused a retarded teenage boy lying handcuffed on the floor of the Jeep, just because he had to take his anger out somehow. "Checkpoint Syndrome" (also the title of his book), gradually transforms every soldier into an animal, he maintains, regardless of whatever values he brings with him from home. No one can escape its taint. In a place where nearly everything is permissible and violence is perceived as normative behavior, each soldier tests his own limits of violence [sic] impulsiveness on his victims - the Palestinians.

His book is not easy reading. Written in terse, fierce prose, in the blunt and coarse language of soldiers, he reconstructs scenes from the years in which he served in Gaza (1996-1999), years that, one must remember, were relatively quiet.

There were the routine humiliations: he and his comrades forcing some Palestinians to sing an Israeli pop song; making children clean the checkpoint prior to inspections; "returning" ID cards by throwing them in the air just to make the drivers get out and pick them up off the ground.

The routine degradations: The dwarf who came every day on his wagon who was forced to have his picture taken sitting on his horse, hit, and degraded for a good half-hour. The one who was made to go on all fours and bark like a dog. The one on whose head a soldier urinated because he'd dared to smile at a guard.

The routine punishments: Deliberately keeping Palestinians at the checkpoint for hours to make them lose an entire day's work. "It's the only way they learn," Furer wrote.

The routine brutalities: Having a souvenir picture taken with bloodied, bound Arabs they'd beaten up. Stealing prayer beads and cigarettes. "Miro wanted them to give him their cigarettes, the Arabs didn't want to give so Miro broke someone's hand, and Boaz slashed their tires." ("If a soldier asks you for your paper, you give it to him. ... At the checkpoint, the soldier is God....")

The routine violence: "I ran toward them and punched an Arab right in the face. ... He collapsed on the road."

"I came to realize that there was an unchanging pattern here," he says. "It was the same in the first intifada, in the period that I was serving, which was quiet, and in the second intifada. It's become a permanent reality." ...

Furer is out to prove that this is a syndrome and not a collection of isolated, individual cases. ... "I was considered a moderate soldier - but I fell into the same trap that most soldiers fall into. I was carried away by the possibility of acting in the most primal and impulsive manner, without fear of punishment and without oversight. ...

"At the checkpoint, young people have the chance to be masters and using force and violence becomes legitimate - and this is a much more basic impulse than the political views or values that you bring from home. As soon as using force is given legitimacy, and even rewarded, the tendency is to take it as far as it can go, to exploit it much as possible. To satisfy these impulses beyond what the situation requires. Today, I'd call it sadistic impulses ...

"We weren't criminals or especially violent people. ... Something about the situation - being in a godforsaken place, far from home, far from oversight - made it justified ... The line of what is forbidden was never precisely drawn. No one was ever punished and they just let us continue."

In the most telling line of the entire piece, Furer says "I was an average soldier." And so he was. An average soldier corrupted, as so many are, by power and hatred. He, at least, has been able to step far enough back to see it for what it was. Others are not so - I was going to say fortunate, but that's not the right word. "Human" fits better, or at least "humane."

"A friend from the army read the book[," Furer said, "]and said that I'm right, that we did bad things, but we were kids. And he said that it's a shame that I took it too hard."

And just how hard should he have taken it when it is still going on every day?

Thanks to Left End of the Dial for the link to The Independent's piece.

Footnote: Such attitudes toward Palestinians are not limited to the IDF; in fact, they're not even the worst of it. Christian Peacemaker Teams are now active in the area around Hebron, walking Palestinian children to school. The children have been subjected to regular harassment and threats from nearby Israeli settlers. Twice in recent months - in September and again in October - CPT members have been physically attacked by settler thugs.

September 29:

The five settlers, dressed in black and wearing masks, came from an outpost of the nearby Ma'on settlement and attacked [Chris] Brown and [Kim] Lamberty with a chain and bat. All of the children escaped injury by running back to their homes.

The settlers pushed Brown to the ground, whipped him with a chain and kicked him in the chest, which punctured his lung. They kicked and beat Lamberty's legs. She is not able to walk because of an injury to her knee and has a broken arm. The settlers also stole Lamberty's waistpack, which held her passport, money and cellular phone.

Lamberty and Brown were taken by ambulance to Soroka hospital in Beer Sheva for treatment. Hebron Team Support person, Rich Meyer, reports that the two CPTers told him they are receiving excellent care from Israeli doctors.

October 9:

[E]ight settlers with wooden sticks and sling shots attacked CPTers Diana Zimmerman and Diane Janzen, an Operation Dove member (name withheld by request), one resident from Tuwani, two residents from Tuba, and two fieldworkers from Amnesty International, Donatella Rovera and Maartje Houbrechts.

When the accompaniment team saw the settlers, dressed in blue jeans, t-shirts, and masks walking toward them they called the police immediately and began walking quickly away from the settlers. Three of the settlers with sling shots ran after the Palestinians hurling stones at them. The other five settlers attacked the accompaniment team. The masked settlers hit Donatello Rovera and Diane Janzen with wooden sticks. Then the settlers beat the Operation Dove member and stole his video camera. The settlers finally ran away when one of the Amnesty International women yelled at the settlers in Hebrew, "The police are coming. You are not going to get away with this."

The police did not arrive until thirty-five minutes after the internationals called for help.

Operation Dove is an Italian Christian organization that undertakes accompaniment work similar to CPT. So many good people of who you never hear trying to do so many good things. Maybe there is hope yet.

Labels: Israel, Middle East

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What are sweet potatoes? (Acceptable: yams)

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Good Eats for $1200

The main ingredient of this German food, a traditional hot dog topping, is cabbage.

For a variety of reasons, Friday proved to be another day that has just slipped away from me. So I guess I'll just have to store the outrage for another day.

Back tomorrow.

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is a (Bengal) tiger?

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Good Eats for $400

At Thanksgiving, many families enjoy a side dish of these veggies baked with marshmallows and brown sugar.

Okay, we've gone from today to 13,000 years ago to 50,000 years ago. Kid stuff.

Scientists in Spain announced Thursday that they've unearthed a 13 million-year-old fossilized skeleton of an ape that is possibly a common ancestor of humans and great apes, including orangutans, bonobos, chimps and gorillas.

The find could add a yet another branch to the human family tree and fill in a gap in our knowledge of hominoid evolution. ...

Researchers think great apes diverged from lesser apes, which are gibbons and siamangs, about 11 million to 16 million years ago. Fossils from that geological epoch, called the middle Miocene, are fairly rare. Scientists believe humans diverged from the living great apes about 6 million years ago.

Those fossils are rare because the animals often lived in forests, where the damp conditions make bones decay fairly rapidly so they don't fossilize well. (This fact, by the way, seems of no interest to the flat-Earth anti-evolutionists who will harp on every gap in the fossil record even though a number of those gaps occur where you'd expect them to occur, such as among animals that did not live in dry climates.) So the find is very significant.

Study of the fossilized bones suggest Pierolapithecus [catalaunicus, as the species has been named,] was a tree climber, with a stiff lower spine, and a specially adapted rib cage and wrist bones. However, its short fingers suggest it did not do a lot of hanging from branches. ...

Study of the fossils suggests the ape was male, weighed about 75 pounds, and ate fruit.

Footnote: The same article notes one other thing:

Only four species of great apes - orangutans, bonobos, gorillas and chimpanzees - exist today. All of them are endangered due to hunting and habitat loss.

"Humans are not proud of their ancestors, and rarely invite them round to dinner."

In 1936, some shaped stone points, intended to be placed on a shaft and used for hunting, were found in a cave near Clovis, New Mexico. They were clearly of human design and were dated to roughly 11,000 BCE, or 13,000 years ago. Many more of these points, which became known as Clovis points, have been found. From this discovery grew the hypothesis that humans arrived in the Western hemisphere about 13,000 years ago as a result of following game over the land bridge that then existed across the Bering Strait.

"That had been repeated so many times in textbooks and lectures it became part of the common lore," said Dennis Stanford, curator of archeology at the Smithsonian Institution. "People forgot it was only an unproven hypothesis."

An unproved and now doubtful hypothesis, as several sites have been discovered in the Americas that can be dated much earlier, to 15,000 or 17,000 years ago, perhaps even earlier.

Perhaps even much earlier, as CNN reported on November 17:

Archaeologists say a site in South Carolina may rewrite the history of how the Americas were settled by pushing back the date of human settlement thousands of years. ...

An archaeologist from the University of South Carolina on Wednesday announced radiocarbon tests that dated the first human settlement in North America to 50,000 years ago - at least 25,000 years before other known human sites on the continent.

The site, called Topper, is near Allendale, South Carolina, on the Savannah River about 60 miles south of Columbia.

If true, the find represents a revelation for scientists studying how humans migrated to the Americas. ...

This new discovery suggests humans may have crossed the land bridge into the Americas much earlier [than previously thought] - possibly during an ice age - and rapidly colonized the two continents.

"If" of course being the operative word. Some are doubtful and some reject the idea that what was found at the site shows signs of human manipulation. And the work has not yet appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, although that's supposed to happen next year. But as skeptic Theodore Schurr, anthropology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, noted,

"[i]f [the radiocarbon] dating is confirmed, then it really does have a significant impact on our previous understanding of New World colonization."

We already know that "protohumans" reached Indonesia nearly 2 million years ago, meaning they left Africa hundreds of thousands of years earlier than thought. And we also already know that homo sapiens spread earlier and more rapidly than had been thought. So maybe - maybe - this is one more leap in a process of learning that we're rather more ancient than we have believed.

Tom Sever at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, has a unique job - literally. He is NASA's only archaeologist.

His job involves studying satellite photographs to see what they can tell us about ancient civilizations. Now, NASA says, by combining such information with that from in the dirt archaeological expeditions, Sever and others think they've figured out the answer to one of the study's great mysteries: the fall of the Maya.

Where the rain forests of Guatemala now stand, a great civilization once flourished. The people of Mayan society built vast cities, ornate temples, and towering pyramids. At its peak around 900 A.D., the population numbered 500 people per square mile in rural areas, and more than 2,000 people per square mile in the cities - comparable to modern Los Angeles County.

This vibrant "Classic Period" of Mayan civilization thrived for six centuries. Then, for some reason, it collapsed.

The question has been why.

From pollen trapped in ancient layers of lake sediment, scientists have learned that around 1,200 years ago, just before the civilization's collapse, tree pollen disappeared almost completely and was replaced by the pollen of weeds. In other words, the region became almost completely deforested.

Without trees, erosion would have worsened, carrying away fertile topsoil. The changing groundcover would have boosted the temperature of the region by as much as 6 degrees, according to computer simulations by NASA climate scientist Bob Oglesby, a colleague of Sever at the MSFC. Those warmer temperatures would have dried out the land, making it even less suitable for raising crops.

Rising temperatures would have also disrupted rainfall patterns, says Oglesby. During the dry season in the Petén, water is scarce, and the groundwater is too deep (500+ feet) to tap with wells. Dying of thirst is a real threat. The Maya must have relied on rainwater saved in reservoirs to survive, so a disruption in rainfall could have had terrible consequences. ...

Using classic archeology techniques, researchers find that human bones from the last decades before the civilization's collapse show signs of severe malnutrition.

"Archeologists used to argue about whether the downfall of the Maya was due to drought or warfare or disease, or a number of other possibilities such as political instability," Sever says. "Now we think that all these things played a role, but that they were only symptoms. The root cause was a chronic food and water shortage, due to some combination of natural drought and deforestation by humans." ...

How did they thrive for so many centuries? An important clue comes from space:

Sever and co-worker Dan Irwin have been looking at satellite photos and, in them, Sever spotted signs of ancient drainage and irrigation canals in swamp-like areas near the Mayan ruins. Today's residents make little use of these low-lying swamps (which they call "bajos," the Spanish word for "lowlands"), and archeologists had long assumed that the Maya hadn't used them either. During the rainy season from June to December, the bajos are too muddy, and in the dry season they're parched. Neither condition is good for farming.

Sever suspects that these ancient canals were part of a system devised by the Maya to manage water in the bajos so that they could farm this land. The bajos make up 40% of the landscape; tapping into this vast land area for agriculture would have given the Maya a much larger and more stable food supply. They could have farmed the highlands during the wet season and the low-lying bajos during the dry season. And they could have farmed the bajos year after year, instead of slashing and burning new sections of rain forest.

This is of more than academic interest. Over the last 40 years, half of the original rainforest has been destroyed by farmers practicing "slash and burn" agriculture.

By 2020, only 2% to 16% of the original rain forest will remain if current rates of destruction continue.

The very real risk is that modern residents of the area are repeating the Maya's mistakes, deforesting the land only to produce climate changes that will more than undo whatever you've gained. Cloud formation and rainfall patterns are already changing over deforested areas of Central America, which could lead to the same sort of downward spiral that the Maya suffered. But

"[b]y learning what the Maya did right and what they did wrong, maybe we can help local people find sustainable ways to farm the land while stopping short of the excesses that doomed the Maya," [Sever] says. ...

Could today's Petén farmers take a lesson from the Maya and sow their seeds in the bajos?

It's an intriguing idea. Sever and his colleagues are exploring that possibility with the Guatemalan Ministry of Agriculture. They're working with Pat Culbert of the University of Arizona and Vilma Fialko of Guatemala's Instituto de Antropología e Historia to identify areas in the bajos with suitable soil. And they're considering planting test crops of corn in those areas, with irrigation and drainage canals inspired by the Maya.

A message from 900 A.D.: it's never too late to learn from your ancestors.

And another message from 900 CE: Stop screwing around with the climate!

Why is the Jesus lizard called a Jesus lizard? Because it can walk on water. Well, okay, it doesn't exactly walk on water - it runs on water.

Really. It can. Aside from a few insects and spiders that spread their weight out far enough to not break the surface tension of the water, the Jesus lizard - more usually known as the basilisk lizard - is the only creature that can do it. And now, the BBC for Wednesday reports, scientists may have figured out how it does it.

Harvard University's Dr Tonia Hsieh told the BBC World Service that experiments showed the lizard to be producing massive sideways force to stay upright. ...

The study, which was reported recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals how a large upward force is produced every time the lizard slaps its foot down into the water.

This keeps the animal from sinking straight down into the liquid. But just like we tend to teeter forward when we run on a soft surface such as sand, the lizard would also stumble forward unless it had a mechanism for stabilising itself.

And this is where the sideways force comes in - and it is almost as strong as the initial slap down. ...

Animals that run on land with two legs, such as birds and humans, have little force directed out towards the sides. The basilisk lizard is very different. ...

"Our guess on this is that it appears to help maintain stability ... as they're running across water; they're constantly tripping[," Dr Hsieh said.]

"It's a matter of catching themselves and keeping themselves upright before they actually fall over."

The lizards have long bodies and large feet. On the edges of their toes are fringes that resemble pom-poms with a number of fronds.

That serves to spread the force of the slap over a larger area of water. Think of trying to reach something at the bottom of a sink full of water. Which would be easier: Pushing your hand in fingers first or slapping down with your palm? Well, then why? Combine two things: First, pressure, which is force per unit area (e.g., air pressure at sea level is about 14.7 pounds per square inch - do the metric conversion yourself). And by Newton's Third Law of Motion ("for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction"), the harder the slap on the water, the greater the push of the water on the hand. So compare an Olympic diver with a 300-pound man doing a belly flop. The former has less force (weight is a force) than the latter but still probably generates much greater pressure on the water because that force, even if smaller, is still concentrated on such a small area. Our belly-flopper, then, exerts less presure but hits the water with greater force. Which one will feel the hit more?

In the same way, when the lizard slaps its broad foot on the water, the water pushes up against the foot, supporting the lizard. In fact, any of us could probably do the same by wearing some kind of sufficiently large flipper arrangement on our feet - for about one step. Then we'd fall face forward into the water. What I find so cool about the explanation is that it means that the lizard is actually constantly tripping but because of the distribution of forces it just manages to keep up with itself long enough to keep from actually falling. Neat.

Dr Hsieh said there were "definitely" broader implications coming out of the research that would centre on the study of how animals moved over many different types of surface.

"They have to manoeuvre across all these surfaces on a daily basis - how exactly are they doing this?" she said.

Footnote: There is in mythology a terrible beast called the basilisk that was so deadly its very glance was lethal.

Yeah, I'm taking the day off. Not from blogging (or from work, for that matter), but from politics. I do expect to have a few posts up but they're all going to be Geek posts - that is, science-related items I found cool or otherwise interesting.

Friday, back to outrage - while I keep looking for a little hope here and there. Right now, most of that seems to fall under the heading "not as bad as we thought," but if that's what there is, I'll take it.

...from all us turkeys. 

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Bambi?

JEOPARDY!
Literary Animals for $1000

Shere Khan, Mowgli's enemy in The Jungle Book, was this type of feline.

In a November 20 report on the situation in Iraq, the BBC said that

US forces in Falluja continue to fight what commanders say are the last pockets of insurgent fighters hiding in the south of the city.

Artillery, tank shells and bombs fell on the area for much of the night and the boom of artillery fire continued into Saturday morning.

The marine commander says these are the final bands of fighters in Falluja but they are proving difficult to dislodge. ...

Many homes in the Martyrs' neighbourhood have been reduced to rubble.

This tactic may be part of the insurgents plan to sway public opinion against the American forces, says the BBC's Jennifer Glasse who is embedded with US marines there.

Must be. Fighting to the death, having your homes reduced to rubble, yeah, all part of a big PR campaign to reverse the enormous levels of popularity American forces now enjoy in Iraq.

Footnote, Now They Said It, Now They Didn't Div.: From the same article:

- Thursday, November 18: The top marine commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. John Sattler, says the Fallujah attack has "broken the back of the insurgency."
- Saturday, November 20: Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, deputy head of US Central Command in Iraq, says it's "too early to say" if the resistance has been broken.

The Los Angeles Times for Sunday reported that

[f]ive months after embarrassed State Department officials acknowledged widespread mistakes in the government's influential annual report on global terrorism, internal investigators have found new and unrelated errors — as well as broader underlying problems that they say essentially have destroyed the credibility of the statistics the report is based on.

So not only is the original (April) report, which the White House trumpeted when it said terrorist attacks and related deaths had dropped to their lowest levels in three decades, a pile of crap, but the revised (June) report, which revealed terrorism-related attacks and deaths at a 21-year high, is also useless because of a wholesale lack of consistent standards of reporting and a restricted definition of what constitutes "terrorism," one that omits many incidents in Chechnya and Iraq.

Now, that's pretty funny in itself, but this is what I was referring to in the title:

"We become the laughingstock if we redo [the report]. But [not doing it (sic)] poses a serious credibility problem," said the official, a terrorism analyst on Capitol Hill. "This determines where we put our resources, what we tell other countries, what we think the trends are. And this just ruins our credibility. People just don't trust us anymore."

Uh, "anymore?"

From the BBC for November 21.

A nationwide polio vaccination campaign has started in India as part of a World Health Organization initiative to eradicate the virus around the world.

More than 170 million Indian children under the age of five are being immunised over the next three days.

Despite an epidemic in 2002, India - by vaccinating as many children as possible with multiple doses - looks likely to stop the spread next year.

Another 80 million children are being vaccinated in 24 African countries.

In the last campaign, about 90% of children were immunised and this time health care workers will be trying to reach those in remote areas.

There are, however, some dark clouds. First, an outbreak in Cote d'Ivoire has not been addressed because the conflict there has made a vaccination program impossible for the moment. Worse,

future campaigns in the UN's Global Polio Eradication Initiative are in doubt.

An additional $200m is needed to continue vaccinations in 2005 and without this money the virus will be able to spread quickly in unimmunised children throughout the world.

How's this for a quickie holiday campaign: The US should show its "moral values" by covering the $200 million cost for the program for 2005. Since that is the equivalent of about 25 hours of the cost of war in Iraq (based on the Pentagon's current estimate of $5.8 billion per month), I really think we should be able to afford it for the sake of eliminating this scourge from the world. Call it our holiday gift to the world's children.

A page with info and links about WHO's polio eradication initiative is here.

As reported by Wednesday's Toronto Globe & Mail, an audiotape has surfaced supposedly made by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in which Muslim scholars are harshly criticized for having "quit supporting the mujahedeen."

"You have let us down in the darkest circumstances and handed us over to the enemy... You made peace with the tyranny and handed over the countries and the people to the Jews and Crusaders. ... when you resort to silence on their crimes, when you refused to hold the banners of Jihad and Tawhid, and when you prevented youth from heading to the battlefields in order to defend the religion," he said. ...

It was unclear whether his message was intended as a direct threat against religious scholars.

I beg to differ: If the tape is genuine, I think that's exactly what it was intended as. You're with us or you're against us. Either you supported Jihad and Tawhid (both earlier names of Zarqawi's group, which he now calls al-Qaeda in Iraq) or you handed over the people to the enemy and "preferred your money and sons" to God's word - a word which Zarqawi, evidently, gets to define.

Well maybe, Mr. Zarqawi, it wasn't their "money and sons" those ulema (religious Muslim scholars) preferred, maybe it was avoiding an endorsement of butchery, beheadings, and bigotry. Maybe, since many have indeed spoken against the occupation, maybe it's not the resistance they dislike. Maybe, Muslims know the difference between opposition and indiscriminate murder and they are not willing to tolerate the latter to advance the former. Maybe it's not that they endorse the occupation but that they reject you. Yeah, that sounds about right.

At the same time, I want to repeat what I just said: If the tape in genuine. Considering the timing and the language, it has the feel of a statement made by someone, if you will, on the run, a cry of desperation or at least of pained frustration, saying, again, that the scholars

"let us down in the darkest circumstances. ...

"You left the mujahadeen facing the strongest power in the world," he said. "Are not your hearts shaken by the scenes of your brothers being surrounded and hurt by your enemy?"

You let us down! Where were you when we needed you? How could you do this to us? The sentiments of someone losing a fight, who knows they're losing, and who feels abandoned by those who should be friends.

I guess I find it just a little too perfect, a little too fitting in the wake of Fallujah, a little too in PR synch with the administration claims that "we've got him on the run!" So yes, I have my doubts as to its authenticity.

But assuming it's real, do I think it's a threat? Well, so far Zarqawi has shown no compunction of which I'm aware about killing anyone whose death he thought might serve a political purpose. I don't imagine that Muslim scholars who were insufficiently enthusiastic about his version of what God wants would be immune.

Footnote: The undercurrents of murder are not limited to Sunni radicals and the ethnic strife so thinly papered over in the interim government continue to fester.

This week, two Sunni clerics who were part of an influential Sunni group that openly called for a boycott of Jan. 30 national elections because of the U.S. offensive against Fallujah were assassinated by gunmen.

On Tuesday, Sheik Ghalib Ali al-Zuhairi, was killed as he left a mosque after dawn prayers in the town of Muqdadiyah, 100 kilometres north of Baghdad, police said.

His assassination occurred a day after another prominent Sunni cleric was killed in the northern city of Mosul - Sheik Faidh Mohamed Amin al-Faidhi, who was the brother of the association's spokesman. It was unclear whether those two attacks were related.

Perhaps they weren't - but if so, I think it's one hell of a coincidence.

