Untucked

Last month, Dan Froomkin penned - or I guess I should say keyboarded - a great tribute to the outstandingly independent journalist I. F. "Izzy" Stone.

The best blogger ever died in 1989 at the age of 81.

That's the conclusion I reached reading Myra MacPherson's wonderful biography of the great rebel journalist, I.F. Stone. The title of her book, "All Governments Lie!," is both a fitting summary of Stone's core philosophy and the organizing principle of many of the finest political bloggers on the Internet.

Froomkin calls "I.F. Stone's Weekly," which ran from 1953 until advancing age forced Stone to shut it down in 1971 (by which time it had become an appropriately-renamed bi-weekly), as "a blog before its time," noting that

MacPherson's book shows us a man who ... "rejected the idea of the reporter as a robot with no political passion or insight. 'Without forgoing accuracy and documentation,' Stone argued, reporters did not need to be 'neutral.' ... 'A newspaperman ought to use his power on behalf of those who were getting the dirty end of the deal.... And when he has something to say, he ought not to be afraid to raise his voice above a decorous mumble, and to use forty-eight-point bold.'"

When Lotus was a print journal, a 4-page monthly, it was consciously based on the Weekly - or, to be precise, the Bi-Weekly, which is what it was when I discovered it. I. F. Stone was and remains one of my personal heroes and one of my personal highs was when I was once introduced as "the best claimant to the title 'the next I. F. Stone.'" Of course, it didn't work out that way for me, but I still can recall how flattered I was at the time. One spiritual connection is that, like Stone, I delight in (in his case, uncovering; in mine, usually merely noticing) the telling detail that others have missed.

One of Stone's methods was to look at what he called "the shirt-tail" of a story, the last few paragraphs where, he said, the really interesting stuff was often buried. A perfect example of this came just today in a Los Angeles Times story about the oh-so-important report that Gen. David Petraeus is supposed to give to Congress in September:

Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

And though Petraeus and Crocker will present their recommendations on Capitol Hill, legislation passed by Congress leaves it to the president to decide how to interpret the report's data.

This, of course, undermines the entire project. It's not even going to be Petraeus's report - which would be unrevealing enough (Did anyone ever actually expect him to say "The surge that I designed, endorsed, advocated, and oversaw is a huge bust and I'm a big fat loser?") - it's going to be the Bushites' report. Petraeus may present it to Congress but he'll have no actual control over what's in it. What's more, it doesn't matter what it says because George "Signing Statement" Bush can say it means whatever he damn well wants it to.

Now, this bit was not missed; it was mentioned on at least three well-trafficked blogs of which I know. But the point here is that these were the 28th and 29th paragraphs in a 34-paragraph story! An excellent example of a shirt-tail, one that, it appears, a bunch of people caught. Izzy would be proud.

Footnote One: I had my own shirt-tail moment a couple of years ago, in a post in November 2003, just 10 days after I started this thing, pointing to an LA Times story from the preceding July. These were the final paragraphs of that story, ones about which I had seen no comment:

Looking back from the third floor of the Pentagon, Feith dismissed such criticism [of prewar planning for post-war Iraq] as "simplistic." Despite initial problems, he said, progress is being made, with order returning to most of the country and a new Iraqi governing council in place.

Still, he and other Pentagon officials said, they are studying the lessons of Iraq closely - to ensure that the next U.S. takeover of a foreign country goes more smoothly.

"We're going to get better over time,' promised Lawrence Di Rita, a special assistant to Rumsfeld. "We've always thought of post-hostilities as a phase' distinct from combat," he said. "The future of war is that these things are going to be much more of a continuum."

"This is the future for the world we're in at the moment," he said. "We'll get better as we do it more often."

Which is part of the reason the talk about Iran doesn't surprise me in the least.

Footnote Two: Another shirt-tail demo from the very same article about the September report. These are the very last two paragraphs:

The Defense official skeptical of the troop buildup said he expected Petraeus to emphasize military accomplishments, including improving security in Baghdad neighborhoods and a slight reduction in the number of suicide bomb attacks. But the official said he did not believe such security improvements would translate into political progress or improvements in the daily lives of most Iraqis.

"Who cares how many neighborhoods of Baghdad are secured?" the official said. "Let's talk about the rest of the country: How come they have electricity twice a day, how come there is no running water?"

How come the substantial, effects-on-the-ground objections are buried at the bottom of the story? I suspect that question is a lot easier to answer than his.

Crossing a line

Updated I have railed often enough against the failure of the antiwar movement in this country to be more aggressive, more assertive, more on-the-streets and less concerned with being seen as "serious" and oh-so respectable commenters on national policy. Yes, the Big Name Bloggers use the terms to mock the upholders of the status quo - but they are not ridiculing being "serious," only who is seen as being such.

For my part, however, I have insisted that what the movement really needs is not more negotiations with Nancy Pelosi or a filibuster-a-thon from Harry Reid, but

tens of thousands of pissed-off Americans in the streets screaming “Out Now! Out Now! Out NOW!”

Screaming it, I've said, until getting out of Iraq in three months or four months is the "safe," the "compromise" position.