Caption to the AP photo: "'Man In Abu-Ghraib,' a marble statue by Iraqi artist Karim Khalil, is part of the country's art renaissance after its best talents spent decades glorifying Saddam Hussein." 

Via the Toronto Globe & Mail for November 24.

Two quick updates on voting irregularities.

- The number of House of Representatives members who have signed a letter to the GAO calling for an investigation is now up to 13. They are:

John Conyers (D-MI), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Robert Wexler (D-FL), Robert Scott (D-GA), Melvin Watt (D-NC), Rush Holt (D-NJ), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Louise Slaughter (D-NY), George Miller (D-CA), John Olver (D-MA), Bob Filner (D-CA), Gregory Meeks (D-NY), and Barbara Lee (D-CA).

In addition, Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), has added his name but it hasn't yet been formally submitted to the GAO. If your Rep isn't on that list, ask them why not.

- The League of Women Voters has declared that voting problems "should be fully investigated and resolved." League President Kay Maxwell said in a press release last Friday that

The League of Women Voters is deeply concerned about voting irregularities in the 2004 election. The appropriate officials must fully investigate these concerns through open and public processes. Election officials should look into problems quickly and thoroughly and fix what proves to be wrong. Transparency and a willingness to look into potential problems will strengthen voter confidence and ultimately improve our electoral system.

It is important to ensure that every properly cast ballot is counted and to make improvements for future elections. Attention must be given to inadequate polling place procedures, problematic voting machines, voter registration system failures, casting and counting of provisional ballots, and absentee voting issues.

The statement also called on anyone who submitted a provisional ballot to exercise their rights under the Help America Vote Act to find out if their ballot was counted and if not, why not.

One other thing: Maureen Farrell has a good column on Buzzflash about the media response to the questions being raised.

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is the Tortoise?

JEOPARDY!
Literary Animals for $600

Felix Salten's fawn, first appearing in print in 1929.

There have been all kinds of analyses as to why the election turned out as it did. The most common, the "values voters," doesn't have near the potency that is being assigned to it because while 22% of voters, according to exit polls, said "values" were their biggest consideration, those polls did not probe what those voters meant by the word. It was simply assumed that "values" always meant anti-gay, pro-Bush voters. The truth is, what put Bush over the top was likely the very thing that Kerry was supposed to be the "Anybody But Bush" who could best challenge it: national security. That's the openly contended area where Bush maintained a consistent double-digit lead - partly because of "don't change horses" thinking, partly because of the slams, slurs, and slanders against Kerry, and partly because Kerry never made clear just what it was he'd do differently.

The point here, though, is not to re-argue to campaign or the polls. It's to suggest that there's something to which we've given very little thought: the sources, the driving forces behind, the overall conservative resurgence. Not just in this election, but generally over the past few decades. We haven't, to refer to the cliche, looked at the forest.

So I want to pull out two other old things I found in the same search as that which produced the previous item. They weren't - especially the first - written with this purpose in mind, but they do relate to efforts to answer the question that has plagued us since at least 1980: Why do average people keep voting against their own best interests?

The first excerpt actually arose out of an exchange about religion I had with a friend in the UK. You can, if you want, skip the first two paragraphs and still get the sense of my argument. Don't worry, it does relate to the issue at hand.

I have an interest in the historical Jesus, that is, Jesus as the philosopher and teacher, as the real living person, not as the phony created God. For example, a question non-Christian (and some Christian) Biblical scholars occasionally ask is, did Jesus mean to start a new religion? Put another way, did he mean to overthrow Judaism? Did he really think himself a redeemer, a savior, a god? Never mind the "miracles:" Being a miracle-worker, a healer, is no indication, since there were many such healers before, during, and after his time and while being able to do "great works" was regarded by his contemporaries as a sign of special authority from God, it was not regarded as a sign of divinity. Never mind the interpretations developed when this small, heretical band decided to bring their rabbi's teachings to non-Jews, believing his message to be one of universal salvation not limited to Jews alone (a revolutionary notion for the Jewish community of the time), and found they had to adjust their laws and doctrines in order to make any headway (the elimination of the requirement for circumcision being the most obvious example). Never mind Calvin and Luther and Augustine and (most importantly) Paul. Consider just what Jesus himself said.

In that light, it's interesting to note that in three of the four Gospels, the synoptic Gospels, the only place where his (supposed) words are recorded, he never once referred to himself as the son of God but rather as the son of Man, which in the Judaic tradition meant something entirely different. The son of God could mean the "Christ," the redeemer, the promised savior; the son of Man was a prophet with a special relationship to God, through who God would speak to "his people" and whose mission was to prepare the way for God's promised kingdom. (And, in fact, could also refer simply to an ordinary person, since every man was a "son of Man." Gender usage as per the usage of the time.) While Jesus didn't deny the title "son of God" - he didn't correct others who called him that - he avoided (cagily at times) acknowledging it and sometimes ordered his disciples to avoid using the term publicly. It's only in John, written, it's generally believed, for a non-Jewish audience who wouldn't be familiar with the distinction and in which the terms "son of God" and "son of Man" appear to be used interchangeably, that Jesus is recorded as having described himself by the former term. And even there, "son of God" is used only five times while "son of Man" is used ten - and even some of those five are vague enough that it's impossible to tell if Jesus meant himself or just a man, any man.

Even through the partisan, pro-divinity filter of the Gospels, it seems clear (to me) that the answer to those questions about Jesus' view of himself and his work is no. He didn't see himself as the "Christ," but rather as an instrument to bring about God's kingdom. Indeed, he said himself that he did not intend to destroy the Judaic law, but to fulfill it. What he believed and taught was the necessity to prepare the way for the final days by returning to a purer form of Judaism, arguing that the priests and pharisees and Sadducees had (in their different ways) perverted it out of their own vanity and pride.

There is in that a fascinating parallel with more recent events in more recent times. Consider the puritans of 16th and 17th century England, who railed against the hierarchy of the Church of England, against the "grand ceremonies" and rites and vestments, and urged a "return" to a "purer" form of Christianity (thus the insulting appellation "Puritan") in preparation for (and, for many, anticipation of) the predicted second coming of Jesus - a tradition renewed of late (i.e., the last few decades - we are talking historical time here) in the growth of independent evangelical churches.

And, in its own way, the current political cries for "traditional values" echo that same theme: The old ways and days, so many believe, were simpler, not so complicated, purer, better, closer to some ultimate truth which we in our pride, our commitment to the pleasures of technology or the earth or (usually) the flesh have forgotten. Conservatives, right-wing ministers, and even those who talk of the wisdom and mysterious technologies of "ancient civilizations" are far more nostalgic than the most cliched 55-year old hippie in sandals and love beads. Whenever the present looks stressful and the future doubtful, there are those who find their security in a dimly recalled and largely imaginary past. Change is frightening to many (fear of change being the one common psychological thread across classes and ages among people who call themselves "conservative") and history has the virtue of being - or, more properly, seeming - sure.

Are we really to think, for example, that it's coincidence that the right wing gained strength in the wake of the '60s, which challenged previously "self-evident" beliefs on an unprecedented scope and demanded people rely on their own wits to judge moral and ethical questions? Are we likewise to think it coincidence, to return to an earlier theme, that puritanism gained strength and adherents during a time when not even one but two supernovas visible in broad daylight occurred (1572 and 1604), so thoroughly shattering the centuries-old and blindly accepted Aristotelian notion that the heavens were eternal and unchanging that even the Catholic church hierarchy couldn't maintain it? I've for a long time argued that the great emotional attraction of conservatism in all its forms is its certainty: You don't have to decide if something is fair or unfair, right or wrong, good or bad. You just have to know what someone else told you. It's already been decided. The doubt, the fear, the questions, the responsibility are all gone. The power of David Koresh was rooted in the emotional desperation of his followers: It wasn't his theology, which, from what I know of it, was infantile, but his certainty that captured their hearts, their minds, and ultimately their wills.

So it's legitimate to examine the emotional climate in which Jesus lived and preached. (Thought I wouldn't get back to it, didn't you?) It was, in fact, a time of simmering tension over the Roman occupation, during which numerous hasidim, in the words of one scholar, "went about healing the sick, controlling the weather, casting out devils, and quarrelling with the religious hierarchy in Jerusalem." That hierarchy was conservative and collaborated with the Romans out of a (legitimate) fear that the alternative was military reprisals, a position that did little to endear it to nationalist Jews - some of who staged riots and other forms of violent resistance. We tend to forget that the rebellion that lead to the Romans destroying the Temple broke out only a little over 30 years after Jesus' execution. In short, it was a time when many - not just Jesus and not just his followers - thought that the promise of God's kingdom was to be fulfilled. Jesus preached the necessity of doing good works and the lack of necessity of the rites, rituals, and politics of the high priests as preparation for that kingdom, which he predicted would come within the lifetimes of his disciples. The kingdom he envisioned was a spiritual, heavenly one (Some of his supporters abandoned him when they figured out he wasn't the Messiah they expected, who was to bring an earthly kingdom.) and preparation for it was to be found in - surprise - the old ways, the old, simple, "pure" ways.

Simply, the more stressful the times, the more looming the change, the greater the anxiety, the more likely conservatism becomes, the more likely a turn to what seems familiar, what seems to be firm ground, what seems safe.

Fast forward to 1994, after the cliched "angry white male" had carried the Newt-wits to victory in the Congress. This was written in the spring of 1995:

What makes the present moment more difficult is that the so-called "angry white male" is not without legitimate grievances: His hopes are shrinking, his dreams for his family and his children are fading, he keeps working harder and getting less for it - he is, in short, losing ground and has been doing it for nearly 20 years now. (Real median family income in the US peaked around 1977 and has been declining more or less continuously since, despite the fact that the average work week has lengthened and more spouses than ever are working. Consider that the rich have gained over that time, and it's clear that the decline suffered by the middle class and the poor is considerably worse than that average.) Meanwhile, things that he thought he could take for granted in his social relationships have been subjected to almost constant assaults in which he is too often cast as the conscious villain of the piece rather than as what he is: the unwitting beneficiary of standards and (pre-)judgments that profit him in the short run but damage him in the long run.

The result is that he feels pressured, frustrated, haunted by the suspicion that he's failed his family, that his efforts are unappreciated, and that he's being blamed for things that "aren't my fault" - which combine to make him bitter and defensive; ready, even eager, to have someone to blame to relieve his own guilt and creeping despair.

Bill Clinton, of all people, expressed it well in a speech on April 8: Referring to middle-aged white men who when they were 20 looked forward to a "good life" of sending their kinds to college followed by a secure retirement, he said "Now they've been working for 15 years without a raise and they think they could be fired at any time. And they go home to dinner and they look across the table at their families and they think they let them down. They think somehow, what did I do wrong? It's pretty easy for people like that to be told by somebody else in the middle of a political campaign with a hot 30-second ad, you didn't do anything wrong, they did it to you."

And who, according to those bastards, are "they?" Intrusive big government. Irresponsible poor people. Environmental elitists/extremists/doomsayers. Selfish minorities. Pushy women. And what is it they "did?" Taxes that take away your money. Laze about on those taxes - your taxes - while you work harder than ever. Environmental laws that take away the job you have. Affirmative action programs that take away the job you deserve.

So the problem isn't that the "angry white male"'s frustrations are without any legitimate cause. It's rather that the very people who are most responsible for his contracting future, for his sense of loss (and for his genuine loss of economic security) - that is, the corporate elite, the rich, the powerful, those who've selfishly gained from the economic trends of the past two decades, those who benefit the most from the old oppressions and divisions - are the very people who are doing their damnedest (so far successfully) to get him to point his finger at anyone except them. The sad fact is, it's always easier to blame those weaker than yourself for reasons that are not only sociological but also psychological: In a foot race, you may resent or envy those in front of you, particularly if you see them pulling away - but it's those coming up from behind who make you feel a threat to your position. Meanwhile, challenging the legitimacy of the position of the leaders would require an adjustment in how the structure of the race itself is viewed. In other words, blaming the poor requires only calling them names. Blaming the rich requires re-thinking the nature of society. Which of those is more likely to be seized on by lost people who feel their world no longer makes sense?

I'm sure you've noticed ... how often I've used some variation of the word "loss" in describing people's feelings. It's my sense that people in the majority culture in the US (i.e., whites) are feeling that things which were valuable to them, important to them, things that gave their lives an, if you will, organizing core, that enabled them to orient themselves with respect to the world around them, are slipping away. More than that for some - being stripped away. And even that description, misty though it is, puts too fine an edge on it, implies too much of a conscious awareness, a conscious analysis. It's more of an undifferentiated sense of being adrift with neither moorings nor bearings, because things you thought you could count on before are no longer reliable.

The punditry, on those rare occasions it can be moved to consider our national mood in descriptions of more than three or four words, will usually point to the "social dislocation" caused by movements for racial, ethnic, and gender justice as the source of our malaise. (I have to laugh, for lack of another sanity-maintaining response, at the continual efforts to blame everything on "the '60s." On May 7, for example, the New York Times ran a page one story that described the rise of paranoid armed private militias of the sort that apparently carried out the Oklahoma City bombing as, quoting the title, "an unlikely legacy of the '60s!" How? Well, in the '60s people said "question authority" and these people distrust the government, so...QED, right?) I would argue, though, that what's happening is more fundamental than "concern about an economic downturn" or "confusion over changing social relations." I say that what's happening to us is a loss of hope. Just a generation or two ago, we as a people had a certain native, even naive, confidence that things would get better. Not necessarily any specific, identifiable thing, but, well, you know, things. More recently, that confidence has faded, to be replaced by the fallback position that "things" can get better. Now, even that limited faith has failed us.

And people feel - lost.

This is not to say, of course, that social stresses and economic strains are unrelated to this; they are. But contrary to the talking heads, they are not the cause(s), particularly not feminism, gay rights, "the legacy of the '60s," or whatever else it is they want to waggle their tongues at. Social changes can cause confusion and resentment, but you get over it, you adjust and move on and, usually, the next generation isn't sure what all the fuss was about. Economic recessions, even depressions, cause genuine hardship, but you hunker down, you survive, and expect that at the end of the day your children will be a little better off than you were. No, the cause is the context in which the present stresses and strains exist, and that context is an economic one, and that economic context is an unremitting stagnation in personal income that's coming to look as though it has no end, that this is no "slump" or "downturn" that will eventually reverse itself, that rather this is the way it is and is going to be, that it's not going to change, that work gets you nowhere and more work gets you more nowhere. (Of the six primary ethnic-gender groupings in the US - black, white, and Hispanic men and women - only one of them, white women, has made a clear gain in real median income over the last 20 years. The others have either stagnated or declined.) Perhaps never before in our history, certainly never before in this century, has such a large portion of our population (and not just those proverbial angry white guys, either) looked at their children and felt that those children will wind up worse off than they themselves are - felt, that is, like failures.

What has this has done to us? It's made us a little colder, a little harder, a little more inured to others' suffering, and a lot angrier. It's prompted us to regard as "unfair" anything (such as affirmative action) that we don't see as benefitting us, personally and immediately. It's propelled us toward isolation from our own communities, fragmentation of any sense of mutual responsibility, and condemnation of anyone different or "other."

What I'm suggesting through these lengthy quotes is that people are feeling more and more, without even it being so clear a thought, but feeling more and more that things are out of their control, that their energy has to go into holding on to what they have instead of building for a future. If they can't control some things, if they can't have influence over some things, they can still try to control others. They can't control their economic futures (or even have much impact on their present) but they can stop gays from being "just like us," from dammit changing the way it used to be. Yes, there is more than enough homophobia to go around. Yes, it is a battle that has been fought over and over, on religion, on race, on gender. But one of the things that has brought it to the forefront, one of the ways in which the issue has been manipulated to focus people's attention on it to the exclusion of issues that actually affect their lives in demonstrable ways, is that it's something people still feel they can control. One familiar thing they can keep just the way it is, something they can hold onto even as what I maintain is the genuine "American dream," the idea that your children will be better off than you are, slips further out of reach.

We can't easily fight that sense of loss of control by wonkishness. We don't lack policies, proposals, or programs; we lack, as others have said, a narrative. A theme, a meme of what progressives (noting as I have before that some Democrats still deserve the title) are about. I have my own notion of a narrative, a pull quote from that speech I quoted on November 12:

What I ultimately reject is the right of so few to have so much when so many have so little; what I ultimately resist is the power of so few to control so much when so many control so little. What I ultimately affirm is the right of every human being to a decent life free of hunger, fear, and oppression; what I ultimately demand from our society is the effort to guarantee that right.

The single word summary being "justice." What we have to do isn't to show people we have programs but to show that our programs provide hope. That it's the left, not the right, that offers them the promise of a better tomorrow. For example: While the right looks at the economy and cries that we all have to "sink or swim," we talk about providing everyone with water wings: You still have to do your own swimming but you won't drown in the process.

And we are the ones who actually talk about responsibility: The right talks about being responsible for yourself, and in that they just want the half that benefits the selfish and the rich who want to be freed from any commitments that don't profit them personally. But we talk about responsibility for yourself and responsibility to others, to the community as a whole; we talk about the whole thing, not just half.

Bottom line: They talk about "go for yourself." We talk about "love thy neighbor." And yes, dammit, that will require some sacrifices, but some things you do just because they're right, not because they're profitable - and if everyone is made to chip in the way they should, according to their ability, including the greedheads and top dogs who have been screwing all of us for decades, it probably won't be a sacrifice at all.

Most importantly, we are the ones who offer them control over their own futures. We are the ones who believe in their right to privacy. We are the ones who believe in their freedoms. We are the ones who want to include them in the overall discussion of where we will go as a people, not dictate the answers. Yes, yes, yes, you can have a say, you can have a voice, and not the imaginary ones like right-wing talk radio that allow you to vent in order to distract you while your future continues to contract. But a real voice in a real community. And a real way to build a real future for you and for your children. Real hope.

That's what we offer and what the right never can.

A lot of energy has been expended of late talking about how the left has to articulate a "clear message" but that in order to do that we have to "rethink" our positions because we've "lost touch with the American people." I was looking for something else in my files and came across a few things that really gave me a feeling of déjà vu. We have gone down this same post-election path before, this same "be more cautious, be more 'centrist'" path, and it seems every time we walk right into the brick wall athwart it we pick ourselves up, dry our bloody noses, dust ourselves off and do the same damn fool things over again only to act shocked when we walk face first into the same brick wall at the next election. (Isn't one of the definitions of insanity "repeating the same actions and expecting a different result?")

I know I've been pounding the table about this recently, but I figure this is going to be an ongoing topic and we need to make sure the policy wonks, the pollsters, and the focus-groupers aren't the only voices heard. (Maybe the first thing we should do is stop talking about "the American people" as if it was a foreign nation. 'Cause, hey, I dunno about you, but I figure I am part of the American people. We may be a political minority right now but what does that have to do with it?)

So two trips down memory lane, to remind ourselves that the "new approaches" being advocated by some in the wake of 2004 ain't so new - and that all along there has been another set of ideas that have been dismissed when not derided by the loudest voices.

First stop, 1988. After George I was elected, a friend wrote to me asking what the role of the left would be now that Jesse Jackson had been iced out of the upper echelons of the Democratic Party and Michael Dukakis had lost the election.

The role of the left after the election will be the same as it's been all along: arguing, working, and campaigning for our ideas and ideals. ... All the things we've talked about, disarmament, health care, housing, environmental clean-up and protection, decent jobs under decent conditions at decent wages, an end to sexism, racism, homophobia, and all the other -isms and -phobias to which we're heir, an economy controlled by all for the benefit of all instead of by the few for the benefit of the few, and a society that values cooperation above competition and public good above private greed, all of it still needs doing. And there will always be children to be educated instead of indoctrinated, communities to be cemented instead of walled off, and human freedoms to be protected by rigorous vigilance instead of proscribed by rightist vigilantes. That we've not had much success recently has a lot more to do with us than with the conceptually warped, logically vapid, morally bankrupt frothings of the right. We've failed to advocate our beliefs either strongly or openly and have tended to - pardon the cliche - hitch our wagons to the harness of the currently popular Democratic Party star, whoever that might be. It never seems to occur to us that when you hitch your wagon to someone else's team you spend your time following a horse's ass.

"Anybody but [fill in the blank]" is not a new phenomenon. Nor is it a winning program.

Our second stop is in 1998, right after the again-disappointing Congressional elections.

The people on the left don't seem to be much help. A siege mentality has settled in, leading to the prevailing opinion (happily, not yet a consensus - but unhappily, it could come to that) among left pundits that we need to limit ourselves to "traditional" goals of the classic Democratic party coalition - more specifically, those which either have, or it's thought could easily gain, majority public support - while avoiding "divisive" (or, in an even more dismissive description, "secondary") "cultural" (or, again worse, "lifestyle" or "identity") issues - which apparently includes not only things like multiculturalism, abortion, and gay rights, but extends in some minds even to affirmative action and sexism. Those who urge otherwise, they say, are - and this is a quote - "luxuriating in their marginality."

But that is, of course, exactly the wrong way to go about it. Two relevant quotes:

- "My center is giving way, my right is pushed back, situation excellent, I am attacking." (Marshal Ferdinand Foch at the Second Battle of the Marne, 1918)

- "The fact is, the movement for peace and social justice in this country has been at its strongest and most influential when it has spoken the truth without giving a flying damn if anyone was 'offended' or not. We didn't build a movement against the Vietnam War by harping on the 'shortcomings of both sides' but by blasting it for what it was.... We didn't build movements for civil rights, women's equality, or a cleaner environment by worrying about how we'd be received by bigots, sexists, or greedy corporate bosses - or who we'd 'turn off' if we labeled the discriminators and despoilers for what they were." (Lotus, April 1991 - i.e., me)

Too much of the left, unfortunately, seems to think it necessary to beat a tactical retreat to what's perceived as safer ground, to avoid being "controversial" or "confrontational." But whatever merits a tactical retreat can have as a military maneuver, in politics all it means is you're ceding ground. In politics, you never gain by backing up, a lesson the right learned decades ago but which the left has yet to even begin to absorb. This, I note, has nothing to do with the compromises involved in so-called "coalition-building" or the considerably harder ones of legislating; it has to do with what you advocate, with where you stand, with what you stand for. Despite that basic and I would have thought obvious reality, one commentator still went so far as to say "we have to avoid being out in front of the American people." (The quote is not exact, but it does accurately reflect the sentiment.) Since being "out in front" is really the only way you can point out a path to follow, that sentiment struck me as exceedingly strange - but, sadly, not unfamiliar.

I read a response to that prevailing opinion last week, one that openly declared that so-called "cultural" issues must be part of any movement if it's really to be about change, not just adjustment - and even though she fell back on hackneyed proposals to get things started ("form a strong labor movement" - gee, I wonder why no one thought of that before?) I was ready to cheer the author. That is, until she ended her argument by asserting that the reason that others urged retrenchment is because they are "comfortable white men." That is, it's not that they're wrong - it's that if they're not on her side it's because they're sexist bigots who really don't care about women or minorities or the poor, but only about themselves.

When my choices get reduced to self-defeating timidity and doctrinaire sloganeering I get really depressed.

I haven't heard much of the doctrinaire sloganeering this time but I still see enough of the self-defeating timidity, as I still see people arguing that the left has to "downplay" issues such as GLBT rights despite the fact that there is no evidence that those 11 anti-rights amendments had anything to do with Bush's win. (Overall, Bush did no better in the states with the amendments than he did in those without them; he carried no states among the 11 that he did not carry in 2000; and in fact, in Ohio he did a little worse than he did last time.)

We even see people prepared to dump Roe v. Wade as either a "drag" on the left or as a way to "shock" people into realizing what is happening, what the reactionaries are pushing. The idea that some people's rights can be sacrificed to other people's tactical considerations shows how desperate some have become. It actually reminds me of - and makes as much sense as - the days when the Weather Underground fantasized it was striking great blows for freedom by smashing windows, trying to provoke a police overreaction and repression that would likewise "shock" people into greater resistance.

I say the answer to not being heard is to talk louder, not to start whispering.

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Yasir Arafat?

JEOPARDY!
Literary Animals for $200

He told the Hare, "You are much faster than I, but as you have seen, slow and steady wins the race."

The November elections prompted concerns about fraud. No, not those November elections. The ones in Ukraine.

The New York Times for November 22 has the story:

Opposition supporters camped out on the streets of Kiev after crying foul in a bitterly contested runoff vote in Ukraine's presidential election.

With nearly all the ballots counted by Monday evening, the election commission said Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych had a slim lead over liberal challenger Viktor Yushchenko. ...

Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and NATO criticized the balloting.

"There was certainly fraud, though this is difficult to quantify," a leading member of the OSCE delegation, Gert-Hinrich Ahrens, told CNN. ...

Even stronger criticism came from Richard Lugar, chairman of the U.S. Senate's Foreign Relations Committee ... who was sent to Kiev as U.S. President George W. Bush's envoy.

Supporters of Yushchenko set up a tent city in Kiev, while four major cities in the western part of Ukraine, including the key city of Lviv, backed calls for a general strike and said they would recognize Yushchenko as the president. Yushchenko says he'll call for an emergency session of parliament to examine charges of fraud and to demand the results in those areas be tossed out. He also insists he'll continue with demonstrations until he is declared the winner.

Gee, not a single call for "healing" and "working together." Apparently, some people take their elections and charges of fraud more seriously than some others.

Footnote, Unintentional Humor Div.: One of the reasons for suspecting fraud was that the results didn't match exit polls.

Bob Herbert's column in Monday's New York Times reminds us of the forgotten issue in the presidential campaign: hunger. Hunger and its companions: poverty and desperation. He says

a report from the Department of Agriculture [shows] that more than 12 million American families continue to struggle, and not always successfully, to feed themselves.

The 12 million families represent 11.2 percent of all U.S. households. "At some time during the year," the report said, "these households were uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food for all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources."

Of the 12 million families that worried about putting food on the table, 3.9 million had members who actually went hungry at some point last year. "The other two-thirds ... obtained enough food to avoid hunger using a variety of coping strategies," the report said, "such as eating less varied diets, participating in federal food assistance programs, or getting emergency food from community food pantries or emergency kitchens."

And whose fault was the fact that this never came up during the campaign? Who let it be ignored, forgotten? The GOPpers? Oh, please - like they were ever going to bring it up. The media? No, not this time, this one isn't their fault. So who does that leave? Who ignored it, never brought it up, never appealed to the "moral value" of fighting hunger? Who dropped all mention of the "two Americas?" Who could have brought it up and failed? Any ideas?

A new study by the Center for an Urban Future, a nonprofit research group, found that more than 550,000 families in New York - a quarter of all working families in the state - had incomes that were too low to cover their basic needs. ...

According to the study: "Most low-income working families do not conform to the popular stereotype of the working poor as young, single, fast-food workers: 88 percent of low-income working families include a parent between 25 and 54 years old. Married couples head 53 percent of these families nationwide. Important jobs such as health aide, janitor and child care worker pay a poverty wage."

(I remember saying several years ago in a mailing list debate with a libertarian, "I'm also aware of the people around me that I see each day at my job who are working just as hard if not harder than I am, longer hours at more physically demanding jobs, but are worse off than I am because we as a society devalue their work.)

Herbert concluded by saying

[t]hese are rough times for the American dream. But times change, and the people who have broken faith with the dream won't be in power forever.

As the man says, it's a matter of surviving a dark time.

Footnote: A summary of the Center for an Urban Future report is here; the entire report, in .pdf format, is here. The USDA data is through its Economic Research Service; you can find it here. It wasn't easy to find; I had to go about four or five levels deep. It's not like they wanted to make it big news or anything, is it? I wonder why?

Updated I'm not one for conspiracy theories, I'm really not. But I'm becoming convinced that there were genuine attempts to manipulate the results of the 2004 presidential election. It's not just that there are oddities and anomalies and statistical quirks; you'll find those in every election where enough people take part. It's not just the cockups with machines or the confusions about voting status; those, too, will be a part of every national election. It's rather than over and over again, in case after case, the oddities, anomalies, quirks, and cockups all went one way: They favored George Bush.

Where are the anomalies that favored Kerry? Where were the problems in the heavily Republican districts? Where is the statistical analysis showing an odd Kerry surge somewhere? Are there any? I don't mean anecdotes about single precincts in New Mexico or some such, I mean an actual pattern. Show it to me and ease my mind.

Now, note well that I'm not flatly saying Bush stole the election - unlike 2000 - because I don't know. The things I've seen, as far as I'm aware, would not, it appears, change the final outcome of the election. It's still possible that they plus fraud undiscovered did just that, but I don't know. What I am saying, what I'm coming to believe, is that some things were arranged so that if the election had been even closer (let's not forget that despite the bull about a "sweeping" or "decisive" victory, the election was close), if it had been a real squeaker, the manipulation would have been enough to turn a tiny loss into a tiny victory. That is, don't outright steal the election, that might be too obvious. Just give your guy a little boost that could get lost in the shuffle. Shorter version: They were prepared to steal the election, it just may not have proved necessary.

These are the latest two items pushing me in that direction, both via Buzzflash.

The first, from ComputerWorld for November 18, says that a team at UCal-Berkeley led by Michael Hout, an expert on statistical methods, has

uncovered statistical irregularities associated with electronic voting machines in three Florida counties that may have given President George W. Bush 130,000 or more excess votes. The researchers are now calling on state and federal authorities to look into the problems. ...

According to the study, counties with electronic voting machines were significantly more likely to show increases in support for Bush between 2000 and 2004 compared to counties with paper ballots or optical scan equipment. This change cannot be explained by differences between counties in income, number of voters, change in voter turnout, or size of the Hispanic/Latino population, said Hout. ...

"No matter how many factors and variables we took into consideration, the significant correlation in the votes for President Bush and electronic voting cannot be explained," said Hout. "The study shows that a county's use of electronic voting resulted in a disproportionate increase in votes for President Bush. There is just a trivial probability of evidence like this appearing in a population where the true difference is zero - less than one in a thousand chances."

What the researchers did was to examine the voting patterns of counties that did not use e-voting machines and by accounting for factors such as noted above predicted how Bush would do in the three counties as compared to how he did in 2000.

Buzzflash, in its own report, provided some details of the numbers:

- Broward County: The prediction was for Bush to get 28,000 fewer votes than in 2000. Instead, the machines tallied a 51,000 vote increase, a gain of 79,000 votes over predictions.

- Palm Beach County: A loss of 8,900 votes as compared to 2000 was predicted; instead Bush gained 41,000, a gain of nearly 50,000.

- Miami-Dade County: Bush was predicted to gain 18,000 votes but instead gained 37,000, an extra tally of 19,000.

Total net gain over predictions: 148,000

The actual gain, the team said, was somewhere between 130,000 and 260,000 votes, depending on if these were "phantom" votes just added to Shrub's total or if they were Kerry votes wrongly credited to Bush. Again, this would not have been enough to change the result but if Florida had been closer, it could have been. And that's what's got me worried.

The other item also involves Florida, this time optical scan equipment, about which I posted on November 7. The saga stars another unsung hero of what's left of our democracy: Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org, who may have found another reason for the odd results those machines produced. The entire article, found here is worth a read, especially for the image of a tug-of-war over a garbage bag containing trashed public records. But this is the gist of it:

A "poll tape" is the phrase used to describe a printout from an optical scan voting machine made the evening of an election, after the machine has read all the ballots and crunched the numbers on its internal computer. It shows the total results of the election in that location. The printout is signed by the polling officials present in that precinct/location, and then submitted to the county elections office as the official record of how the people in that particular precinct had voted.

Harris went to Florida's Volusia County Elections Office on Tuesday, November 16 to see the poll tapes for the 100+ optical scanners in that county. However, the printouts she was given - apparently copies of the ones sent by the elections office to the Florida Secretary of State's office and used to tabulate the official count - were dated November 15 and were unsigned.

When she finally secured the original, signed, dated tapes from November 2 - which involved that tug-of-war over a garbage bag - Harris and her associates discovered something disturbing: The original (November 2) tapes and the later (November 15) tapes sent to the state did not match.

"The difference was hundreds of votes in each of the different places we examined," said Bev, "and most of those were in minority areas."

When I asked Bev if the errors they were finding in precinct after precinct were random, as one would expect from technical, clerical, or computer errors, she became uncomfortable.

"You have to understand that we are non-partisan," she said. "We're not trying to change the outcome of an election, just to find out if there was any voting fraud."

That said, Bev added: "The pattern was very clear. The anomalies favored George W. Bush. Every single time."

And that has been the pattern: "Anomalies" favoring Shrub. Every single time. Our future is being stolen from us, anomaly by anomaly.

Footnote: Media Matters for America (MMFA) has an item about media coverage of the Berkeley study about the e-voting machines (there really wasn't any) which also notes that

- at the request of the Oakland (CA) Tribune, an MIT political scientist re-examined the data and replicated the results, i.e., got the same answer, and

- a Princeton University professor of microbiology conducted an independent analysis, using different methods, that produced similar results to the Berkeley study.

Updated to include the Footnote and to correct a misunderstanding on my part as to the source of the range of 130,000-260,000 votes Bush gained.

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is Nicholas?

FINAL JEOPARDY!
Nobel Prize Winners

With Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, he rounded out a trio of 1994 Nobel Peace Prize winners.

I'm sure you've heard of the case of Lauren Rainey, the 13 year-old girl in Alabama whose life is being put at risk by the intention of the state Medicaid authority to cut her off from assistance because - if you can grasp the "logic" of this - she's not getting worse.

Lauren is a dwarf who breathes through an artificial airway. She is deaf, has an enlarged heart, scoliosis and other bone abnormalities. She is hooked up to an oxygen machine and a humidifier mister - and her airway has to be suctioned several times every hour.

Medicaid now provides help 10 hours a day to give her exhausted mother some rest and relief.

Do you see what is so bizarre about the logic being applied by the state? They're treating this as if it's some kind of infection or a broken limb - something where once the patient has been stabilized, the intervention can be withdrawn and the patient can recover. In Lauren's case, she is getting no worse because of the intervention: It's the intervention itself that is keeping her from getting worse. And withdrawing it will produce the very worsening of her condition that they are saying isn't happening which is why they can remove the intervention! Just absotively nuts.

Apparently, Governor Bob Riley's office has been getting an earful from a variety of sources and they really don't like it, poor babies. People are still being urged to contact the state to let them know what they think about the decision.

State Capitol
600 Dexter Avenue
Montgomery, Alabama 36130
Switchboard: 334-242-7100
Fax: 334-353-0004
http://www.governor.state.al.us/contact/contact_form.aspx

This also raises something else, something that I intend to make my watchword, my catchphrase, for dealing with the right. This is the email I sent to the guv:

Re: Lauren Rainey

You have been quoted as saying all the publicity surrounding her case has done is to "frighten a child" and impugn the state's responsiveness because there are "a variety of different programs." So far, no program that would serve to substitute for the care she is losing has been specified.

As a fellow American, I'm sure you appreciate the value of straight talk, so I put it to you: Either name the programs and show how they will serve her case or admit there aren't any such and maintain her current care.

In other words: Put up or shut up.

That's it: Put up or shut up. That's going to be my response to every claim, every accusation, every wild tale, presented by the right. All of them. Prove it. Back it up. No anecdotes. No "everybody knows." No "you can look it up" crap, demanding that we do the work to try to prove your case for you, no - you said it, you prove it. And if you can't, stick it.

Put up or shut up. Makes a good bumper sticker.

Okay, here's something to consider. Yesterday I was reading Digby at Hullabaloo and he provided a link to a post here that included links to a number of political quizzes, i.e., ones that try to place you on the political spectrum. There were seven and I tried all of them.

- Political Quiz said that on a left-right scale ranging from 0 (left) to 100 (right), I'm a 3.

- The World's Smallest Political Quiz concluded I'm a liberal:

Liberals usually embrace freedom of choice in personal matters, but tend to support significant government control of the economy. They generally support a government-funded "safety net" to help the disadvantaged, and advocate strict regulation of business. Liberals tend to favor environmental regulations, defend civil liberties and free expression, support government action to promote equality, and tolerate diverse lifestyles.

- The Political Brew's Political Quiz, again using a 0-100 left/right scale, gave me a 4 on fiscal matters and a 2 on non-fiscal ones.

- Politopia, which places you on a "map," put me me in their Southwest region:

You advocate a large degree of personal freedom and a large degree of government control over the economy. Your neighbors include such folks as Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader, Hillary Clinton, and Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine, and may refer to themselves as "liberals," "left-wing liberals," "civil libertarians," "democratic socialists," "egalitarians," or "anarcho-socialists."

- Political Quiz in 2-D called me a

Radical Social Liberal: You want government out of your personal life, great! But you seem fairly happy with the amount of government in your economic life. This puts roughly halfway between the views of Libertarian and Democratic politicians.

- Political Compass uses two scales, both ranging from -10 to +10: One is Economic Left/Right; the other is Social Libertarian/Authoritarian. I came up as -9.50 on the former scale and -8.00 on the latter.

All pretty consistent, all putting me around where my description of Lotus would put me: part of the radical nonviolent left. Okay, but there was still one more: Slate's quiz called Red or Blue, Which Are You? It measured things more related to pop culture, food preferences, and other non-political things. And my result?

Time to get out of the sun - you're looking a little Red.

Now, based on the political findings and how we usually hear things, I should have been expected to be among the bluest of the blue. I mean, isn't that what all liberals, all leftists, all progressives, all whatever it seems convenient to label us, are? Condescending cultural elitists who sneer at pop cultures, wouldn't dream of getting their fingers greasy with barbecue sauce, and don't know Dale Earnhardt (either one) from Dale Evans?

Well, as others have pointed out, there are a lot of folks in those "red" states who knew exactly what that pre-NFL game commercial was referring to, and they aren't all San Franciscan expatriates who thought they'd find better fresh arugala out in the country. And there are a lot of us here in the bluest parts of Massachusetts who are "a little bit country, a little bit rock'n'roll" and who are quite capable of finding "a little common ground we can dance on ... somewhere between the Stones and Jones."

And don't let anybody tell you different.

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is Siberia?

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
I'm Czar-y, So Czar-y for $2000

The first czar of this name came to power in 1825; the second and last, in 1894.

TOMORROW'S FINAL JEOPARDY! CATEGORY
Nobel Prize Winners

Okay, as threatened, I dug out that outline of a revised tax system I came up with 32 years ago - more specifically, June 1972. What brought it up originally was that the McGovernites in the Democratic Party, at that point in control of the nominating process, began to have public hearings to encourage wide input into what the party platform would be. The group I was involved with at the time, Jersey Shore War Resisters League, submitted a statement on Vietnam, arms, and foreign policy to which the tax proposal was appended. As I said at the time, I can't guarantee the particular numbers would work, but I think the organizing principle works well.

One major but often-overlook fault of our current system is that the tax rates are the same everywhere. That is, the IRS in effect assumes that the cost of living is the same everywhere. But at any given level of income - in fact, tell you what, in order to avoid arguing about relative poverties, let's use 150% of the federal poverty level as a base. At any given level of income beyond that, a family of any given size simply will be better off living in Mississippi than in Boston. They simply will be able to afford more stuff. Despite the differences in the standard of living implied by that fact, the IRS taxes them both the same.

So the first step is for the IRS to divide the US into "zones" based on the cost of providing adequate food, clothing, shelter, and health care to families of varying sizes in those areas. This information for the most part already exists, broken down even by zip code, in the databases of the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, some adjustment may need to be made to make sure the IRS figures refer to net rather than gross income, i.e., they should reflect that actual amount of cash necessary for the purposes of family support.

Second, because households operate as a single economic unit, income should be reported that way. That is, household income as one amount, dropping such categories as "married filing separately."

So each household could be looking at a chart with several local "zones" across the top and family size down the side. The figure where your zone and family size cross gives a figure for net income required for family support. I'll note here that one thing that could be discussed is what level would constitute "adequate" support. I'd be willing to start by proposing an amount equal to 200% of federal poverty level (again, allowing for local costs of living and family size), but I'm certainly not tied to that.

The figure obtained from that chart is not taxable. That is, it's deducted from the household's gross income - I'll call it a "living deduction." Only that part beyond what's needed to provide for your family is subject to taxation. So if you're, say, two parents with three kids whose gross household income is $40,000 in an area where the federal poverty rate for a family of five is $14,000, your deduction (if we assume 200% of the poverty rate) is $28,000, leaving $12,000 subject to taxes.

The last principle I'd advance is that all income should be treated equally. Since all dollars can be spent the same, all dollars provide the same benefit, so they all should be taxed the same. Getting money by having money (i.e., investments) should not be treated more favorably than getting money by working. So all income beyond the living deduction is taxed equally and with no exemptions.

Those with taxable incomes up to $50,000 would be taxed at a rate of 30%; those with an income between $50,000 and $100,000 would pay $15,000 (30% of $50,000) plus 50% of the amount over $50,000; those with an income in excess of $100,000 would pay $40,000 (30% of the first $50,000 plus 50% of the next $50,000) plus 75% of the amount over $100,000. Remember, these figures are what's left over after your family is provided for. And again, I'm certainly open to discussions about the particular numbers - it's the principle I'm interested in.

I'm sure people can come up with "well what about this particular case" arguments, but that will be true of any tax system. No one system can guarantee complete fairness to everyone in every condition. But I'd still say start by throwing out all the special case deductions and exemptions. If any are to be put back in, they need to be justified from scratch.

This is strictly just for the heck of it.

Rolling Stone has listed the top 500 songs of all time. Except, of course, it's not - the 172 critics and musicians who came up with nominations for the list were told to focus on "the rock 'n' roll era," so the list is heavy with songs from the '50s, '60s, and '70s. Still, what the hey, here are the Top 10:

#10 - "What'd I Say" by Ray Charles
#9 - "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana
#8 - "Hey Jude" by the Beatles
#7 - "Johnny B. Goode" by Chuck Berry
#6 - "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys
#5 - "Respect" by Aretha Franklin
#4 - "What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye
#3 - "Imagine" by John Lennon
#2 - "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones

and the #1 Top 500 song of all time:

#1 - "Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan

"No other pop song has so thoroughly challenged and transformed the commercial laws and artistic conventions of its time, for all-time," writes senior editor David Fricke in the latest issue of the magazine.

The full list is here.

Updated Again, with the cooperation of the Washington Post.

The Shrubberies are dropping broad hints as to the kind of changes in the tax system they're going to be pushing. As the Post described it on Thursday,

the administration plans to push major amendments that would shield interest, dividends and capitals gains from taxation, expand tax breaks for business investment and take other steps intended to simplify the system and encourage economic growth, according to several people who are advising the White House or are familiar with the deliberations.

The changes are meant to be revenue-neutral. To pay for them, the administration is considering eliminating the deduction of state and local taxes on federal income tax returns and scrapping the business tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance, the advisers said. [Emphasis added.]

Get that? More simply put, they want to shield major income sources for the filthy rich and corporations and pay for them by killing one of the most common itemized deductions for middle-class taxpayers and jettisoning employer-provided health insurance - unless, that is, you imagine employers will pay for it out of their own pockets. But the frame is that the "revenue-neutral" purpose is to "simplify the system and encourage growth." Growth in the number of people without health insurance, anyway.

The claims about "economic growth" are totally bogus and without foundation: There is no evidence that cutting such taxes spurs productive investments; in fact, it's more likely to spur speculation such as the sort that drove housing prices mad in the 1980s. But it sure sounds good, doesn't it, as the same people who smugly declare we can't solve our social problems by "throwing money at the poor" claim equally firmly that we can solve our economic problems by throwing money at the rich.

But oh, it goes beyond just growth, oh of course, it's also that equally important issue of fairness.

Pamela F. Olson, a former Bush Treasury official in close contact with administration tax planners, said the president will pursue a tax system where all income - whether from wages, dividends, capital gains or interest - is taxed only once. That would mean eliminating taxes on dividends and capital gains paid out of fully taxed corporate profits.

Well, I mean, that's only fair, isn't it? I mean, we don't want to be unfair to those dollars, do we? You know how sensitive they are! Tax them twice? The very idea!

There are a couple of pieces of crap mixed here in a fetid pile. First, by their own argument, it's even more "double taxation" to eliminate the deduction for state and local taxes - indeed, it's triple taxation, since those affected would now paying three separate taxes on the same income. What's more, such triple taxation is already inflicted on anyone who doesn't itemize.

Second and more importantly, the whole idea of "double taxation" is complete bull. Unlike things like food or fossil fuel, dollars are not consumables. That is, once food is eaten, once oil or coal or whatever is burned, they're gone. There may be waste or byproducts, but the resource itself is gone. While a given individual can only spend a given dollar once, the dollar itself can be spent numerous times.

So a company may pay dividends out of "fully taxed" profits - but those dividends are new income to the recipients that can be spent exactly the same way as any other dollar, bring the same benefits to them as any other dollar. There is no reason they should not be subject to taxation in the same way as any other dollar.

In fact, by the "double taxation" logic we could easily argue that no one should pay any taxes on anything, because certainly those dollars have previously been taxed somewhere, sometime, by someone.

So we have proposals being floated that would benefit the haves and the powerful at the expense of the have-nots and the powerless, that will serve to further concentrate more wealth in fewer hands - but which are being presented as "simplicity," "fairness," and "promoting growth."

You want some framing for us? Try this: Tax the rich! Make those who have the most pay the most! Make those who have benefitted the most give the most back! And when we're accused of "Class warfare!" throw back "Damn straight! And it's about time!"

Footnote: A good number of years ago - Omigosh, almost 33! Can I have my shawl and warm milk now, please? - I outlined a revised tax system. I admitted at the time I didn't have the numbers or the actuarial skill to be certain the numbers I used for rates, etc., would work but that I thought the basic principles were valid. I think I'll drag that out and put it up later just to throw the ideas out there for a looksee. (Unless after all these years, upon looking at it again, I say "What a crock! I'm not going to embarrass myself by putting that up!")

Updated to clarify some language and an explanation and to add the Footnote.