Well, to celebrate this, my 3,001 post, the turn of the odometer so to speak, I thought I'd offer two clips of the August 11 demonstration outside "The Big" Dick Cheney's home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, involving a decent number of joyfully pissed-off Americans.



A longer one:



Footnote: Reuters reported a few days ago that

[t]he New York Police Department must release undercover police reports on protester activity planned for the 2004 Republican National Convention....

The ruling came in response to two lawsuits filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union for protesters. ...

The police department argued the arrests were justified due to information gleaned from a surveillance operation by undercover officers who attended protester meetings before the convention, but have not released the details. ...

In response to the ruling, NYCLU lawyer Chris Dunn called the police surveillance of political activity "troubling."

Keeping up the pressure on all fronts is what will work. By no means do I reject lobbying, voting, legal work, any of it. It's rather that I embrace the joyfully raucous power of on-going public protest - protest that is the mortar of a movement's structure, firming the foundation for every other effort - and want to see much more of it.

Updated with Another Footnote: I want to thank the right-wing nutsoid whose link to this post was labeled "another moonbat ranting" for the attention.

Overall quite a place he's got there. (I assume "he" because the pseudonym is of a male.) There were 10 posts up on the homepage, nine of which were about politics or political issues. (The other was about the opening of the musical comedy version of "Young Frankenstein.") Over the course of those nine posts, he calls Ann Coulter "profound" and "a genius," calls both Charles Krauthammer and Robert Novak "great," and says, apparently seriously, that "The Big" Dick Cheney is "a statesman, a leader of enormous integrity, [who] would make an excellent President."

On the other hand, Michael Moore "is a socialist." (Hey, bozo, buy a clue: I'm a socialist. Michael Moore? No way.) Markos Moulitsas is "a demagogue, a socialist, and ... a threat to the basic American freedoms" while DailyKos is the "loony left, the hard core of the crazies." (And here I've been griping about how centrist Markos strives to be.) Cindy Sheehan is a "madwoman," Jack Murtha is "despicable" and "a national embarrassment," The New Yorker and the New York Times are part of "the Treason Lobby," Max Cleland lost his limbs as a result "only of his own clumsiness" because he "dropped the grenade on himself ... after stopping for a beer," and the Democratic candidates for president are "shrill," angry, "monotonous and unattractive." (Well, okay, if "unattractive" means "unappealing," for the most part I'll concede the last two words.)

Remember, all this was in the space of the most recent nine politics-related posts. I kept thinking this has to be a spoof, but found no evidence of it. In that context, being called a "moonbat" is positively complimentary.

But what was really revealing about his audience is that at one point he linked to something Novak had written, urging people to "read Bob’s whole article, it’s not long." (Yes, emphasis added.)

Still struggling with that attention-span thing, hey, kids?

Oh, and for any rightie wackos want to gripe about me not including a link back to his site: Cry me a river.

Feeling a draft, Chapter Three

In September 1974, Gerald Ford, perhaps in an attempt to regain some support after his approval rating crashed from 71% to 49% in the wake of his pardon of Richard Nixon, announced an "earned re-entry" program for Vietnam draft resisters. As part of this, resisters were supposed to present themselves to their local US Attorney. Instead, three days after it was announced, I wrote to the US Attorney avowing I would refuse to cooperate with the program. To my surprise, a little later I learned that I was the first person in my state to refuse.

This was the letter:

On October 13, 1971 I returned my draft and classification cards to my local draft board; I have refused to carry such cards since then. Upon receiving a new classification card in January of 1973, I returned that as well. At those times I stated in detail my moral and philosophical reasons for opposition to war and the draft, reasons which I will not repeat here beyond stating my conviction that war is morally intolerable and logically untenable, and that anything that aids in prosecuting war, such as the draft, is likewise unacceptable.

As I’m sure you’re aware, I’m still liable for prosecution for these acts. It’s my understanding that under the recently announced “earned re-entry” program, in order to avoid such prosecution I would be expected to present myself to you and indicate my willingness to do 24 months of “public service” work.

I’m writing to you to inform you that I will have no part of this punitive plan, this so-called “leniency.” “Leniency” it is not, “reconciliation” it is not: It is punishment, pure and simple. Punishment for the crime of following your conscience, punishment for the crime of resisting government criminality, punishment for the crime of refusing to kill at the order of the state.

Calling a requirement for two years of work at a low-paying job acceptable to the government “public service work” is merely a euphemism for doing time, and a flimsy one at that. Requiring an oath of allegiance from those who tried to right our national wrong in Indochina is an absurd distortion of reality: It is those who pursued the war, not those who resisted it, who should be required to take such an oath, for it was our leaders who lead us into the war, and who now continue to use American tax dollars to fund its continuation by others, who betrayed the ideals of justice on which this nation was supposedly founded.

The work and oath of allegiance requirements are in effect requirements for expressions of contrition by those who resisted the war. I can’t in good conscience express contrition for acts that I feel to have been, not merely not wrong, but actually quite right. And as long as the US continues to insist on being “#1,” with all the attendant ill consequences for millions of people all around the world, I could not possibly swear an oath of allegiance which could in effect pledge me to support values and actions in which I could not believe.