A hot topic on the left these days is how debates can be and are framed to the advantage of one side by what language is used. Here's a dandy example from the Washington Post for Friday:

The U.S. Congress Friday reinstated a ban on Internet access taxes after the House agreed to extend it for another three years rather than make it permanent.

As Congress neared adjournment for the year, the House passed by voice vote a Senate bill that prevents state and local governments from taxing the monthly fees Internet providers like EarthLink Inc. charge their customers.

The Bush administration is expected to sign it into law.

The ban, in place since 1998, expired one year ago amid dire predictions that tax-happy states could choke the growth of the Internet.

Say again? "Tax-happy" states? Considering how many of those states are cutting services, shuttering libraries, closing fire stations, laying off teachers, putting off needed road and bridge repairs, and on and on, wouldn't "cash-strapped" states or "fiscally-burdened" states or "financially-struggling" states be both more apt and more accurate? Tax-happy?

The drumbeat of war, that is. And the echoes just keep getting louder.

A Washington Post story on Friday revealed that the "intelligence" Colin Powerless cited in charging Iran is trying to adapt a missile to accept a nuclear warhead was unverified information from a single, unvetted, "walk-in" source.

The official said the CIA remains unsure about the authenticity of the documents and how they came into the informant's possession. A second official would say only that there are questions about the source of the information. ...

The lack of certainty about the source who approached U.S. intelligence had kept officials from talking publicly about the information, and Powell's comments caught the small group of informed officials by surprise and angered some of them.

Although why they would be surprised at the White House using unverified intelligence to advance agenda is beyond me.

Even so, the spin machine was whirling madly in the article's wake, as the State Department went into rhetorical overdrive to cover CP's ass. It claimed Powerless's remarks had a "firm basis" in "solid information" and the US is on "very very solid ground" in making its accusations, CNN reported.

"Those who have seen [the information] have expressed confidence that, A, it is valid and, B, the critics taking issue with it don't know what they are talking about," [a senior State Department] official said. "What the secretary said was backed up by strong information that gives us confidence in his conclusion."

Strong words. Almost as strong, in fact, as the "clear," "convincing," "undeniable" evidence our lame-duck Secretary of State put before the UN Security Council about Iraq to justify an invasion.

Interestingly, US officials did not, according to CNN, dispute the Post's story that the allegations were based on a single unvetted source. Instead, one said "public discussion of the details of the human source of intelligence is irresponsible and a remarkably bad idea" and called "disturbing" the idea that it would be discussed with a journalist. Which is to say, they're not denying the story, they're just pissed it got out and want to change the subject to the leak itself instead of what it said.

Then there's the fact that

Powell ... said the Iranians need to "convince the international community that they are not moving in the direction of a nuclear weapon, and they will comply with their obligations to the IAEA."

Okay. So we've got the expatriate dissident group hoping to overthrow the government making accusations. We have the supposedly "very very solid" but actually questionable intelligence about nefarious plans involving weapons of mass destruction. We've got the accusations of massive, long-term deception coupled with demands that "they" prove a negative while we show no actual proof of our contentions. Is that all so far?

Not quite. We also have the "alarming" information about something "they" are doing which they think they have every right to do and which you know about because they, who are always trying to deceive the world, told you. (In Iraq's case, it was the Samoud-2 missile.) Again from CNN for Friday:

Iran is producing massive quantities of uranium hexaflouride on the eve of the implementation of an agreement to suspend its nuclear activity, U.S. and Western diplomats said Friday.

Uranium hexaflouride, also known as UF-6, can be fed into gas centrifuges and turned into highly enriched uranium - the key energy component for both nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons.

The officials said Iran notified the International Atomic Energy Agency - the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog - of the UF-6 production just days before the nation's agreement to freeze all uranium enrichment activities goes into effect Monday. ...

"We are alarmed," a Bush administration official said of Friday's developments. "This is a profound show of bad faith and violates the spirit of the agreement."

Now, just for my own understanding, how it is "bad faith" for Iran to tell the IAEA it's producing UF-6 at a time prior to the date it agreed to stop enrichment activities? How is it bad faith for the Iranians to operate a facility which CNN says is "visited regularly by IAEA inspectors and is legal under Iran's nuclear agreements?" How is it bad faith for them to reveal capabilities which, if the White House was to be taken at its word, they would have tried to conceal? No matter.

The official said the Bush administration plans to take up the issue with the British, French and Germans, as well as the IAEA. The administration feels the development will give a boost to U.S. efforts to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council when the IAEA board of governors meets next week, the official said.

That's what matters: moving the goalposts, always upping the requirements. Does anyone here remember how the UN weapons inspectors came to return to Iraq in 2002? If not, let me remind you: It was Saddam Hussein who sent word to the Security Council that he was ready to restart inspections. The US, however, was not satisfied; we didn't want the inspectors to go back in, as that could undermine our plans. So we demanded changes in the inspection regimen, ones specifically designed to make it harder for Iraq to cooperate and which would provide a pretext for unilateral US military action. The conditions were ones we felt confident Saddam would refuse. So set on this were we that on September 20, 2002, Powerless went before the House International Relations Committee and testified that the US would find ways to stop weapons inspectors from going back to Iraq unless the Security Council first adopted our resolution. The Security Council folded, adopted the resolution - and to our astonishment, Saddam agreed. That is why the inspectors got back in: We were unable to keep them out.

The point is, once Iraq agreed to one set of conditions we imposed a harsher set. And now that Iran has agreed to stop its enrichment programs, we want to find a way to say that's not enough in order to seek sanctions.

This is not looking good.

Link via Buzzflash.

Washington (UPI, November 18) - The Pentagon is spending more than $5.8 billion a month on the war in Iraq, according to the military's top generals.

That is nearly a 50 percent increase above the $4 billion-a-month benchmark the Pentagon has used to estimate the cost of the war so far. ...

Since 2003, the Pentagon has received some $160 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in supplemental funding - that is, in addition to its annual budget. It will be requesting another multibillion-dollar supplement early next year to cover the continuing cost of the war.

This means that the entire amount of this year's annual appeal from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to the developed world - $1.7 billion to provide basic food, medical care, and sanitation to 26 million desperately needy people in 14 countries - could be covered by nine days of what we spend on occupation and war in Iraq.

What was that crap about "moral values?"

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Catherine (II) the Great?

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
I'm Czar-y, So Czar-y for $1200

Boris Godunov recolonized this area stretching north to the Arctic Ocean; we're not sure why he wanted it.

Fat chance.

This is going to be one of those long-quote-short-comment posts that I dislike, but it seems the best way to handle this in this case. The excerpted article is from the Christian Science Monitor for November 10.

The highway is packed as you drive home and then a car swerves in front and cuts you off. You jot down the license plate number as the traffic stalls. When you get home, you log onto the Internet, type the plate into publicdata.com, and up pops the owner's name, home address, and driving record.

New neighbors move in across the street. You wonder how much they earn, how old he is, if they're married or just cohabiting. A few clicks on the county court's website and you're privy to the husband's Social Security number, details about his wife, and the fact that he had a financial spat with a local business.

And it is all perfectly legal.

In the name of "efficiency," counties and municipalities are putting public records online. Yes, the records are public, not private - but before, in order to see them you actually had to go to the county clerk or city hall, which usually would only happen if there was some good reason. Now, anyone anywhere in the world with an internet connection can rifle through them at their leisure for reasons good or bad, for idle curiosity, revenge, voyeurism, identity theft, or stalking. And public records can go far beyond name and address.

Divorce decrees and child-custody cases can include accusations and allegations - whether true or not. Sexual-harassment cases can play on damaging allegations about the plaintiff's lifestyle or sexual history. Private medical records - not open to public scrutiny - sometimes end up in court documents, and thus online, if an insurance holder sues over payment claims. "It is a common tactic of companies to threaten to bring highly sensitive medical information, as well as other personal matters, into the case in order to discourage the plaintiff from proceeding," [Beth] Givens[, director of Privacy Rights Clearinghouse,] notes.

Although some federal laws restrict access to certain kinds of personal data, including some financial data, health records, and records relating to minors, there is a great deal left unprotected. The idea, supposedly, is to promote transparency, but frankly this strikes me as a very poor and very risky way to do it. The idea of public records was to monitor the government, not lay details of our personal lives - including, in a number of cases, Social Security numbers - which are of no proper interest to uninvolved parties open to view.

But some legal analysts suggest the tide of Internet exposure may be hard to turn back. It's a generational thing, says Mark McCreary, an attorney at Fox Rothschild in Philadelphia who specializes in Internet privacy issues. He cites Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems' CEO: "If you're online, you have no privacy." ...

Advertisers, marketing companies, hundreds of websites offering - for a price - "hard-to-find info about people" are all pulling their data from public records. Commercial background reports often have the option of monitoring an individual for a year, as their database is refreshed with new public records. A singles resort, for instance, uses recent divorce filings to plump up its mailing list.

All of this is legal. But, as America becomes a "dossier society," privacy advocates question how much of this activity still corresponds to the original intent of government oversight.

My contention is "none at all."

Some states and localities are starting to react. California has passed some laws requiring consumer notification and restricting online access to certain data. Other laws are focusing on the right of individuals to access their own data rather than others'.

State and county governments are also looking at the type of data collected and reviewing whether all the categories are necessary, McCreary says. Other solutions, privacy advocates say, might include regulating the information broker industry by keeping closer tabs on how personal data are used and by requiring more accountability from private investigators.

But the bottom line, warn some privacy advocates, may be that "old-fashioned" privacy - once defined by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis as "the right to be let alone" - is becoming an anachronism.

But don't despair, it is possible to fight back, guerrilla-style:

Virginia resident Betty "BJ" Ostergren, a self-described privacy watchdog, has been following her own state's push toward digitizing public records. "I think it's a stupid, dangerous, reckless venture," she charges.

Two years ago she mailed hundreds of letters to individuals in King William, Scott, and Warren counties. Each person received a list of personal details about him or her that Mrs. Ostergren had culled from the Internet. The response was outrage, she says. Within 24 hours of her letters arriving "all three [Virginia] counties shut down their sites," she says. Two still remain offline.

Now, there is an unsung hero.

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Maurice Sendak?

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
I'm Czar-y, So Czar-y for $400

Czar Paul's mother was this "great" empress; Paul's father was possibly her husband Carl Peter III.

Although a decision isn't expected until spring, it's still worth noting that an important 4^th Amendment case has reached the Supreme Court,

where the justices must decide whether the use of a drug-detecting dog in conjunction with a minor traffic stop amounts to an unreasonable search or seizure.

This involves an Illinois case from 1998 when one Roy Caballes was stopped for speeding. While one cop was writing up a warning, another arrived with a drug-sniffing dog which indicated there were drugs in the trunk. Armed now with "reasonable suspicion," the cops searched the trunk and found marijuana. Caballes was convicted of trafficking and sentenced to 12 years and a $256,000 fine. Ultimately, the state Supreme Court overturned the conviction, ruling that the use of the dog impermissibly expanded a routine traffic stop into a drug investigation.

"While dog sniffs are not physically invasive, they do intrude on reasonable privacy interests," says Ralph Meczyk, a Chicago lawyer, in his brief to the court. "Using a drug dog during an otherwise routine stop can be intimidating, accusatory, and humiliating." ...

Illinois Solicitor General Gary Feinerman disagrees with the state high court's approach. He says canine sniffs are not the equivalent of Fourth Amendment searches since all they involve is walking a dog around the outside of a car.

"Police officers need no individualized suspicion that illegal drugs are present to justify conducting an external canine sniff of a vehicle at a lawful traffic stop," Mr. Feinerman says in his brief to the court.

That is, the cops and the state are arguing that police don't need to have any reason to subject you or your possessions - in this case, your car - to an "external canine sniff" (I'm not sure what an internal canine sniff would be, but it sounds uncomfortable). That is, they can do it just because they feel like it. Remembering that the point of such a "sniff" is to detect the presence of drugs, thus allowing for a search, we can put their position more bluntly: They are arguing that police can, for any reason, on a whim if they like, pick you out and actively seek justification for a full search of your person and possessions.

I've written about this issue twice before, once on drug-sniffing dogs in general back on January 13 and once on this particular case on April 11. (Because I thought it important enough, I included the text of the January 13 post in the April 11 one, which is why there's only one link.) I said then, and I say now, that if this case goes the wrong way, we can pretty much kiss the Fourth Amendment goodbye.

Why? Because drug-sniffing dogs exist precisely because they can do what people can't, smell things people can't. They are intended to detect things beyond the range of human senses. If it's permissible to use dogs for that, why not anything else? Why not equipment even more sensitive than dogs? Why not equipment that extends human abilities in other ways, that can see better, hear better, sense heat better? Why not?

A decision in favor of the state of Illinois would give police carte blanche to use whatever hi-tech gizmos they can get their hands on to, again, actively seek "reasonable suspicion," suspicion which, once found, allows for invasive searches. What it would do, in fact, is to shrink your zone of legal privacy to only that which can't be detected by most advanced technology available - a zone that would continue to shrink as that technology advances.

I'm sure some, including perhaps some readers here, will consider me alarmist. So be it: Where my rights and my privacy are concerned, I'd much rather be alarmist than apathetic.

I wondered how Vladimir Putin's announcement that Russia was soon going to deploy "new form of nuclear missile unlike those held by other countries" would play out. I couldn't help but notice that the next day, Netscape's news poll as asking people if the development of Russian military forces should be regarded as a threat to the US. A majority said yes. (Although I will note that Netscape doesn't say how many people responded.)

But taking a side road here, I remember that during the 80s, when nuclear war and nuclear weapons were on most all our minds, I at one point felt constrained to remind some folks that they were not the only issue.

And it's not just nuclear arms: Conventional arms are becoming more powerful, more destructive, every day: The power of some is now measured in kilotons. We can't let ourselves fall into the trap of opposing the threat of mass annihilation with unthinkable weapons by proposing the threat of mass destruction with thinkable ones.

We have to say "no more" to the B1s, and "no more" to the M1s and "no more" to the next ones.

Now, in some ways the situation feels reversed and with the carnage in Iraq occupying our attention and with the risk of sudden death arising from suicide bombers and hijacked airliners, with Uzis and AK-47s and their brethren the weapon of choice to bring horror and bloodshed in a score or more of "minor" wars around the world, we have to remind ourselves that nuclear weapons still skulk in their silos and submarines, waiting only for the command.

And yet - still its the "conventional" arsenal that is in daily use, bringing daily death. So even as I want to point up the continued existence of the means of annihilation, I don't want us to forget such as this:

Eglin Air Force Base, FL (AP, November 8) - The Air Force built a weapon so big it was nicknamed "Mother of All Bombs" on the eve of the war with Iraq, but MOAB would be dwarfed by a much larger munition now under study.

The proposed Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP, would weigh 30,000 pounds, nearly 40 percent more than the 21,000 pound MOAB - officially Massive Ordnance Air Blast - that never saw combat.

MOAB is like a super-sized "Daisy Cutter" bomb used during Vietnam. It was so named because, used for low-altitude air burst, it would blast clear an area so effectively it was like it even sheared off the daisies. MOAB, of the same type as the Daisy Cutter but 50% more massive, was intended as a "shock and awe" weapon.

MOP, on the other hand, is intended to penetrate underground so that even tunnels would not be safe from the blast. Unlike its predecessors, it would have a shape that would allow it to be dropped from high-altitude by a B-52 or B-2 Stealth bomber rather than being pushed out of a cargo plane.

It just keeps getting better and better.

The Iranian parallels to the buildup of war hysteria over Iraq are growing.

The United States has intelligence indicating Iran is trying to fit missiles to carry nuclear weapons, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said[, according to CNN on Thursday]. ...

"I have seen intelligence which would corroborate what this dissident group is saying," Powell told reporters Wednesday as he traveled to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Santiago, Chile. "And it should be of concern to all parties." ...

Powell said there is no evidence to suggest that Iran has developed the technology to make a nuclear weapon, but suggested that the regime is working to adapt missiles for nuclear warheads.

"I'm talking about information that says that they not only had these missiles, but I'm aware of information that suggests they were working hard as to how to put the two together," Powell said.

So we have the "dissident group" making accusations followed up by "intelligence" that "suggests" something terrible is in the works. Meanwhile, the credibility of the "dissidents" is built up, with their unsavory backgrounds mentioned only in passing:

Banned in the United States as a terrorist organization, the group was instrumental in 2002 in revealing Iran's enrichment program in the central city of Natanz, based on what it said was information provided by sources in Iran.

"Instrumental" is, shall we say, an overstatement. But a useful one to lend credence to new charges.

The next step, I suppose, would be complaints about the inadequacy of inspections and breathless declarations about the "threat" not only to the entire region but beyond - after all, Iran has called the US "the Great Satan" and if they get nukes, well, we know Osama bin Laden has expressed interest in them and they all hate us anyway, so... QED, right?

Oh wait, the first hints about the failure of inspections and the developing threat are already out there. Colin Powerless

said that "for 20 years the Iranians have been trying to hide things from the international community." ...

[Iran] currently possesses less than 1,000 centrifuges. But if it added 500 centrifuges, experts say Iran would be able to make enough weapons-grade uranium to make a bomb annually.

In all of this, by the way, does anyone remember that we have nuclear weapons? That we were the first to have the suckers, the first and so far the only ones to use them? This is not to say no one should be concerned about the proliferation of such monstrosities, but like the man said:

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. (Matthew 7:3-5)

Some good stuff in that book even for we non-believers, y'know?

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Monica Seles?

JEOPARDY!
Initials M. S. for $1000

This children's author cooked up Chicken Soup with Rice.

Someone asked me about the item I posted the other day about "finding Atlantis" off Cyprus, specifically that I mentioned my own opinion as to what version of the location of Atlantis I find most likely. So, just in case, let me make clear what I believe on the matter: I believe there was probably an "Atlantis" in the sense of there having been some early city, perhaps impressive for its day, that was destroyed in some kind of cataclysm, possibly a flood. I also believe the tale got bigger and bigger as it got passed on and down until by the time Plato got it, Atlantis was some impossibly advanced, noble, civilization and that much of what he hear of its glories are the products of fertile imaginations. It's my lay interest in archaeology that gets me interested in some of the notions as to where the "real" Atlantis stood.

How many times have researchers previously claimed to have discovered the vanished island-state?

Oodles — and that's not even counting the numerous psychics and crackpot "Atlantologists" who've placed the city everywhere from Nicaragua to Ceylon.

You might enjoy reading the rest of the linked article - and he doesn't even get to the South China Sea idea!

Or Chalobbied?

Ahmed Chalabi, of course, was the person primarily responsible for filling the willing ears of the White House with gory tales of Saddam Hussein's overflowing chemical and biological weapons stocks and drive to get nuclear weapons. Supposedly based on inside information, the claims proved to be bogus, nothing more than PR to promote an invasion of Iraq by which Chalabi hoped to benefit.

Now the pattern may be repeating in the case of Iran, high on the list of next targets for "regime change" among the councils of the conservatives in DC. AP reported that

Iran bought blueprints of a nuclear bomb from the same black-market network that gave Libya such diagrams and continues to enrich uranium despite a commitment to suspend the technology that can be used for atomic weapons, an Iranian opposition group said Wednesday.

Farid Soleimani, a senior official for the National Council for Resistance in Iran, did not offer evidence for the claims. His group has said in the past that it gets information on Iran's nuclear program from opposition sources within Iran, including some moles who have infiltrated the Islamic Republic's military and security organizations.

CNN adds that the group

says it has disclosed the location of what it says is a newly discovered nuclear weapons research facility in Tehran,

on land in the Lavizan district of the capital under the control of the Ministry of Defense.

The group said the Iranian regime moved various nuclear equipment to the new site after its previous facility in the Bagh Sian area in Lavizan was publicized and subsequently visited by the IAEA.

However, AP notes that "much of [the group's] information as not been confirmed" and that "no evidence has been found" in support of NCRI's claim that Iran received blueprints for nuclear weapons manufacture. Meanwhile,

CNN's Matthew Chance said the group had made similar allegations in recent years and its information had been found to be "somewhat patchy."

And NCRI itself is the political wing of the People's Mujahedeen, or Mujahedeen Khalq, a terrorist organization charged with attacks on civilians in Iran.

The claims come just days after Iran reached an agreement with the UK, France, and Germany to halt its nuclear enrichment programs in exchange for their support before the IAEA that Iran has the right to pursue a nuclear energy program, an agreement that would avoid a confrontation and hinder US desires to have Iran brought before the UN Security Council to face possible sanctions. The timing, just after the agreement and shortly before the IAEA meeting, could be coincidence, but the benefit to NCRI to having Iran in increasing conflict with the West, particularly the US, can't be overlooked - and neither can the benefit to the warmongers in the White House of having "inside information" for convenient accusations.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... you know the rest. Of course, that assumes that the people in power here have any shame to feel.

It's an item that anytime from the 50s to the 80s would have gotten major play, with members of Congress running for microphones to tell anyone and everyone - especially their constituents - how very, very deeply concerned they were.

Moscow (AP, November 17) - President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russia is developing a new form of nuclear missile unlike those held by other countries, news agencies reported. ...

No details were immediately available, but Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said earlier this month that Russia expected to test-fire a mobile version of its Topol-M ballistic missile this year and that production of the new weapon could be commissioned in 2005.

News reports have also said Russia is believed to be developing a next-generation heavy nuclear missile that could carry up to 10 nuclear warheads weighing a total of 4.4 tons, compared with the Topol-M's 1.32-ton combat payload. ...

Earlier this year, a senior Defense Ministry official was quoted as telling news agencies that Russia had developed a weapon that could make the United States' proposed missile-defense system useless. Details were not given, but military analysts said the claimed new weapon could be a hypersonic cruise missile or maneuverable ballistic missile warheads.

Multiple warheads (MIRVs) and maneuverable reentry vehicles (MaRVs) are nothing new to the US arsenal - and, as people have likely long since forgotten, the original purpose of MIRVs was to overwhelm missile defense systems - so I'm not sure exactly what "form of nuclear missile unlike those held by other countries" Putin is talking about. A hypersonic cruise missile would fill that bill, it's true, but he could also be referring simply to the overall size of the payload of the new Topol-M. (The US has tended to focus on smaller, more accurate warheads in lieu of bigger ones.)

Still, it will be interesting to see what kind of attention this gets. It does indicate that Russia still sees itself as in a rivalry with the US and that, as it long has, it sees plans for a missile defense system as a threat, the fact that it's very unlikely to work notwithstanding. It also means that the risk of nuclear war, neglected and ignored, is still quite real.

However, even with this announcement, even with a subsequent deployment, there is no rational reason to feel a threat of unprovoked attack. Which brings us back to the question of what play this will get. If there's a lot, if there are administration officials referring to this and making huffing noises about "a dangerous world" - especially if they refer to "old enemies" or "re-emerging threats" - it should be taken as an indication that the administration wants a second fear front, perhaps concerned that terrorism is becoming old hat, that while people are still worried about it, it just doesn't have that old sparkle, especially as Iraq continues to go down the tubes. If they just let it slide, well, we can conclude the opposite, that they think that the "new" threat of "The terrorists are after you!" works better for them than the "old" threat of "The commies are after you!"

So far, the "play it down" line appears to be getting the emphasis.

"We are confident that Russia's plans are "not threatening and are consistent with its obligations, and I think are indicative of a new strategic relationship between the United States and Russia that is focused on reducing threats and increasing confidence," deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters.

So reported CNN. However, the same article also said

But State Department officials told CNN on condition of anonymity that although they don't think Putin's comments are anything to worry about, they will be seeking further clarification from the Russians about the specific modernizations in Moscow's program.

"As far as we can tell there is nothing to be concerned about, but Putin did not give a lot of detail," one official said. "We are trying to figure out what he meant. Did he mean what we think he means or is this something that is not covered by the treaty?"

So both options are still in play.

Footnote, Huh? Div.: Bush and Putin actually should get along. They both speak the same language.

Putin reportedly said: "International terrorism is one of the major threats for Russia. We understand as soon as we ignore such components of our defense as a nuclear and missile shield, other threats may occur."

Uh, what? Terrorism is a threat because you ignored nuclear weapons? What?

And lo, a darkness came over the land and the bigots did blast their bilgewater over all creation and freely so, yet they were not satisfied and stood even more fervently in their fear and rage and wouldst condemn all the righteous to the pit. From AP for November 17:

A homecoming tradition in which boys dress like girls and vice versa in a tiny Texas school district won't be held Wednesday after a parent complained about what she regarded as the event's homosexual overtones.

As a substitute for "TWIRP Day," the schools ranging from elementary to senior high decided to hold "Camo Day" - with black boots and Army camouflage to be worn by everyone who wants to participate.

TWIRP, which stands for "The Woman Is Requested to Pay," was hosted by Spurger schools for years during Homecoming Week - to give boys and girls a chance to reverse social roles and let older girls invite boys on dates, open doors and pay for sodas.

Plano-based Liberty Legal Institute issued a news release Tuesday reporting that it "came to the aid of a concerned parent" over an "official cross-dressing day" in the school district 150 miles northeast of Houston.

"It is outrageous that a school in a small town in east Texas would encourage their 4-year-olds to be cross-dressers," Liberty Legal Institute attorney Hiram Sasser said in the release.

Tanner T. Hunt Jr., the school district's attorney, called Sasser's statement "inflammatory and misleading." He said the district never planned or conducted a "cross-dressing day."

"They are a tiny little East Texas school district," Hunt said. "It never occurred to them that anyone could find anything morally reprehensible about TWIRP Day. I mean, they've been having it for years, probably for generations, and it's the first time anybody has complained."

It was a silly little tradition that had been going on "for years, probably for generations," but it took only one paranoid homophobic bigot, Delana Davies by name, backed by the fat cat fatheads of some reactionary legal scumbag outfit to bring it down. So instead of some supposed evil, filthy, sinful celebration of homosexuality via "TWIRP Day," they will have a pure, clean, holy celebration of war, violence, killing, bloodshed, mayhem, hate, and destruction via "Camo Day." Surely Jesus would have approved.

I say my blog is about "surviving a dark time." And I do believe we will survive - but that does not mean the darkest days are not still ahead.

Not terribly important ones, I suppose, but still something I'll note in passing.

First, Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of this blog. My first post was on the morning of November 13. At the time I said

I was finally moved to start a blog (after thinking about it for a while without ever getting around to it) by a recent phone conversation with a friend, in which the morass in Iraq came up. As such conversations do, this one then veered off in several related directions at once, all revolving around a core of our mutual distaste for George Bush. After a few minutes, my friend sighed and said there was no point getting all worked up about it.

"Yes, there is," I replied. "The truth is, my hope is nearly gone. My anger is the only thing that keeps me going."

So now I have an outlet to express that anger, to discuss what I'm angry about, why I'm angry, and, in my calmer moments, to try to rediscover that hope and offer a different vision of what we as a people, a nation, a culture, might do, might be, might become. (And, of course, I also need to wonder if this will become just navel-gazing, an exercise that makes me feel better without actually accomplishing anything. I suppose that having started this, I now also have to try to make sure at least some people see it. Bummer.) ...

I do promise to try to make this worth reading and to be coherent even if inconsistent at times. (Was it Shaw who said "I'll only be consistent when I'm dead?")

Thanks for reading.

That last sentiment in particular is one I want to repeat.

The other milestone was that at about 7:55 this morning, I got my 10,000^th visitor. I know that makes me a small-timer in the blogging world, but still it's one of those events, one of those nice round numbers, of which we like to make note.

(Actually, I probably passed 10,000 a few weeks ago, since I didn't install a counter until I'd been doing this about nearly two months, but what the heck. Seeing the counter go to five figures brought a certain amount of pleasure.)

This morning, the New York Times published an article about a memo from new CIA chief Porter Goss in which he said he was trying "to clarify beyond doubt the rules of the road." The article was headlined "New C.I.A. Chief Tells Workers to Back Administration Policies."

But by this afternoon, CNN reported, CIA officials were "angrily" denying the memo said any such thing.

"It is false," said one official, "quite baffling." The official called the New York Times headline "dopey."

A CIA spokesman said the memo was "a statement about the nonpartisan nature of what this agency does," rather than the opposite."

Quite a contradiction there. Well, let's see. What does the memo actually say? As quoted by both sources, it said

"We support the administration, and its policies in our work as agency employees. We do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies."

Now, just how in hell is that not a call for partisan support for the administration and its policies? One of the few things on which I agree with Rush Limbaugh is his contention in one of his books that "words mean things." So just how does a demand that CIA "support the administration" and "not identify with ... opposition to the administration" constitute an avowal of the "nonpartisan nature" of the work?

Consider, too, that as the Times notes,

[i]n recent weeks, White House officials have complained that some C.I.A. officials have sought to undermine President Bush and his policies. ...

Mr. Goss's memorandum included a reminder that C.I.A. employees should "scrupulously honor our secrecy oath" by allowing the agency's public affairs office and its Congressional relations branch to take the lead in all contacts with the media and with Congress.

So CIA employees are being told to support administration policies, don't "identify" with opposition to those policies, and keep their mouths shut at a time when the White House is griping about lack of support and Shrub's boy is cleaning house. And we're still supposed to believe in the face of fact and logic that Goss is calling for a "nonpartisan" CIA.

We truly have taken leave of reality. We have passed through the looking glass into a strange land where words simply mean whatever the purveyors of power choose them to mean. And woe be unto the unbelievers.

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Martin Short?

JEOPARDY!
Initials M. S. for $600

In 1985, at age twelve, this tennis player became the youngest to be named Yugoslavia's Sportswoman of the Year.

From Digby at Hullabaloo comes a link to a speech by Abraham Lincoln at Cooper Union in New York City in October, 1859. Lincoln's target was the demand of legislators from the South that slavery be allowed in federal territories, with particular focus on Sen. Stephen Douglas' contention that the Constitution barred the federal government from restricting slavery.

But when he considered the nature of the attacks on the Republican Party for its opposition to such an extension of slavery, Lincoln could have been speaking to the present-day American left, particularly those parts that responded to the election by talking about how we could finesse stands on abortion or back off support for gay/lesbian rights. From the speech (emphasis in original):

Judging by all they say and do, and by the subject and nature of their controversy with us, let us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them.

Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections are the rage now. Will it satisfy them, if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and insurrections? We know it will not. We so know, because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and insurrections; and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and the denunciation.

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. ...

[W]hat will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us. ...

They will continue to accuse us of doing, until we cease saying.

I am also aware they have not, as yet, in terms, demanded the overthrow of our Free-State Constitutions. Yet those Constitutions declare the wrong of slavery, with more solemn emphasis, than do all other sayings against it; and when all these other sayings shall have been silenced, the overthrow of these Constitutions will be demanded, and nothing be left to resist the demand. ...

[L]et us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored - contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man....

LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.

The Republicans did not actually advocate the abolition of slavery (thus the reference to "let them alone"), regarding its acceptance a "necessity" because of its extensive existence in the South, but did oppose allowing it to extend beyond the existing slave states and hoped that it would fade away over time.

But that, of course, was not enough for the slavers. And neither will surrendering on any principle here and now satisfy our present-day equivalent. So, like the man said, let us have faith that right makes might and do our duty.

Footnote: Those on the other side might also give some thought to the matter and consider this passage from A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt:

Setting: Sir Thomas More has declined to employ Richard Rich, who has just left the room.
Wife: Arrest him!
More: For what?
Wife: He's dangerous!
Roper: For all we know he's a spy!
Daughter: Father, that man's bad!
More: There's no law against that!
Roper: There is, God's law!
More: Then let God arrest him!
Wife: While you talk he's gone!
More: And go he should, if he were the Devil himself, until he broke the law!
Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down (and you're just the man to do it!), do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

They, too, should be careful what they wish for.

...for those who look at Iraq and the election and sigh "if only, if only...," insisting at least to themselves that no matter what John Kerry said in the campaign, upon being elected he would whip off his MachoMan disguise and show himself a peacenik.

Seoul, South Korea, Nov. 7 (UPI) - Newly declassified documents revealed the United States planned as recently as 1998 to drop nuclear bombs on North Korea if the country attacked South Korea.

As part of "scenario 5027," 24 F15-E bombers flew simulation missions at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina to drop mock nuclear bombs on a firing range between January and June 1998, the Korea Times reported Sunday.

The revelation followed claims by a South Korean lawmaker that the U.S. drew up plans to launch preemptive strikes on key targets in North Korea in 1994. ...

The declassified documents also said the U.S. had kept nuclear weaponry in South Korea until at least 1998, despite officially claiming it had withdrawn all nuclear warheads in 1991.

Let me think, now. Who was president in the two years mentioned, 1994 and in 1998? Must have been some warmonger Republican, yes? Hmmm, let me think....

This one involves no chuckling, however. Via TalkingPointsMemo, it's a Washington Post feature which contains, it says, information on every American who has been killed in Iraq.

During Vietnam we used to hold antiwar memorials consisting of reading the names of the American war dead. I think it's time to revive the practice.

As then, we have no names to read of the fallen among Iraqis. But there are estimates ranging from over 10,000 to the recent study that projected 100,000 "excess deaths" since the war's start. Perhaps that could be made part of it: Using the lower figure to illustrate, the reading of each name could be punctuated by someone saying "and 10 more Iraqis."

This one is just for a chuckle, but it does say something about the way we think about things nowadays.

Thanks for Gutless Pacifist for the link.

A video and song I heard about on a mailing list I'm on. I think it's worth a look and a listen.

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is Little Men?

JEOPARDY!
Initials M. S. for $200

This comic's characters include Jackie Rogers, Jr. and Jiminy Glick.

Democracy is really taking hold in Iraq.

Iraq's media regulator warned news organizations Thursday to stick to the government line on the U.S.-led offensive in Fallouja or face legal action.

Invoking a 60-day state of emergency declared by Iraq's interim government ahead of the assault that began Monday, Iraq's Media High Commission said media should distinguish between insurgents and ordinary residents of the Sunni Muslim city.

Although the commission was supposed to be independent of the government, encourage independent investments in media outlets, and prevent government interference in the news, its statement was on the letterhead of the Iraqi prime minister's office.

It said news organizations should "guide correspondents in Fallouja … not to promote unrealistic positions or project nationalist tags on terrorist gangs of criminals and killers."

It also asked media to "set aside space in your news coverage to make the position of the Iraqi government, which expresses the aspirations of most Iraqis, clear."

"We hope you comply … otherwise we regret we will be forced to take all the legal measures to guarantee higher national interests," the statement said. It did not elaborate.

We'll know that real democracy has been achieved when such warnings are no longer necessary and the news media can be trusted to trumpet the official line of their own accord.

Thanks to American Leftist for the link.

"CNN's Jane Arraf, embedded with the Army, said the city was heavily damaged but that little was leveled, with many houses repairable."

Oh, well, I guess that's okay, then. 

Nuremberg is on the line.

There simply is no doubt that in its attack on Fallujah the US and US troops committed war crimes. There simply is no doubt that the leadership that sent the soldiers in, the officers that laid down the rules of combat, and some of the soldiers themselves should be in the dock, facing the condemnation of a wrathful world. Repeated reports of deliberate targeting of civilians and the wounded make a farce of claims that the troops are showing "restraint" or making "careful distinctions."

- There is the testimony of Bilal Hussein, a resident of Fallujah and an AP photographer, who witnessed murders of civilians. He initially stayed in the city to cover the assault, having sent his family away.

In the hours and days that followed, heavy bombing raids and thunderous artillery shelling turned Hussein's northern Jolan neighborhood into a zone of rubble and death. The walls of his house were pockmarked by coalition fire.

"Destruction was everywhere. I saw people lying dead in the streets, wounded were bleeding and there was no one to come and help them. Even the civilians who stayed in Fallujah were too afraid to go out," he said.

"There was no medicine, water, no electricity nor food for days."

Finally, Hussein had had enough and decided to make a break for it. He planned to swim the Euphrates River as an escape route.

"I changed my mind after seeing U.S. helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the river."

He watched horrified as a family of five was shot dead as they tried to cross. Then, he "helped bury a man by the river bank, with my own hands."

"I kept walking along the river for two hours and I could still see some U.S. snipers ready to shoot anyone who might swim."

- There is the fact that on Thursday, the New York Times reports,

a stream of refugees, about 300 men, women and children, were detained by American soldiers as they left southern Falluja by car and on foot. The women and children were allowed to proceed. The men were tested for any residues left by the handling of explosives. All tested negative, but they were sent back.

The Geneva Conventions and the laws of war forbid returning refugees to a combat zone. University of Houston law professor Jordan Paust, a former Army prosecutor, delicately called the incident "highly problematical conduct." James Ross of Human Rights Watch was more direct: "If that's what happened, it would be a war crime."

- There is the pool report videotape by Kevin Sites of NBC television of a Marine shooting down a wounded and unarmed Iraqi prisoner on Saturday. Sites said that three other wounded prisoners in the mosque apparently also had been shot again by the Marines.

The events on the videotape began as some of the Marines from the unit accompanied by Sites approached the mosque on Saturday, a day after it was stormed by other Marines.

Gunfire can be heard from inside the mosque, and at its entrance, Marines who were already in the building emerge. They are asked by an approaching Marine lieutenant if there were insurgents inside and if the Marines had shot any of them. A Marine can be heard responding affirmatively. The lieutenant then asks if they were armed and fellow Marine shrugs.

Sites' account said the wounded men, who he said were prisoners and who were hurt in the previous day's attack, had been shot again by the Marines on the Saturday visit.

The videotape showed two of the wounded men propped against the wall and Sites said they were bleeding to death. According his report, a third wounded man appeared already dead, while a fourth was severely wounded but breathing. The fifth was covered by a blanket but did not appear to have been shot again after the Marines returned. It was the fourth man who was shown being shot.

- That's not the only video. Another by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, available here, shows a Marine patrol locating a wounded sniper in an alley. A Marine climbs on a barrel, shoots into the alley, then steps down, saying "He's done." (The exact incident starts at about 1:25 into the video but watch it all.)

There is some chance of prosecution of the soldiers in Sites' report because they were caught on tape by a credible eyewitness. The chances of prosecution of those who forced refugees back into the combat zone are small, of those who shot civilians swimming across the Euphrates are miniscule, of those who sent these soldiers into battle, none at all.

It doesn't change the fact that clear, repeated, war crimes took place in the attack on Fallujah. If they get away with it, that just makes it worse.

Footnote: Just in case you thought this was just heat of battle, take a look at this video. It comes from the early days of the invasion.

There are some folks who are starting to consider the idea that their efforts to convince the hapless and hopeless Dummycrats that chasing the GOPpers to the right is not the way to win elections may be futile - and who are tired of being taken for granted by a party hierarchy more interested in poll results and focus groups than in actually standing for anything worthwhile.

Here are two items to consider for those not rigidly tied to repeating past failures. First, DDJango at the Progressive Blog Alliance says, in part:

In recent posts here and elsewhere, I have called on progressives to abandon the Democratic Party and organize on our own. ...

The biggest reason I reject the Democratic Party is that there's just too much "you can't do that, it'll never work" going around. Never have I seen an institution so in need of creativity, risk, and change be so resistant to those very things. The same folks (McAuliffe, Sasso, Shrum, etc.), with same old tactics and strategies, using the same money sources. Ugh.

The only way the Democratic Party will change will be as a result of a vibrant, credible, momentous threat from a progressive populist movement from outside the Party. We need to state our own vision of the world. Then, if the Democrats like what we see, they can join us.

Writing in supportive response, Harry at Scratchings chimes in with

[t]he Republicans are dominated by their most doctrinaire wing. ... They will also take their ball and go home rather than compromise. The Democrats have no such worries. The Republicans are guaranteed to be incrementally more evil to liberal and progressive sensibilities with each election. They can stuff Clintons and Kerrys down progressive throats knowing full well that liberals and progressives can be guilt tripped into support. Personally, I'm sick of their tired canards about Nader and the regurgitated psychobabble analysis of him, his supporters and other progressives. ... [T]hey have no respect for the political power of progressives and won't have any because we can swayed by their shit. In politics, you don't make concessions to people you don't have to appease.

So now is not the time to build bridges with Democrats. The squishy liberals and the quivering moderates have lesser-eviled us all into the Bushist swamp.

I have to put myself in the "tired of compromising" camp as well. I said during the campaign that I would vote for Kerry if I lived in a swing state strictly as a tactical maneuver to slow the seemingly-relentless slide of the political center to the right. Specifically, I thought he would be an improvement in certain areas directly related to the exercise of Executive Branch powers, such as protecting civil liberties and maintaining environmental standards; I disregarded the chances of any actual improvements. (My favorite poster of the campaign was one that read "John Kerry! He'll go backwards slower!") But I will support (and have for some time supported) any available progressive alternative. I harbor no illusions that some progressive movement will suddenly emerge and sweep to victory, but frankly if I'm going to lose I'd rather lose saying what I actually think than saying what focus group-tested BS I've been advised will gain another part of a percent of the "undecideds."

On the other hand, Katha Pollit, writing in the November 3 issue of The Nation, seems ready to just give it up altogether.

Mourn. Please. Just right now, don't say, "Don't mourn, organize" or "Pray for the dead but fight like hell for the living." ...

It's an article of faith among progressives that moving to the left wins votes, and I have written many columns in witness to the creed. But what if it isn't true? What if it wins fewer votes than being a liar and a bigot? ...

The logic of the "Left Is More" position seems to be this: What people really want is a Debs or La Follette who will smite the corporations, turn swords into plowshares, share the wealth and banish John Ashcroft to a cabin in the Ozarks. But since the Democratic Party denies them their first choice, they will - naturally! - pick a hard-right warmaker of staggering incompetence and no regard for either the Constitution or the needs of the people. Better that than settle for a liberal centrist who would only raise the minimum wage by two dollars. ...

This makes no sense to me as an explanation of the recent election. ...

Maybe this time the voters chose what they actually want: Nationalism, pre-emptive war, order not justice, "safety" through torture, backlash against women and gays, a gulf between haves and have-nots, government largesse for their churches and a my-way-or-the-highway President.

Where, I wonder, does that leave us?

I have several problems with this, the biggest being the claim that those of us who argue for advocating more aggressively left positions do so because we think the American public really is on our side on all matters. Nonsense. It's rather that a large portion of the American public can't be divided easily into "smite the corporations, turn swords into plowshares, share the wealth and banish John Ashcroft" on the one hand and "smite the unions, turn plowshares into swords, hoard the wealth and put John Ashcroft on the Supreme Court" on the other. There are a good number who, for example, think we need a lot of swords but also would "smite the corporations." There are others who would think "Chief Justice Ashcroft" has a wonderful ring to it but will also gripe about an unfair tax system that favors the rich.

Recently, I objected to a characterization of the election as reflecting the desires of "middle America." I noted that, based on demographics of age and income, I am part of middle America. I was tartly told to check out my local American Legion hall where I would be "disabused of that notion." So do it, I said. Go there. And ask the folks there how they feel about Big Business and about the rich screwing "the little guy." You might, I suggested, be surprised at the answers.

Yet we have persistently, foolishly, allowed the reactionaries to determine which parts of those varied feelings are the issues to be discussed. We have allowed - allowed, I say - issues of corporate dominance of our economy to be swept from the table. We have allowed - allowed - the issue of a system run by and biased in favor of the rich to be turned into a referendum on "government regulation." We have allowed - again I say, allowed - our issues, the issues where the majority of the people do agree with us, to become non-issues because we've been two busy trying to pick up 0.2% of some voting bloc by finessing some proposal or another.

This is not, I emphasize, to say that an openly and aggressively progressive platform would carry a national election. It wouldn't. But by failing to say what we believe, we make that a permanent condition.

So where, as Pollit asks, does that leave us? It leaves us exactly where we've been: As progressives, as radicals, we are a minority. We represent the majority on particular issues, even a number of them, but taken as a whole, presented as a whole, our platform would not carry the day. We could easily find ourselves in Barry Goldwater territory. We might well have cause to echo Bill Buckley's famous line: During his 1965 run for mayor of New York City on the Conservative Party ticket, he was asked what would be the first thing he'd do if elected. He said "I'd demand a recount." We could easily be losers on that scale.

And that indeed would be a terrible thing - because we all know what happened to the Republican Party and conservatives in the years since. They just vanished altogether, didn't they?

Bottom line: If I'm going to be put to the sword anyway, I'd rather do it as the bull in the ring than the pig in the slaughterhouse.

Footnote: Check out Goldwater's acceptance speech at the 1964 GOP convention. See if it doesn't lay out some familiar lines of argument.

The Columbus (OH) Free Press reported last Wednesday that large numbers of provisional ballots are being thrown out in Ohio because of a change in requirements that was instituted since the election.

As reported by editor Bob Fitrakis, the new rule

for counting provisional ballots in Cuyahoga County, Ohio was implemented on Tuesday, November 9 at approximately 2:30 in the afternoon, according to election observer Victoria Lovegren.

The new ruling in Cuyahoga County mandates that provisional ballots in yellow packets must be "Rejected" if there is no "date of birth" on the packet. The Free Press obtained copies of the original "Provisional Verification Procedure" from Cuyahoga County which stated "Date of birth is not mandatory and should not reject a provisional ballot." The original procedure required the voter's name, address and a signature that matched the signature in the county's database. ...

According to Lovegren, 80 yellow-jacketed provisional ballots piled up in the hour and 45 minutes she observed. By Lovegren's tally, three provisional ballots were rejected because the registered voters' registration had been "cancelled." The rest, she said, were being discarded because of no date of birth.

How anyone could even possibly imagine that changing the rules after the fact could have the remotest chance of being legal escapes me. Or is it that they just don't care?

I've said before that I really don't know and I rather doubt that the extent of manipulation, intimidation, and fraud was sufficient to turn the election; that is, that absent such, Kerry would have won. But that simply is not the point. The fact is, it clearly happened and happened on a large scale - and is still happening, if this is any indication.

So two questions: One, what do you think are the chances the Injustice Department will do any actual investigation? And two, what do you think are the chances the Dummycrats will get behind the handful of their party who are calling for the GAO to undertake one?

We are so screwed.

Footnote: The text of the November 5 letter sent by Reps. Conyers, Nadler, and Wexler is here; a November 8 follow-up, with the additions of Reps. Holt, Scott (VA), and Watt, is here. Both are in .pdf format.

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is H. Norman Schwarzkopf?

FINAL JEOPARDY!
American Literature

In Spanish, the name of this classic by Louisa May Alcott is Hombrecitos.

Many people, me among them, have long called for the development and distribution of non-lethal weaponry to police. While I've always been against the Taser, others have pushed it as a means to defuse situations that would otherwise turn violent. To those people, I would say be careful what you wish for. From the Miami Herald for November 13:

A Miami-Dade police officer used a Taser to stop an unarmed, 12-year-old girl who was running away from him after she was caught skipping school, police acknowledged Friday night.

The incident happened Nov. 5, just over two weeks after other Miami-Dade officers used a stun gun to restrain a first-grader.

According to the police report, officer William Nelson got a complaint that some hooky-playing kids were swimming in a pool, drinking, and smoking cigars. When he got there he found the girl, apparently drunk, and told her to get dressed so he could take her to school. As they approached his squad car, she took off running. He chased her but being unable to catch her, shot her with his Taser, dropping her with a 50,000 volt shock.

He justified firing "for my safety along with [the girl's] safety." (Brackets in original.)

Right. A drunk 12-year old girl running away from him is a threat to his safety. He must have gotten that from the PBA manual under the heading "defensive maneuvers" - in the chapter "Avoiding Blame for Screwups."

In the earlier case, involving a 6-year old, the police justified the shooting because, they said, the boy was holding a piece of broken glass and threatening to cut himself. Okay, grant the situation at face value. What would the police have done if they didn't have Tasers? Shot him with a gun? Let's say that's unlikely. So what would they have done? Maybe patience? Persuasion? Calling in someone who knew the boy and knew how to handle him? A quick rush to grab him and the glass before he could use it on himself? What?

Whatever it was, why didn't they do it? Why did they resort to the Taser? This reveals the problems with such devices: They become substitutes not only for more violent actions - which is their supposed function - but for less violent ones as well. They become conveniences, something easy to reach for when things don't go easily otherwise. Dealing with a disturbed 6-year old, much less a drunk 12-year old, is difficult and frustrating. So just ZAP! knock them down and problem solved.

Instead of just defusing situations, Tasers become a constant temptation for police to escalate the level of force they employ. I say dump the suckers.

Footnote: I previously posted about Tasers on March 7 and July 26.

Labels: taser

Hubris probably describes it better. An utter disregard for, a contempt for, constitutional government.

Last term, the U.S. Supreme Court drew some lines in the sand[, wrote St. Petersburg (FL) Times columnist Robyn Blumner on October 31]. The court said that the president, despite his claims to the contrary, could not hold Americans as enemy combatants without giving them a range of due process rights. And, it said that noncitizen prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay have a right to go to court to challenge the legality of their confinement.

In fact, the New York Times said on November 1,

[t]he court, by a 6 to 3 margin, ruled in June that the people held at Guantánamo as unlawful enemy combatants "no less than American citizens are entitled to federal courts' authority" to challenge their detentions.

Despite that clear ruling, when Gitmo prisoners have tried to go to court, the Injustice Department has responded by repeating in district court the same arguments the Supreme Court rejected months ago!

Lawyers for many of the detainees, including the ones named in the Supreme Court ruling, say the Bush administration is purposely ignoring the justices' mandate and stalling.

They cite the government's refusal to acknowledge that detainees are entitled to free access to lawyers to make their cases before federal judges. More broadly, they argue that the government is still trying to argue issues it has already lost in the Supreme Court, especially that the detainees have full rights to challenge their detentions in lower federal courts.

The Justice Department responded to demands by the detainees' lawyers with language remarkably similar to that it used almost two years ago in the case it has already lost.

"The notion that the U.S. Constitution affords due process and other rights to enemy aliens captured abroad and confined outside the sovereign territory of the United States is contrary to law and history," a recent government brief asserts, in an echo of the briefs submitted in the original Supreme Court case.

Thomas Wilner, a lawyer for several detainees who were involved in the original lawsuit, said in his brief that the government's motion was "simply outrageous."

It has also been called "unethical" and the DOJ described as "completely unrepentant," acting as if the Supreme Court had never acted.

In what's become SOP, the administration is justifying its actions by taking a phrase out of context.

The Justice Department said in its brief that "the court expressly declined to address 'whether and what further proceedings' would be appropriate after remand," as proof the justices left open the issue of whether the government was required to afford the prisoners more rights. But the full sentence at the end of the principal opinion reads, "Whether and what further proceedings may become necessary after respondents make their response to the merits of petitioners' claims are matters that we need not address now."

That is, the DOJ is trying to argue that the Supreme Court left open the question of "what further proceedings" were necessary after remand - that is, after the matter had been sent back to lower courts. But in fact the Court ruled that such issues would arise after prisoners had made their claims and the DOJ had responded to them. Put even more bluntly, the DOJ is arguing that the prisoners' access to the courts is still at issue even though that is exactly the issue the Supreme Court resolved. Fortunately,

[t]his is not going over well in the legal trenches. Earlier this month, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington, D.C., rejected the Justice Department's extreme position and granted a group of Kuwaiti detainees access to counsel and the right to confer with their attorneys without being monitored by the government.

And last Monday, the Bushites got slapped again.

Washington (AP, November 8) - A federal judge's ruling Monday that sidetracked the Bush administration's plan to prosecute foreign enemy combatants is the latest in a string of legal defeats for the government. ...

A judge in Washington said the military short-circuited the rights of Osama bin Laden's driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, 34, of Yemen. ...

[U.S. District Judge James] Robertson said Hamdan hasn't been given a chance to show he is a prisoner of war and entitled to far more legal protections, most notably the right to appeal all the way to the Supreme Court.

Legal observers have predicted continuing losses for the Shrub legal goons as they try to turn the presidency into a monarchy ruling by divine right. Right now I can't help but wonder if their tactic is simply to stall stall stall until they can get in a few more judges who might find that their personal ideological vanities trump justice.

Footnote, There's Always One Dept.: Here's a candidate for one of those judgships.

Prof. Douglas W. Kmiec of the Pepperdine University School of Law said he believed that the Supreme Court ruling in June was "written in a deliberately incomplete manner so that it found a right to habeas review but left the nature of that review to some district court." Professor Kmiec said he believed the government was acting "well within its bounds and is not obliged to do anything beyond what they have done."

Of course, again, the Court did no such thing, but who cares when there's a War on Terror^{(reg.)(c)(pat. pend.)} to be won?

As recently as May, the New York Times reminds us, Defense Secretary Donald Rumplestiltskin asserted in public testimony that the Shrub gang held that

"everyone in Iraq who was a military person" as well as "the civilians or criminal elements" who were detained by the American authorities would be "treated subject to the Geneva Conventions."

Now, however, it develops that two months earlier there was already a draft memo being circulated trying to establish the legality of the CIA secretly taking non-Iraqi prisoners out of the country for what these days is euphemistically called "interrogation." And now, a consensus has been reached and

[a] new legal opinion by the Bush administration has concluded for the first time that some non-Iraqi prisoners captured by American forces in Iraq are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, administration officials said Monday.

The opinion, reached in recent months, establishes an important exception to public assertions by the Bush administration since March 2003 that the Geneva Conventions applied comprehensively to prisoners taken in the conflict in Iraq, the officials said. They said the opinion would essentially allow the military and the C.I.A. to treat at least a small number of non-Iraqi prisoners captured in Iraq in the same way as members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan or elsewhere, for whom the United States has maintained that the Geneva Conventions do not apply. ...

The administration officials did not specify exactly how decisions about an individual's status under the Geneva Conventions would be made. But they said that the factors would include nationality, affiliation with terrorist organizations and activities inside Iraq, and that the decisions would be made by American government agencies who held the individuals in their custody.

In other words, they'll do whatever they damn please because they're making it up as they go along without the need for any overall legal guidance that can't simply be re-written to fit the circumstances.

Think I'm being too cynical?

"At the outset of the hostilities in Iraq, both the Defense Department and the agency were instructed by the Justice Department that the Geneva Conventions apply for Iraq," [Justice Department spokesman Mark] Corallo said.

Still, a Justice Department official said separately, "No matter what the provision is in the Geneva Convention, they are subject to legal interpretation."

I'm not being cynical at all.

Move over, Energizer Bunny. They keep going and going and going....

Martian rovers Spirit and Opportunity are going strong 10 months after they began their geological study of the red planet, mission scientists said Thursday.

And with more sunlight as Mars' springtime begins, activity is picking up.

"The rovers are both in good shape," said Jim Erickson, the rover project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "Normal science activities are increasing as we continue to get additional power out of the solar panels, primarily because the Martian day is getting longer." ...

Spirit is currently climbing high into the Columbia Hills, which rise above Gusev crater where the spacecraft landed. ...

After initial study of some so-called basaltic rocks near its landing site, Spirit embarked on a 10-week drive across the crater, more than a mile wide, to reach the Columbia Hills. Scientists hope to find older, more interesting rocks there, and perhaps tell-tale signs of water. ...

Opportunity is exploring in an area called Meridiani Planum on the other side of planet. The rover hit pay dirt early, landing inside a shallow crater ringed in layered rock outcroppings. In April, mission scientists announced Opportunity had found conclusive evidence that a salty sea once lapped the shores of Meridiani.

The rover now is studying rocks inside another, larger crater named Endurance. ...

The rovers, especially Spirit, are aging. Mission managers continue to grapple with a steering brake problem. And a new issue involves a sensor that monitors the status of a layer of insulation that guards against electrical shorts in the vehicle.

"It is an indication that more parts may be showing their age," Erickson said.

Engineers say operations should not be affected in the immediate future.

And even if they are, just remember this: The missions were supposed to last 90 days. It seems the rovers were well-named.

It seems like a small amount. I mean, it's a great deal of money, but in the larger picture, it's such a small amount. In fact, at the moment I write this, it's less than 1.2% of the estimated amount of money we've spent on the war in Iraq. Yet it seems so hard, so ridiculously hard, to come by. From Thursday's BBC:

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has launched an annual aid appeal to help address what the UN calls the world's forgotten emergencies.

Mr Annan asked for $1.7bn (£922m) for aid projects to deal with neglected humanitarian crises, mostly in Africa. ...

The appeal is meant to provide basic food, medical care and sanitation. But last year's appeal raised only just over half of the funding requested.

Half. Just half. Isn't that amazing? Incredible? Horrendous? For what we spend in one month on killing people in one country, we by ourselves could fully fund an appeal to improve the lives of 26 million desperately needy people in 14 countries. This in no way absolves other industrialized nations of their own failures to help, their own stinginess, their own indifference in the face of suffering, their own willful amnesia - but since I believe that the measure of the generosity of heart of any people is measured by what they do, not by what they call on others to do, I look to us. And I blame us.

The Beeb adds that

[o]ne of the biggest and most expensive crises for the UN is in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where many people have been displaced by war....

Overstretched UN peacekeepers there say they have not yet managed to bring peace.

However, in an unusual step, those peacekeepers, from Uruguay, are taking a more "muscular" approach. They have begun making joint patrols with Congolese government troops, BBC said on Friday. The patrols

aim to root out former soldiers from neighbouring Rwanda who fled there after the 1994 Rwandan genocide. ...

[The] former Rwandan government troops are accused of terrifying the local population by looting, rapes and other attacks. ...

The issue of the Rwandan rebels has been a running sore here for a decade and has led to two full-scale wars between Congo and Rwanda.

The peacekeepers admit that they don't know if the tactic will succeed, since the Rwandan refugees say they don't trust the Rwandan government and are unwilling to go home. But it's thought to be worth a try.

At the same time, it's wise to recall that despite the admitted difficulty of getting aid to the rural areas of DR Congo, controlled as they often are by violent militias,

[a]id workers with the UN and private charities say security is not only brought by soldiers - tackling some of the causes of social and economic breakdown, they say, can be just as effective.

Footnote: The BBC has a pop-up overview of the conflict in DR Congo. It's just that, a quick overview, but it's worth looking at if you are unfamiliar with the background. The link is here.

Just to pass this one on; I got it from BeyondTheMainstream.

A first grade teacher explains to her class that she is an American. She asks her students to raise their hands if they are American, too. Not really knowing why but wanting to be like their teacher, their hands explode into the air like fireworks.

There is, however, one exception: A girl named Gita has not gone along with the crowd. The teacher asks her why she has decided to be different.

"Because I'm not an American," replied Gita.

"Then," asks the teacher, "What are you?"

"I'm a proud Indian," boasts the little girl.

The teacher is a little perturbed. She asks Gita why she is an Indian.

"Well, my mom and dad are Indians, so I'm an Indian too."

Now the teacher is upset. "That's no reason," she snaps. "If your mom was an idiot, and your dad was an idiot, what would you be then?"

Gita thinks for a moment.

"Then," she says, "I'd be an American."

Yeah, yeah, I know, elitist liberal crap pissing on America. Bite me.

Actually, on a serious albeit unimportant philosophical note, is there actually any reason I should be proud of being an American? I mean it, seriously. This has nothing to do with any values in which we do or at least claim to believe or any good we may have or at least tell ourselves we have done as a nation.

The thing is, I was born here. It's my home and I freely admit to an abiding affection for it and for the people who live in it, including even a goodly hunk of those who flipped their lids and their voting levers for Shrub. (That, as opposed to the bigoted, knuckle-dragging mouthbreathers who claim to speak for all of them.) But as far as I can see, I didn't have a damn thing to do with being an American. It wasn't the result of anything I did, it was strictly an accident of geography.

People should take pride in the good they do and in the accomplishments they achieve. For most of us, being an American simply doesn't fit either description. So what about being an American can we be "proud" of? I figure the only people who can express pride in being Americans per se are immigrants, those who made a conscious choice to be such. For me, I can't see any more justification for me to be proud of being American than for being tall.

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is George (Armstrong) Custer?

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Specific Generals for $2000

In 2000, this Desert Storm general received the Harry S. Truman Good Neighbor Award.

TOMORROW'S FINAL JEOPARDY! CATEGORY
American Literature

(PS - Yes, I know about the "S." I'm transcribing the answer as given.)

According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for Sunday,

[a]n expedition on the trail of the lost city of Atlantis says it has discovered evidence of man-made structures submerged in the sea between Cyprus and Syria.

Robert Sarmast, who is convinced the fabled city lurks in the watery depths off Cyprus, will give details of his findings this week.

"Something has been found to indicate very strongly that there are man-made structures somewhere between Cyprus and Syria," a spokesperson for the mission told Reuters.

The mystery of Atlantis - both whether it existed and if so, why it disappeared - has fired the imagination of explorers for decades. ...

Theories place Atlantis somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, near the Greek island of Santorini, off the Celtic Ridge of Britain or even further afield in the South China Sea.

Sarmast's theory is that Cyprus is the pinnacle of Atlantis, with the rest of it about 1.6 kilometres below sea level.

That would do a lot for the Cypriot tourism industry, in any event. Personally, based on current evidence I go more for the Spanish location, partly because the arguments for other sites rely in part on persistent cross-cultural stories or a great flood that took place about 11,000 years ago - but the most recent archaeological evidence dates the development of settled villages to about 8,000-9,000 years ago, making the existence of the supposedly advanced Altantian culture with its rumored grand buildings and temples a couple of thousand years earlier at best problematic. (This does not, I hasten to add, undo the flood stories, only their applicability to Atlantis.)

Updated The still-divided nation of Cyprus, it's northern third still run by a Vichy government under the aegis what amounts to Turkish military occupation, having recently obtained membership in the European Union, now wants to enter into the Exchange Rate Mechanism, or ERM2, to prepare the way to adopt the euro as currency by 2007. However, it has one big hurdle to overcome: the IMF. From AFP for October 30:

The Cypriot government must maintain its tight fiscal policy if the island is to enter the eurozone, an International Monetary Fund (IMF) official said in Nicosia Friday. ...

"Successful participation in the ERM2 and ultimately the euro area are of paramount importance, and some sacrifices are needed," Thomas Richardson told a news conference at the end of a regular biannual visit to compile a report on Cyprus.

Such "sacrifices," of course, are to be made by the Cypriots, not by international banks and major lender nations that finance the deals.

The government is seeking to curb public spending by raising the retirement age of civil servants, enforcing a wage and jobs freeze in the public sector and prohibiting supplementary budgets. ...

In its preliminary conclusions, the IMF said Cyprus must also be prepared to take further measures to achieve fiscal adjustment targets.

These include more aggressive collection of back taxes, increasing fees for government services, streamlining social benefits and, if necessary, a "limited tax increase."

Tax increases, which can affect those not in need of government services, is of course a very last resort.

Updated to revise some poor phrasing which could have been read as saying that the Cypriot government, rather than that of the northern, Turkish-occupied third of the island, was the Vichy regime.

Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli released in April after 18 years in solitary confinement for the heinous crime of telling the world what it already knew - that Israel, alone among the nations of the Middle East, possesses nuclear weapons - has been re-arrested, BBC reported Thursday.

He was seized by armed officers and is being held on suspicion of passing on classified information, police say. ...

The bishop of the Jerusalem church where Vanunu has lived since his release said he saw him seized by between 30 and 50 men, many armed with machine guns.

Anglican Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal told the BBC News website that Vanunu's room had been searched and his mobile phones, laptop, camera and notebooks seized. ...

"They invaded the cathedral close," he said. "Some of them climbed over the fences, others came through the main gate.

"They terrified, terrorised the guests and the pilgrims, none of whom knew why this invasion happened with machine guns." ...

There have been suggestions that Vanunu's detention, coming on the day of Yasser Arafat's death, may have been timed to avoid widescale media coverage, says the BBC's Richard Miron in Jerusalem.

Personally, I'd phrase it as more than a suggestion. And 30-50 men with machine guns? What the hell was that?

And here's something else: What the hell classified information are they talking about? What information could he have that would be of any interest or use since it would be 20 years old or more? What's really going on here? Is this actually because he's been meeting with journalists, which technically he's not supposed to be doing? If so, why not just say so, say he violated the terms of his release? Why the "passing on classified information" BS?

Free him. Now.

Labels: Israel, Middle East

Once again, the possibility of building a reactor to explore the development of fusion energy has been stymied by a rift in the six-nation consortium over where it should be built, the BBC told us on Tuesday.

Officials had gathered in Vienna at the International Atomic Energy Agency to discuss the project, which will be based in either France or Japan.

The parties are deadlocked over the decision - and neither Japan nor the EU will back down in favour of the other.

Japan has the support of the US and South Korea; the French site has the support of the EU, Russia, and China.

What's infuriating about this dispute is that it likely would have been solved a year ago were it not for the petulant attitude of the Bush administration. As I noted last December 21 in the wake of the first meeting, the BBC reported

[t]he US has been against the French option because of France's opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Get that? It had nothing to do with the merits of the two sites, it had to do with a childish desire to spite the French. A year later and the spoiled brats of the White House are still riding that hobby horse. Jerks.

Footnote: Let it be noted that for all its potential, potential which theoretically could offer what would be in human terms an inexhaustible energy source, fusion power is not without its drawbacks. For one thing, by its nature it would require large, centrally-run plants, even more so than today - and with that comes centralized control. Second, it does produce nuclear waste, since the shielding will be subject to intense neutron radiation. However, in that area is has two huge advantages over fission reactors: The quantities produced are far less and the resulting waste consists of solids, not liquids, making containment much more feasible.

I still say about fusion power "prove it to me." But I would like it to be given the chance to offer that proof.

Updated "Why is there air?" Remember Bill Cosby asking that way back in the days when he actually worked at being funny instead of lazily expecting loud guffaws every time he made a face? Well, scientists have long had a similar but much harder question: Why is there mass?

You can say you have the mass you do because it's the sum total of the masses of all the fundamental particles making you up. But why do those particles have mass? And why do they have the masses they do?

If you think the question is weird, the answer may be weirder: It might involve quantum entanglement.

Quantum entanglement. One of the stranger aspects of quantum physics, it means that two fundamental particles can become "entangled" as the result of an interaction, with the result that later changing some aspect of one, say its "spin," instantly changes the same aspect of the other - no matter how far apart they are. What makes this particularly weird is that it means (and this has been experimentally confirmed) that the information about the change of one is transmitted to the other faster than the speed of light, which non-quantum physics says is impossible and which is the macro world, it is.

Last year physicist Vlatko Vedral of the University of Leeds, UK, showed that entanglement is involved in superconductivity.

Vedral says that the ability of a magnet to levitate above a superconductor can only be caused by a current composed of entangled electrons. They would serve to stop the photons of the magnetic field from penetrating more than a short distance into the superconductor, making them act as if they had mass.

Vedral also claims that a similar mechanism may be behind the mass of all particles. The standard model of physics says that matter is made of particles ... while the various forces in the universe ... act through "mediator" particles....

In theory, these mediators are all massless, and so all the fundamental forces should act over infinite distances. In reality, they do not: the forces have a limited range [which means] the mediator particles have mass.

This is thought to be due to what's called the Higgs field and mediated by the Higgs boson. The problem is, no one produced direct evidence of a Higgs boson and no one has explained how the field could affect mediator particles.

Entanglement could be the answer. Vedral has shown that the condensation of the Higgs bosons and exclusion of the mediators requires entanglement between the Higgs bosons. Entanglement may be linked to the mass of not just the mediator particles, but all fundamental particles. Different particles would interact differently with the entangled Higgs bosons, providing different "effective masses" for each particle.

The idea is sketchy, but other scientists think what Vedral admits is an intuition is worth studying.

And if all this is confusing or even seems bizarre, remember that it was Niels Bohr who said "If you're not outraged by quantum mechanics, you don't understand it." What it all means is that when Shakespeare had Hamlet say "There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy," he didn't know the half of it.

Updated to add some explanatory links. Although I'm not sure they'll make things a whole lot clearer.

Another thing occurred to me as I was doing this. "Entanglement" is sometimes described as two particles acting as if they were in some way one particle. If in fact the Higgs field permeates the universe and if in fact it is composed of entangled bosons which then act, in effect, as one, doesn't that bring us around the long way back to something akin to the aether?

The Green and Libertarian Parties have announced their intention to jointly demand a full recount of all presidential ballots cast in Ohio. As ballot-qualified candidates, they have the legal authority to make that demand.

"Due to widespread reports of irregularities in the Ohio voting process, we are compelled to demand a recount of the Ohio presidential vote. Voting is the heart of the democratic process in which we as a nation put our faith. When people stand in line for hours to exercise their right to vote, they need to know that all votes will be counted fairly and accurately. We must protect the rights of the people of Ohio, as well as all Americans, and stand up for the right to vote and the right for people’s votes to be counted. The integrity of the democratic process is at stake," the two candidates said in a joint statement.

The candidates also demanded that Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican who chaired the Ohio Bush campaign, recuse himself from the recount process.

Citizens' and voting rights groups in Ohio have organized two public hearings about irregularities and voter suppression. The first was held today; the second will be on Monday.

The fee for the recount is estimated at $113,000; the total cost, including all other expenses, will run to $150,000, which the two campaigns are seeking to raise. Donations can be made here through PayPal or by mail; the address is at the link. Donations by credit card can be made at the Cobb campaign website at the above link.

As of 8PM Saturday, over $112,000 had been raised, making the campaigns confident their goal would be reached.

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is George S. Patton (Jr.)?

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Specific Generals for $1200

Two years before Little Bighorn, he published My Life on the Plains.

...that some of us have been talking about values for some time. This is an excerpt from, actually the final part of, a speech I gave at my one major campaign rally when I ran for Congress way, way back in 1984. You could call it my major policy address. Because of the date, some of the references are a little dated but after thinking (and having a rethink) about it I decided to post it because I still stand by the sentiments. Consider it now my own statement of values.

Our heritage as a people includes a great many idealistic values like compassion, tolerance, and decency. But our leaders usually appeal to the worst in heritage: to selfishness, suspicion, competitiveness, to "what's in it for me." I think we're better than our leaders give us credit for and it's time we had government that speaks to the highest of our ideals instead of the lowest of our fears.

There followed a list of policy proposals with the theme "we can show our commitment to" ending the arms race, economic justice, the environment, racial and sexual justice at home, and political justice abroad by adopting the ideas presented. I've omitted them both for space reasons and because many were specific to that campaign - but note they were presented as in service to certain principles. I continued:

Our leaders don't understand that. The appeal of Reagan, and to a smaller but still considerable extent the Democrats, is to selfishness: what the British call "I'm-all-right-Jack." They want you to think of just yourselves in isolation: You're working, you're not hungry, your mortgage hasn't been foreclosed, so the hell with everybody else. They speak of family but it's a tight, constricted, limited view; a soulless, cold, isolated vision that sees little tiny groups of people in constant struggle against all the other little tiny groups, looking always to protect their turf against outsiders.

I want you to know that the concept of family is as precious to me as it is to all the Falwells, all the Reagans, all the Ferraros. But I have a different vision of family, a broader vision, a deeper vision, a vision based on commitment, not just on ceremonies, based on ties of the heart, not just on ties of the blood. There are people here tonight who are every bit as much a part of my family as any blood relation could ever be: people like [some people named] and others who I know will understand when I don't take the time to mention all of them.

But our leaders don't understand that vision. That's why they speak of the personal but never of the public; of self but never others; of us and them but never we; of family but never of community. No, never of community. In fact, they're afraid to talk of community, because that means to talk of social obligations, of moral commitments to a type of extended family that goes far beyond the Reaganites' circumscribed view: a community that includes strangers, people who you'll never see, never meet, never have any contact with, but with who you share a mutual obligation, a mutual moral duty, a community extending even to the community of humanity.

Now I may sound like a philosopher, but the fact is that what I'm interested in is change: not slogans, not philosophies, but getting-the-job-done type change. That means being hard-nosed, practical, and factual in our programs. It was the Italian pacifist Danilo Dolci who said "Faith does not move mountains. Work, exacting work, moves mountains."

But when I say "practical," I don't mean practical in the sense of the neoliberals, those people who lower their sights, harden their hearts, darken their vision, and then congratulate themselves on their realism. No, I mean something different. You know the saying "I dream dreams of things that never were and ask 'Why not?'" What we have to do is dream dreams of things that never were and ask "How?" How? What are the practical steps we can take right now, today? We have to approach the world with steel in our eyes.

But at the same time we can't let the steel in our eyes cloud the dream in our hearts. We have to hold to the vision of what we as a people, what we as a nation, can do, what we can be, and not settle, as so many do, for the mere hope that it will get no worse. So that's what I call on you, all of you, to be: steely-eyed dreamers, people who know the hard, factual work to be done but never forget just where that work is supposed to take them.

What I ultimately reject is the right of so few to have so much when so many have so little; what I ultimately resist is the power of so few to control so much when so many control so little. What I ultimately affirm is the right of every human being to a decent life free of hunger, fear, and oppression; what I ultimately demand from our society is the effort to guarantee that right. I've no desire to place a ceiling over anyone's aspirations, but I do intend to put a floor under everyone's needs.

Because compassion is not a cliche; it's a requirement of our humanity. Decency isn't for case-by-case convenience but must be a basic social tenet. And justice is not a prerogative of the powerful but a basic human right and it must be protected as such.

And there, there in that one word, lies the dream, a dream that reaches to the depths of the human dream. We don't dream of perfection, of idealized utopias, but of justice. Simple justice. Human justice. Justice in its truest sense: economic, social, and political. A justice that rejects the ascendancy of bombs over bread, of private greed over public good, of profits over people. A justice that centers on the preciousness of life and will fight to maintain and even expand that preciousness.

That dream is there for us, and if we can but have the courage to hold to that dream, to take risks for it, to look to the future, together we can do it. It won't be easy. It won't be cheap. And it won't be convenient. But it is possible - and, after all is said and done, it's simply the right thing to do..

And that's my pledge to you, here, tonight: to live that dream as best as I can, to hold to it, to work for it, in Congress, out of Congress, in public, in private, in groups, on my own, for the rest of my life. Because I'll never give up on that dream. Never.

I'll leave it to others who actually know me and my life, not superficially or by reputation but actually, to judge how well I have kept that pledge. But whatever my failings in that regard may be or have been, I still say that overall, on matters of morality and principle, what we on the left propose is simply the right thing to do. And we damned well should make a point of saying so.

An article making the rounds of the blogs appeared in the November 10 Washington Post. It reported on a survey by liberal Christian groups that found that

the moral values held by most Americans are much broader than the handful of issues emphasized by religious conservatives in the 2004 presidential campaign.

Battling the notion that "values voters" swept President Bush to victory because of opposition to gay marriage and abortion, three liberal groups released a post-election poll in which 33 percent of voters said the nation's most urgent moral problem was "greed and materialism" and 31 percent said it was "poverty and economic justice." Sixteen percent cited abortion, and 12 percent named same-sex marriage. ...

The poll found that 42 percent of voters cited the war in Iraq as the "moral issue" that most influenced their choice of candidates, while 13 percent cited abortion and 9 percent same-sex marriage. Asked to name the greatest threat to marriage, 31 percent said "infidelity," 25 percent cited "rising financial burdens" and 22 percent named same-sex marriage.

Tom Perriello, an organizer at Res Publica, said the poll shows that "while there may be a solid 20 percent who are very focused on abortion and gay marriage, for most Americans of faith, there are other moral issues of greater urgency, and that's where the religious middle is."

Perriello added that the answer to the "God gap" between right and left "is that progressives need to embrace the deep moral critique that people are looking for and make that case on poverty and Iraq, and not just try to talk more about God or outpace the Republicans on gay marriage or abortion."

Encouraging results and excellent advice. There is a lot of talk today about "reality-based" versus "faith-based" ways of viewing the world, with the former depending on facts, logic, proof, and the latter drawing inspiration from belief and conviction, even if divorced from any demonstrable basis. I'd say all of us demonstrate both of those, the differences being to what extent and under what conditions each emerges. Arguing with a strongly faith-based person is an exercise in futility for any reality-based person - they are untouched by any facts or logic you can present and feel no need to offer any of their own, even in support of their own factual assertions, e.g., "Osama bin Laden endorsed John Kerry" or, as one I saw assert recently, "John Kerry refused to release his military records because they show he got a dishonorable discharge."

The reverse, I suppose, can be true for a faith-based person arguing with a strongly reality-based one. It could seem to them that their opposite number has no sense of right and wrong, that everything is a matter of cold-blooded calculation. In that can lie some of the charges of "arrogance." And indeed, there is that difficulty with the reality-based worldview: It needs to justify everything as a logical gain, a calculable benefit. Think, for example, of the arguments in favor of affirmative action seeking to show there actually is an overall economic benefit. While true, they raise the possibility that if the reverse was true, that there was no demonstrable economic benefit, affirmative action should be dumped. That is, the reality-based view has trouble accounting for doing something simply because you believe it's the right thing to do, without regard to gain or loss.

So it's important for those of us on the left to remember that there is a clear, strong, undeniable moral case for what we believe, a case we have neglected for far too long. It's, again, encouraging to know there is a constituency, a big one, for that kind of case and I'm pleased we are being reminded of it.

So why am I depressed? Because even in the face of this, even in the face of finding that far more people are concerned with moral issues surrounding poverty, greed, and the war in Iraq than the hot-button issues of the radical right, even after discovering that more people share our concerns than theirs, still

[s]ome said it was time for "moderate and progressive" religious groups, as well as the Democratic Party, to rethink their positions.

"One of the things a few of us are talking about is a reassessment of how the Democrats deal with an issue like abortion - could there be a more moderate ground, where even if they retained their pro-choice stance, they talked about uniting pro-choice people together to actually do something about the abortion rate?" said Jim Wallis, editor of the liberal evangelical journal Sojourners.

If the Democratic Party were to "welcome pro-life Democrats, Catholics and evangelicals and have a serious conversation with them" about ways to reduce teenage pregnancy, facilitate adoptions and improve conditions for low-income women, it would "work wonders" among centrist evangelicals and Catholics, Wallis said.

Maintain a pro-choice position while working to make abortion less likely? Sounds like a plan. So let's see, what are some ideas to make abortion less likely?

How about, say, reducing the risk of unwanted pregnancies through sex education and wide availability of birth control? Or how about reducing the financial burden of child-bearing and raising by, oh, I don't know, improved availability of pre- and post-natal care for those who now can't afford it? How about nutrition programs like, uh, WIC? How about economic justice for the poor? How about an increase in the minimum wage? (Reality-based factoid: Economic security is linked to subsequent reductions in birth rates.)

How about improved and expanded adoption services for those wishing to go that route?

How about the fact that every damn item on that list is already on the agenda of the left? So what the hell are we talking about, "rethink our positions?" We are the ones who are proposing ways to reduce the demand for abortion. They are the ones whose answer comes down to "don't have sex and if you do and get pregnant, t.s., you're screwed for life." And for those among them who don't say that, who have enough of that reality-based worldview to realize that just saying "don't have sex" doesn't work (and never has), sure, let's talk - but I want to hear what you will bring to the table beyond ineffective moral condemnation. "Rethink" our position? "Moderate" our position? We are already the ones offering the ideas. Moderate to what?

I applaud the assertion that we need to present a moral as well as a factual case for our positions. And if they had said we have to find ways to advocate our views more clearly, more forcefully, my praise would have been unrestrained. But responding to the findings as yet again a cause for a "rethink," a "reconsideration," a "moderation" of our views, taking even encouraging news as a cause to fall back, is thoroughly self-defeating. And depressing.

Footnote: And if we're going to address teenage pregnancy, we should start from the fact that both teenage birth rates and teenage pregnancy rates have been declining for more than a decade. Yes, declining, despite what you may have heard. According to the latest figures from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), December 31, 2003,

the teen birth rate declined by 30 percent over the past decade to a historic low and that the rate for black teens was down by more than 40 percent. For young black teens (15 to 17 years) the results were even more striking - the rate was cut in half since 1991. ...

The average age at first birth was 25.1 years in 2002, an all-time high in the United States. In 1970 the average age at first birth was 21.4 years.

What's more, in another report a few months earlier (October 31, 2003), again the latest one available, NCHS reported that

[t]een pregnancy rates have reached historic lows, dropping 25 percent from 1990 to 1999. The birth rate dropped 19 percent and the abortion rate was down 39 percent in this age group. More recent data indicate the teen birth rate has continued to drop through 2002 - down 28 percent.

There is dispute as to how much this is due to increased use of birth control, HIV- and other STD-awareness, promotion of abstinence, or other factors including economic opportunity; some consideration of those factors is in an article from the Alan Guttmacher Institute, available here. But no matter the cause (or, more likely, causes), it is happening and any consideration of the issue has to start from there.

Extra note: The links at Res Publica are messed up. The link above gets you to the main site but the links from there are broken. If you want to access the other areas, you can but you'll have to put in the URL manually. Thus, for "About Us," the addy is http://www.therespublica.org/AboutUs.htm. And so on for the others.

Labels: abortion rights

There is much that can be and should be said about Yasser Arafat; some of it complimentary, some of it not. A great deal, I expect, will be said about his life, his effect on the Middle East, and what the near future holds in store. Much of the latter will be idle speculation, in which I will of course join a bit further on.

I also expect that the two mantras that will be repeated endlessly in discussions of Arafat will be "corruption" and "failure to contain terrorism." Neither is without merit, but both will be overplayed and overemphasized to the detriment of truth.

Yasser Arafat was like many other leaders of popular movements over the years, in that he displayed a failing I've seen even in those I greatly admire (Jean-Bertrand Aristide springs to mind): He was a much better organizer, a much better if you will activist, than he was an administrator. He eventually lived to be the old lion, far past his peak but with just enough in him to hold on to leadership of the pride when facing the increasingly-frequent challenges - but who like the aging founder of the family business refused to face the fact that it was time to let go. His "corruption" was mostly that of cronyism, of surrounding himself with trusted friends while icing out others, generating an autocratic governance and central control that came to frustrate even his own aides. It was not, it should be noted, a financial corruption. In fact, last summer, Markus Kostner, country coordinator for the West Bank and Gaza department at the World Bank, credited the Palestinian Authority with having "a clearer bill of health vis-a-vis financial management" than most countries in the region. Admittedly, that is not a terribly high standard to meet - but it is a standard.

Terrorism is a, what should I call it, a subtler issue, first because terrorism is of course how Arafat and the PLO brought the plight of the Palestinians forcibly to the world's attention. (Although Israeli Justice Minister Yosef Lapid's description of Arafat as "a man who made terrorism a method in the world" surely ranks among the larger distortions of historical fact of recent years.) But the PA and Arafat came to condemn terrorist attacks as at least counterproductive when not morally wrong. Still, the Israeli position was that Arafat had never done enough. Even when, last June, Arafat could note that

British intelligence, which is monitoring the security situation in the territories on behalf of the Quartet, recently published a positive report on the Palestinian security services' efforts to foil suicide bombings in Israel.

Even when Israeli officials admitted that conditions would make it difficult for any Palestinian government to exert strict control over violent splinter groups. Even then, he'd never done enough and therefore, in Israel's view, it need do nothing, need take no steps, need make no compromises. The image pushed, in fact, was not only that Arafat hadn't done enough, but that he refused to do anything, that if he but snapped his fingers and said "stop!" that attacks on Israelis would cease. It was never said directly, of course ("We never actually said Saddam was behind 9/11.") but that was the clear message.

But it wasn't that Arafat wouldn't stop terrorist attacks, it's that he couldn't. And in the face of continued Israeli intransigence, in the continued lack of progress or response, in the continued IDF terror attacks on Palestinians, the harder Arafat tried to stop attacks on Israelis the more he raised internal threats to his own position.

So "corruption" and "terror" is what we will hear. But my own conviction is that history will be kinder to Yasser Arafat in the long run than in the short run.

But of course we live in the short run, and in that frame there will be expressions of relief, of "Thank God he's gone!" They won't be put quite so bluntly, of course, even here certain diplomatic niceties must be observed. Instead, it will be talk of "new opportunities" under "new Palestinian leadership." Or, as Shrub put it in a ghoulish statement made while Arafat was still alive, an "opening for peace." (This before his crocodile tear offer of "condolences" to the Palestinian people.)

I fear it will change nothing, open nothing. And soon enough the "new leadership" will be denounced in the same terms that Arafat was, as obstacles to peace and as proof that Israel must continue on its "unilateral separation," involving turning Gaza into a gulag and clamping a tighter hold on significant portions of the West Bank, while putting even more restrictions on Palestinians in the rest of the occupied territories.

It's already starting: Secretary of State Colin Powerless said

it is important that the new Palestinian leadership fight terrorism and make it clear it "will not in any way give any kind of support to terrorist activities."

That is, they will be judged not by how well they address their own people's needs but by how well they address Israeli demands.

Understanding why I say nothing will change requires going back over 10 years, to 1993. It was then that Arafat

shook hands at the White House with [then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin on a peace deal that formally recognized Israel's right to exist while granting the Palestinians limited self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

It was a very risky deal for Arafat, who against fierce opposition had guided the PLO first to acceptance of a two-state solution in the mid-1970s, then to de facto recognition of Israel, and then in 1993 to formal recognition, the thing that Israel had always insisted was the one thing it required. He had dragged the Palestinian hierarchy, kicking and screaming the whole time, along, as well as facing an increasing opposition both from the rejectionist front opposed to any deal with Israel and from Palestinians on the whole, who were increasingly frustrated with the lack of any progress or reciprocal concessions from the Israelis.

The result was seven years of relative - I say relative - peace and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, which operated with at least some degree of authority, even if circumscribed by Jerusalem, in the occupied lands.

In 2000, it came apart. Arafat did not want to attend proposed talks, thinking that nothing would come of them and a failure would be worse than no meeting. Bill Clinton, desperate to reach a Middle East peace as his legacy, convinced Arafat to come by promising him that there would be no recriminations.

At that meeting, then-Israeli PM Ehud Barak made a supposedly "generous offer" to Arafat, involving a Palestinian state in Gaza and something like 90% of the West Bank. Arafat refused. The talks broke down and Clinton returned to Washington to denounce Arafat for the talks' failure, betraying the promise he had given previously. Clinton still blames Arafat. Thus, it is said, Arafat's "true face" was exposed, that of a man determined not to make peace with Israel.

There is just one problem: The deal that Barak proposed was one that the Israelis knew in advance Arafat would not, could not, accept. It was nothing but a propaganda ploy designed to head off the possibility of a settlement. As subsequent events have shown, with Bush cutting off contacts with Arafat and John Kerry declaring during his campaign that Arafat could "expect no reprieve" from a Kerry administration, it was one of the most successful PR coups of modern times.

What was wrong with the "generous" offer? Two things. One, the 10% of the West Bank not part of this Palestinian state would be occupied by Israeli "security corridors" connecting settlements and outposts, which would have effectively sliced the West Bank into a bunch of Bantustans, with Palestinians needing the permission of the Israeli military to get from one part of their country to another.

The other, perhaps even more important, issue was that the agreement would have required the Palestinians to completely relinquish any "right of return," the dream of the families of those who fled or were driven from their homes during the 1948 war to return to them someday. This is an intensely emotional issue among Palestinians: I remember one activist telling me some years ago "the Jews did not forget their homeland in 2,000 years but they expect us to forget ours in twenty-five." No Palestinian leader could have accepted that and survived politically - and perhaps physically. And the Israelis knew it. What's more, they also knew that

[e]ven those who hold an 'extreme' position on the issue, among them Arafat, have adopted the position that if Israel recognizes the right of return in principle, its implementation can be partial and limited.

But the principle itself was simply not negotiable. The "generous offer" was bogus to its core.

I have said before and I say here again: It assuredly was otherwise in the past, but now, today, the obstacle to peace in the Middle East is not the Palestinians. It is Israel.

There will be those who read this and are angered, affronted. They will, with justice, point to the toll of Israeli blood produced by terror, by suicide bombers. They will, with justice, point to the radical rejectionist groups such as Hamas, which

vowed to keep up attacks against Israel. "The loss of the great leader will increase our determination and steadfastness to continue Jihad and resistance against the Zionist enemy until victory and liberation is achieved," a statement said.

But I say to you that with or without peace you will face such as Hamas. But without peace you face them and millions more, millions who are desperate, angry, who increasingly feel they have nothing left to lose. Peace is not without its risks. But what in heaven's name makes you think the status quo is safer?

Labels: Israel, Middle East

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Wilt Chamberlain?

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Specific Generals for $400

George C. Scott won an Oscar for his portrayal of this general.

I'm sure we will hear much over the next few days about the discovery of "hostage slaughterhouses" in Fallujah. Such images will not only be used here to drown out the cries of the civilians killed and maimed, but may even have some resonance in the Arab world, where, as the Christian Science Monitor noted on November 2,

[w]ith images of civilian casualties from US airstrikes set against insurgent slayings of unarmed Iraqi police and civilians, Arabs and the Arab media are increasingly struggling with the question of how far to support an insurgency that sometimes uses tactics they feel are immoral.

Conversations with ordinary people, intellectuals, and politicians illustrate that clearer lines are being drawn in people's minds between what is seen as "legitimate" and "illegitimate" resistance.

"People are coming ... to grips with complicated realities," says Abdel Moneim Said, director of Egypt's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.

Among the events that have raised the doubts include the October 7 bombing attacks on Israeli tourists at Taba, the videotaped beheadings of foreign contractors, the executions of 49 unarmed Iraqi military trainees, and the kidnapping of aid-worker Margaret Hassan.

Nonetheless, I expect the primary use to which the new information will be put is as pro-invasion, pro-Fallujah-attack PR deployed against the American public. The White House will press it and the media will slaver over it and thereby will, par for the course, play down or overlook completely the more important stories.

One downplayed story is that the first major objective of the US-led attack on Fallujah was not an arms cache, not a command center, not a defensive perimeter, but a hospital.

In Washington, Pentagon officials told CNN the hospital was one of the initial objectives of the planned offensive.

U.S. military officials said the hospital needed to be secured so that hospital workers could attend to casualties without facing intimidation from insurgents, and to end its use as a source of anti-U.S. propaganda.

The "propaganda" in this case being reporting civilian casualties from the "precision air strikes" that have rained down on the city for months. And speaking of propaganda, had anyone complained that the hospital previously had been unable to attend to casualties due to "intimidation from insurgents?" No? Then what the hell is the official statement supposed to mean?

Apparently, though, some of that damned "anti-American propaganda" slipped through anyway, into the hands of the Guardian (UK):

Sami al-Jumaili, a doctor at the hospital who escaped arrest when it was taken by US troops, said the city was running out of medical supplies and only a few clinics remained open.

"There is not a single surgeon in Falluja. We had one ambulance hit by US fire and a doctor wounded," he told Reuters. "There are scores of injured civilians in their homes whom we can't move. A 13-year-old child just died in my hands."

Meanwhile, under the heading of overlooked we can file the fact that this story said "[t]here was only minor resistance when the hospital was seized" but another CNN story the same day (Monday) quoted Allawi as claiming

[n]early 40 "terrorists" were killed in the hospital takeover and four foreign fighters - two of them Moroccan - were captured,

which sounds like an indication of pretty heavy fighting to me.

And did you notice - as the media pretty much failed to do - that as soon as the attack began officials started downplaying its importance and talking down what it would accomplish? CNN reported that

[m]ilitary officials say 3,000 to 5,000 insurgents may be inside the city - difficult terrain for urban warfare - but they acknowledge many may have slipped away amid widespread reports that an offensive was coming.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged Monday that [Abu Musab] al-Zarqawi's whereabouts are uncertain. "I have no idea if he is there," Rumsfeld said.

Those sentiments were echoed by Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, who said

the city was sealed off Sunday, but many insurgents could have slipped out before then.... As for al-Zarqawi, Metz said, "I think it would be fair to assume that he has left."

And the overall effect? Defense Secretary Rumplestiltskin was quoted by the Guardian as saying

victory in Falluja would not end the insurgency. "These folks are determined. These are killers. They chop people's heads," he said.

But the most significant overlooked story - by which I do not mean unreported, I mean underreported, not getting the attention it deserves - had to be that

[a] major Sunni political party has quit the interim Iraqi government and revoked its single minister from the Cabinet in protest over the U.S. assault on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, the party's leader said Tuesday.

The Iraqi Islamic Party wields significant influence over the country's Sunni community and its withdrawal from the government will likely be a blow to Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.

"We are protesting the attack on Fallujah and the injustice that is inflicted on the innocent people of the city," said Mohsen Abdel-Hamid, head of the Iraqi Islamic Party,

according to AP. Reuters notes that

it was unclear what impact the withdrawal would have. The party's one cabinet representative, Industry and Minerals Minister Hajem al-Hassani, said he would leave the party but not resign. ...

The party will keep its four representatives on the 100-member National Assembly, a body created in August as a check on the activities of the interim government.

Even so, the move so "alarmed" Allawi, the New York Times said on Wednesday, that

he met privately with Mr. Abdul Hameed hours later. But the party stuck to its position, and an aide said in the afternoon that it was not clear that the group would take part in the elections.

"We haven't decided to withdraw from the elections; we're still going forward with the process," the aide, Ayad al-Samarrai, said. "But it will all depend on the general situation in Iraq."

Some, however, have already decided. As the Times describes it,

the leading group of Sunni clerics called for Iraqis to boycott the nationwide elections scheduled for early next year. ...

"The clerics call on honorable Iraqis to boycott the upcoming election that is to be held over the bodies of the dead and the blood of the wounded in cities like Falluja," said Harith al-Dhari, director of the Muslim Scholars Association, a group of Sunni clerics that says it represents 3,000 mosques.

Hours earlier, the group issued a religious edict ordering Iraqi security forces not to take part in the siege.

If there is a significant Sunni boycott of the January elections, it would seriously hurt their legitimacy. If it was sufficiently widespread, it could undo them completely. That not only would be devastating to US plans for the country, it would be a serious push in the direction of the outright civil war so many fear and so many hope to avoid. That, frankly, would seem to me to be a much more serious issue, a much more important story, than further proof that Zarqawi is the butcher we already knew him to be.

But then again, I expect there really isn't any reason to worry about a boycott. Just let J. Kenneth Blackwell do the counting and you can have 90,000 votes appear out of nowhere.

Footnote one: One report referred to 15 to 20 insurgents who the military described as having been "neutralized" as they attempted to set up an ambush. Neutralized? What, did you drain off excess negative charges? Wash them in de-ionized water? You meant you riddled them with holes, splattered their brains against the walls behind them, ripped their bodies open and left their intestines falling into the street, let them lie in puddles of their own piss, spit, and blood, moaning away their last moments of life in deep pain. Why don't you say so? "Neutralized," indeed.

And no, this is not to deny the insurgents meant to do any less. It is to deny the convenient lies we tell ourselves, the comforting euphemisms we toss around, to conceal even from ourselves the reality of what we are doing.

Footnote two: A Pentagon official claimed that more than 500 insurgents have already been killed in the fighting out of a total of 2,000-3,000 in the city. US-led forces have had 13 killed. The numbers seem out of whack, like Vietnam-era body counts, but maybe not. Quil Lawrence, a BBC correspondent embedded with troops in Falluja said

"I imagine there must be many casualties considering the amount of gunfire I've seen. The Americans launch about 500 rounds to the insurgents' one, pelleting the insurgent area."

Somehow, "pelleting" seems an inadequate description. Those aren't BBs they're shooting.

And on cable TV, no less. Apparently, Keith Olbermann on MSNBC did a rather impressive piece on problems with the election. I didn't see the broadcast, so I'm relying on an account from a reader at BuzzFlash.

Olbermann covered the points I mentioned the other day, such as heavily Democratic counties in Florida going for Bush and the fact that the problems with touchscreen voting appeared in those areas where there was no printout, making a recount difficult if not impossible. But he went beyond that in several ways, including showing that this is the first time those Florida counties have gone Republican. (I had heard previously that the trend of people registered as Democrats voting for Republicans had existed in 2000 but not to near the same extent as in 2004. And as I noted before, the trend only seemed to exist in certain counties, those served by optical-scan voting machines connected to central tabulators.)

Among other points:

- He interviewed a reporter from a newspaper in Cincinnati, who told him that for the first time, reporters were prevented from witnessing the voting in some of the major minority areas of the city due to an order from the Department for the Security of the Fatherland, which claimed that these areas were under an increased threat of terrorism.

- In some counties in Ohio, the press has been barred from inspecting the figures from voting, something it has always been allowed to before.

- Interestingly, there were 90,000 more votes cast in Ohio than there are registered voters. Let Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell explain that one.

There were also a few other oddities, such as the fact that the same Florida voters who supported Bush also supported by an even bigger margin a measure to raise the state minimum wage to $1.00 above the federal level. Certainly that's possible and could reflect being concerned about both the economy (where voters favored Kerry) and security (where voters favored Bush), but still.

There was also the matter of absentee ballots in Florida being taken away by the Secretary of State's office, preventing local officials from counting them.

But as I've said before, the frustration with all this is that while there's enough to be suggestive, there's not enough to know. And even more, while I think a prima facie case has been made for fraud, manipulation, and intimidation, there's not enough to know if the level was great enough to affect the outcome. In Ohio, for example, the margin was something like, if I recall correctly, 136,000.

Even so, No Stolen Elections!, the folks who organized a pledge of street action on November 3 in the event of widespread fraud, are urging people to call Blackwell's office at 614-466-2585 to demand

- every single provisional vote be counted,
- the release of information about the number of "spoiled" ballots, where a vote can be thrown out because of a random mark somewhere on the ballot, and
- a handcount of "spoiled" punch cards to count as many as possible.

They are also calling on people to demand of their Congressional representatives that they join with Reps. John Conyers, Rush Holt, Jerrold Nadler, Robert Scott, Mel Watt, and Robert Wexler in demanding a General Accounting Office investigation of the thousands of complaints regarding the 2004 election. Call 202-224-3121 or 800-839-5276, the Congressional switchboard, and ask for your representative's office. If you don't know who that is, the League of Women Voters can help you here. (I don't know if it's been updated post-election, but since incumbents rarely lose, there's a good chance it's right.)

Labels: Constitutional rights, voting issues

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Shaquille O'Neal?

JEOPARDY!
Basketball for $1000

In 1961-1962, this Philadelphia Warrior became the only man in history to score over 4,000 points in a season.

So Attorney General John Burntfarm has resigned.

Hold the applause. The nominee to follow him is White House counsel Alberto Gonzales.

The Washington Post notes that this is the guy who argued in a January 2002 memo that

the war on terrorism made the Geneva Conventions' limitations on treatment of enemy prisoners "obsolete" and "renders quaint some of its provisions,"

arguments that, as Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way told AP, "ultimately led to the Abu Ghraib prison scandals." In addition, the Post goes on,

[h]is office also played a role in an August 2002 memo from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel advising that torturing alleged al Qaeda terrorists in captivity abroad "may be justified" and that international laws against torture "may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations" conducted in the U.S. war on terrorism. ...

Gonzales also publicly defended the administration policy of detaining alleged "enemy combatants" without access to lawyers or courts, a position rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in June.

Despite that, this is the reaction from quoted Democrats:

"It's encouraging that the president has chosen someone less polarizing," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "We will have to review his record very carefully, but I can tell you already he's a better candidate than John Ashcroft." Another Democrat, Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, said the Senate generally allows the president to choose his own team and was likely to do so in this case. ...

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the Judiciary Committee's senior Democrat, said he did not see Gonzales' nomination as contentious.

"Not contentious?" Someone who called the Geneva Conventions "obsolete" and "quaint," someone who was involved in twisting logic and law to justify torture, someone who argued that the president's actions are not reviewable by courts, this someone is "not contentious?"

Now, it's true that, with a 55-45 GOP majority, barring a major political upheaval Gonzales will be confirmed and the Democrats won't be able to stop him. But it looks like they are not even going to try.

And that's why we are so flaming screwed.

Footnote: My "Ewwww!" moment of the week, via AP:

"He is a calm and steady voice in times of crisis," Bush said, his eyes glistening with emotion as he stood next to Gonzales.

Oh my word. The next thing you know, the media, which has already transformed a 51-49 majority (safe to say that most of the spare 1% was anti-Bush) into a "clear mandate" and a "decisive win," will be calling him "Great Leader Kim Il Bush" and begging for the chance to be allowed to kiss the boot.

The answer, of course, is that polar bears live in the Arctic and penguins live in Antarctica. But within the century there could be another answer: There are no polar bears. Reuters, November 8:

Global warming is heating the Arctic almost twice as fast as the rest of the planet in a thaw that threatens millions of livelihoods and could wipe out polar bears by 2100, an eight-nation report said on Monday.

The biggest survey to date of the Arctic climate, by 250 scientists, said the accelerating melt could be a foretaste of wider disruptions from a build-up of human emissions of heat-trapping gases in Earth's atmosphere. ...

Arctic temperatures are rising at almost twice the global average and could leap 4-7 Celsius (7-13 Fahrenheit) by 2100, roughly twice the global average projected by U.N. reports. Siberia and Alaska have already warmed by 2-3 C since the 1950s.

Among the effects noted by the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA), funded by the United States, Canada, Russia, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Norway and Finland, were

- Sea ice around the North Pole has shrunk by 15 percent to 20 percent in the past 30 years.
- By the end of the century, sea ice could disappear in summer, in which case "polar bears are unlikely to survive as a species," the report said.
- Creatures like lemmings, caribou, reindeer and snowy owls are experiencing loss of habitat, being squeezed north into a narrower range.
- The melting of glaciers is expected to raise world sea levels by about 4 inches (10 cm) by the end of the century. That doesn't sound like much, but for low-lying areas it could be devastating.
- The thawing of the permafrost has lead to subsidence that has collapsed buildings and destabilized pipelines, roads, and airports.
- Indigenous hunters are falling through thinning ice. The animals they hunt, such as seals and whales, are harder to find.
- Increased UV radiation has been linked to skin cancer and cataracts.

Changes under way in the Arctic "present serious challenges to human health and food security, and possibly even (to) the survival of some cultures," the report says.

And the primary culprit is, again, as it's been found to be over and over and over, burning of fossil fuels. And even if you want to shrug it off because who cares what happens to polar bears and the people can adapt or move, remember that

Klaus Toepfer, head of the U.N. Environment Programme, said the Arctic changes were an early warning. "What happens there is of concern for everyone because Arctic warming and its consequences have worldwide implications," he said,

implications which are already visible in the natural world, as another report released Monday confirms.

North American wildlife species ranging from butterflies to red fox are scrambling to adapt to Earth's rising temperatures and may not survive, according to a study released on Monday.

Heat-trapping greenhouse gases emitted by vehicles, factories and other human activities have boosted Earth's temperatures by 1 degree F over the past century, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change said in a report.

To adapt, North American species like the Edith's Checkerspot butterfly, red fox and Mexican jay are moving to colder northern climates that suit their habits, the Pew Center said, citing 40 separate scientific studies.

With global temperatures expected to rise another 2.5 degrees to 10.4 degrees F by 2100, "future global warming is likely to exceed the ability of many species to migrate or adjust," the Pew Center said.

These shifts, "spotted in many other birds, mammals, invertebrates and plants," not only affect habitat, they

may alter competition and predator-prey relationships and have other unforeseen consequences

including altering of growing seasons, which can change the O₂-CO₂ balance in the atmosphere. The result could be to

impact the Earth's ability to clean carbon dioxide from the air, the report said.

Alaska's tundra now emits more carbon dioxide than it absorbs because temperatures have risen by 4 degrees to 7 degrees F over the last 50 years, the report said.

And continued warming could continue that trend: More carbon dioxide resulting in more carbon dioxide, generating a feedback loop potentially leading to the runaway global warming climate scientists have feared.

And don't forget that as ACIA Chairman Robert Corell, a senior fellow at the American Meteorological Society, pointed out, CO₂

typically lingers in the atmosphere 100 years before being recycled.

"If you were to put the brakes on right away, it's still going to take a long time for that supertanker to slow down," he said.

It's gonna be a hell of a century.

Footnote one: The AICA report was not all negative.

Farming could benefit in some areas, while more productive forests are moving north on to former tundra. "There are not just negative consequences, there will be new opportunities too," said Paal Prestrud, vice-chair of ACIA.

Right. Like for cancer treatment centers, relocation services, flood insurance reps, supplies of SPF2000 sun screen, all kinds of opportunities.

Footnote two: The Shrub Society, continuing to eagerly suck up to its corporate partners/masters, had its own spin.

Dana Perino, spokeswoman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the council's work "is part of the $8 billion the Bush administration has committed since taking office to climate change research. It reaffirms the importance of moving forward with the president's sensible strategy to address emissions in a way that keeps our economy strong."

I can't help but notice the word was "address," not "reduce." A revealing choice, I suspect.

Footnote three: Just for the record, please don't anyone respond "if only Kerry had won." His proposal was to "re-open negotiations" on the inadequate Kyoto protocol even though, having gained Russia's support, it has gone into effect among its signatories. How re-negotiating an established agreement is any more of a corporate-friendly stall than "we need more research" is quite beyond me.

Labels: global warming

Leonardo DiCaprio - yes, that one - has a website devoted to environmental issues. And actually, it's pretty good. In fact, it was through that website that I found this little gem of inanity:

BushGreenwatch reported on October 29 that

The federal Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, appointed last year by the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services, has rewritten national dietary guidelines for the American public in a manner that is "so vague as to be meaningless," a group of national nutrition experts is charging.

It really is hilarious. The committee, "stacked with members who have strong ties to the food, drug and dietary supplement industries," has taken the solid data in the report and reduced it to pointless bromides for guiding consumers. (Yes, nit-pickers, I know "pointless bromide" at least borders on a redundancy. Consider it merited emphasis.)

For example, in place of previous specific advice such as "choose a diet that is low in saturated fat and cholesterol and moderate in total fat," the new guidelines say "choose fats wisely for good health." In place of "choose beverages and foods to moderate your intake of sugars," we now have "choose carbohydrates wisely for good health." That is really useful "advice" - for anyone who previously was actively planning on choosing unwisely and knew what foods had the levels of fats and carbohydrates that would help them along.

One bit of light here is that it means that even now, even these people can't just deny the health hazards of too much saturated fat and too many carbohydrates. Even now there is some limit to what the bozos of corporate America can get away with.

For various now-irrelevant reasons, Tuesday was a lost day, for which I apologize.

I try to have something posted every day (there is certainly more than enough to talk about) but the best laid plans and all that, meaning things often don't go as intended - including the quote.

Onward.

YESTERDAY'S (MONDAY'S) QUESTION
Who is Bobby Knight?

JEOPARDY!
Basketball for $600

In 1993, he was named the NBA's Rookie of the Year while playing center for the Orlando Magic.

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Oscar de la Hoya?

JEOPARDY!
Basketball for $200

On September 10, 2000, he was fired as coach of the Indiana Hoosiers after twenty-nine years there.

From the same AP story that quoted Colonel Brandl:

The deadliest attacks Saturday occurred in Samarra, a city 60 miles north of Baghdad that U.S. and Iraqi commanders have touted as model for pacifying restive Sunni Muslim areas of the country.

Insurgents in Samarra stormed a police station, triggered at least two suicide car bombs and fired mortars at government installations. One of the car bombs, targeting the mayor's office, used a stolen Iraqi police vehicle, the U.S. military said.

Twenty-nine people, including 17 police and 12 Iraqi civilians, were killed throughout the city, the U.S. military said. Arabic language television stations said more than 30 died as gangs of insurgents roamed the city, clashing with American and Iraqi forces.

The dead included the local Iraqi National Guard commander, Abdel Razeq Shaker al-Garmali, hospital officials said. Forty other people, including 17 policemen, were injured, the military said. ...

Samarra, an ancient city of gold-domed mosques that once served as the capital of a Muslim empire extending from Spain to India, was recaptured from Sunni Muslim insurgents in September and was touted as a model for restoring government control to other areas formerly under guerrilla domination.

I'm reminded of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in 1968. Right-wingers like to tout the fact that the offensive was actually a military defeat for the NLF and North Vietnamese because they were ultimately unable to hold on to any objectives (although they did hold one, the city of Hue, for almost a month). Technically, that's true. But it misses the bigger point: What the Tet Offensive demonstrated is that despite the US's repeated assurances that our military had things under control, it didn't. The message, which got across to the American public, was "You may be able to occupy the cities, you may be able to drive us into hiding, you may have the overwhelming edge in firepower, but you can't win. You may hold us at bay for a time, but you can't win."

The same message may be being sent here: "You may be able to patrol the streets, you may be able to press us down for a time, but you can't win - and you can't win because no matter how you phrase it, no matter how you parse it, no matter how you try to coat it or spin it, you are foreign occupiers and will never have the true allegiance of the people."

STDD>HO.

This doesn't require much comment, I expect. Buried in an AP article from Saturday about rebel attacks in the days leading up to the attack on Fallujah was this:

Col. Gary Brandl voiced his troops' determination:

"The enemy has got a face. He's called Satan. He's in Fallujah and we're going to destroy him."

Major Kong only talked about "nuclear combat toe-to-toe with the Rooskies." Colonel Brandl sure has got him beat: He's going one-on-one with Old Nick himself.

Updated There was a demonstration in San Francisco a few days ago where a few thousand protestors "decried the re-election of George W. Bush and the continuing war in Iraq," according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The article ended this way:

About a dozen Bush supporters, wielding signs that read "The silent majority has spoken" also showed up and marched behind the crowd.

"I'm in this to promote the fact that we won," said Victor Tracey, 20, a San Francisco State University student.

Not to defend Bush's policies, not to defend the war in Iraq, not even to say "we're right and you're wrong." No, it was to "promote the fact that we won." That's what was important. The winning. The power. The surge of victory. And that seems to be true of so many Shrub people - or, more exactly, the loud-mouthed yahoos who think that they speak for everyone who voted GOP, think that they represent the "real America."

"We won." That's what counts for them.

This actually isn't new. In June of 1995, I wrote this to a friend in the UK about the GOP victory in the 1994 Congressional elections. I was actually referring to GOPpers in Congress, but it still fits.

The difference in the outcome was the Perot voters, those I call the "a'ginners" - i.e., whatever it is, they're a'gin' it. ... Although not a large segment of voters, they went 2-1 for Republicans, enough to change enough elections to change Congress - putting the Senate in the Dole-drums and subjecting us to the spectacle of a bunch of Newt-wits stomping around Washington, verbally wiggling their asses in a touchdown taunt, conceitedly smug in their condescension, who seem less excited about what they can do with their new-found power than they are by the simple fact that they have it. It's the power itself that's getting them off, far more than any notions of some good (even for themselves) they might accomplish by wielding it.

Supposedly, Henry Kissinger called power "the ultimate aphrodisiac." It's clear that for some, that is true. Listen to them. Read their posts, attend to their comments. Note how often they boil down to "We won! So shut up!" It's not "we won so now we can do such-and-such" (except for when "such-and-such" is some form of humiliation of the "losers"), it's just "we won." It was important - vital - to them to be on the winning side.

And not just the winning side - but the winning side with attitude. Or, more accurately, "at'tude." The posed, adopted, in-your-face style. These people responded to Bush not in spite of his arrogant, conceited, immature, stupid, counter-productive rejection of not only world opinion but of any contrary opinion, not in spite of the fact that he despises fact, nuance, complexity, and contemplation, but because of it. To be blunt, the more reasonable John Kerry appeared, the more contempt they had for him.

This obviously does not describe all or even, I'd easily venture, a majority of Shrub's supporters. But it does describe a certain subset of them, a vocal subset eager to wrap themselves in the mantle of power and prepared to swallow any fantasy that holds off their sense of powerlessness in the face of reality.

And that, in fact, is what I think drives many of them: a sense that they are not in control of events, a certain sense of desperation about the world around them and their place in it, and a resulting willingness to glom onto anything that will give them a sense of control, of power, even something that will in the longer run destroy the very security they seek.

Because of that, it is a waste of time talking to them or arguing with them. They are lost causes until (and if) they mature (noting here that maturity is not necessarily a matter of age). So don't waste your time. Instead, argue to those around them. Point out their absurdities, but not to them, to those that associate with them. Choose your targets wisely and don't waste your ammunition on targets that have, in matters of logic, already been destroyed.

Do I sound cruel, unforgiving, rigid, dismissive of some? Then so be it. This is a battle for justice, it has been for decades, not a battle of violence or arms, but a battle of rhetoric (I don't say ideas because we're the only ones who have any) and commitment - and I'm tired of being expected to play nice with the bullies and bigots.

Updated with a Footnote: "The silent majority has spoken." Gore Vidal used to delight in pointing out when Nixon popularized the term that it came from classical Greece and meant the dead. "At last," he'd say, "we have a president who truly understands his constituency." Plus ca change....

Shrub had his post-election coming-out party on Thursday, telling reporters at a press conference that Americans have embraced his agenda. Now this either means that he is equating a sliver-thin majority who often enough didn't know what they were voting for with all of us - or, more likely, he wants to spread the meme that the definition of "American" is "agrees with George Bush."

In fact, he also offered his new definition of "bipartisan."

"I'll reach out to everyone who shares our goals," said Bush....

Yessiree, there's a real spirit of cooperation: "I'll work with anyone who already agrees with me. Everyone else can go screw themselves."

I don't know if this is actually any worse than the sort of wimpy, mealy-mouthed soporifics about "healing" and "seeking common ground" I would have expected (and, in fact, we got) from John Kerry, but it's bad enough. It does have one saving grace: It means we know exactly where we - including the left, any Democrats worth the name, and any moderate Republicans who still remember the difference between a principled conservative and a fanatic - stand. We are the opposition. And we'd damned well better act like one.

And that does not mean "seeking accommodation" or "maintaining the dignity of the process" or any other such nonsense. It means a scorched Earth policy against them and all the inhuman, greedy, bigoted, narrow-minded, violent, destructive, heartless, ignorant bullshit they stand for. No retreats, no accommodations, no compromises unless they are real compromises, i.e., you get at least as much as you give.

They wanted it, they own it. From now on, everything that goes wrong, every death in Iraq, every lost job, every dollar of deficit, every polluted stream, every invasion of privacy, every loss of rights, every lost dream, is their fault. Nobody else's. Theirs. And don't let anyone forget it.

Footnote: Let's face facts, though, It won't be easy. Not when the media are bleating like a flock of sheep, seeing who can be the loudest in framing issues the way the White House desires. This same article referred to Shrub's "decisive victory" and actually called his Iraq policy a "commitment to spread democracy in the Middle East."

YESTERDAY'S ANSWER
What is caffeine?

FINAL JEOPARDY!
Olympians

Winning gold in the 1992 Olympics, this lightweight boxer circled the ring holding an American flag and a Mexican flag.