I turned in my draft card as a public expression of my refusal to kill other human beings. Now I’m being told to say “I’m sorry.” I’m not sorry. Even though I presume that my chances of being prosecuted are somewhat increased by this, I feel I have no other moral choice than to treat this “earned re-entry” plan the same way I treated the draft: I reject it, openly, freely, publicly - and entirely.

Peace be with you.

Except for a little media attention this gathered, as this came in the midst of some debate about amnesty for Vietnam-era resisters, that was the end of my relationship with the draft. Well, except for this addendum: In 1980, I was running for Congress as an independent and the question of the draft had come up again. When I was asked about it, I said

I am opposed to military conscription at any time, in any form, by anyone, for any purpose. I think that about covers it.

I was never prosecuted; I can't say why except to say that by the time I got the gumption to openly resist, in 1971, there were an awful lot of us.

Feeling a draft, Chapter Two

On January 27, 1973, I received a new draft classification card, making me 4-F. Curiously, that was the same day that then-Defense Secretary Melvin Laird announced an end to draft-related military inductions and the day the Vietnam ceasefire was to go into effect.

I sent the card back to the draft board the same day with the following letter:

The end of a given war does not mean the end of war. The end of the war against Indochina does not mean the end of militarism in America. Even as a “generation of peace” is trumpeted, the already-obese military budget swells still more in Fiscal 1974, draining like a blood-sucking leech the life from the long-since anemic ideas of cures for or even opposition to hunger, disease, ignorance, sexism, racism, rats, foul air and dangerous water,....

Perhaps the clearest expression of America’s still-convoluted sense of values is the continued increase in money spent on preparation for war (“There will be wars and rumors of wars” as long as there are Pentagons.) while money for pollution control is impounded and the OEO [Office of Economic Opportunity, part of Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" programs] is closed down to “economize.” As long as the president continues to treat us as the “children” he has called us - with the Pentagon playing the part of the pampered favorite getting any new toy he wants by threatening to hold his breath until he turns blue while the rest of us are cast as the scorned daughter sent to bed without dinner for daring to question Father’s decisions - there can be no letup in our resistance to the present destructive realities. As long as bombs are more important than bread, there can be no lessening of our work for future dreams. And as long as the state continues to claim that it owns our very lives, there can be no pause in our saying “no” to death and “yes” to life.

For that is what a military draft - what any draft - means: The state owns our lives and can use them as it sees fit, even to our deaths or our use as the instrument of others’ deaths. And an end to inductions is not an end to that idea. An end to inductions does not mean the end of the draft, does not mean the end of American militarism, does not mean the state has rejected the pattern of violent solutions to problems, does not mean America has turned from death toward life. It means only that the state feels it doesn’t need our bodies/lives - just now. As long as the idea that our lives belong to the state exists, the draft exists; as long as the draft exists, militarism exists; as long as militarism exists, the spur to war exists; as long as the spur to war exists, war exists.

The draft is linked to war. Ending the draft will not end war, but war will not end until the draft does. If we are to build a just, decent society, we must reject war, reject militarism, reject the idea that the state owns our lives - reject, therefore, the draft.

Life is the highest good, and anything that advances life is an expression of that special, crystal-glitter quality called “human,” that self-awareness, that capacity for love, that reach for hope that separates us from other animals. Anything that opposes life or advances death is a rejection of that quality, a rejection of our humanity. To be human is to reach for life, for love, for hope - to reach for our potential for positive values. To be human is to reject death and all that advances death. The draft - the very concept of the draft - advances, indeed inspires, death. I reject the draft. And I reject all the symbols of the draft, such as the classification card I received today. Do with it as you will, but I will not have it.

Peace be with you and peace be to you.

(The ellipsis at the end of the first paragraph was in the original.)

Actual inductions did not stop immediately as there were some who had already received induction notices but hadn't yet been placed in the military. The last draft-related inductions came at the end of June 1973 at which time the legal authority to induct draftees expired.

Feeling a draft, Chapter One

On Friday, as you surely know, US war czar Lieutenant General Douglas Lute told National Public Radio that it "makes sense" to consider a renewed military draft and what's more, it "always been an option on the table." Adding some fuel to the fire was the fact that

[s]eparately, the US military said the army and marines met their recruiting goals in July and were on track to meet their recruiting targets for the year.

But the army, which missed its recruiting goals in May and June, is now offering new recruits 20,000 dollar bonuses if they sign up and ship out to boot camp before September 30, the end of the fiscal year.

The Pentagon, not surprisingly, stepped in aggressively to deny the idea, but this is not the first time the possibility has come up and not always from the military.

So as I approach my 3,000th post, I thought I would pause a moment in the flow of present events to look back at my own personal history with the draft. The beginning was uneventful enough:

- In the fall of 1966, I registered as demanded by law.
- For the next two years I had a draft deferment as a college student. During that time my opposition to the Vietnam war in particular and war in general sharpened and focused.
- When I dropped out of college I was reclassified 1-A (draftable) and called for a pre-induction physical. I failed that physical because of a minor problem and was classified 1-Y (sort of a reserve pool if there proved to not be enough 1-As).
- In 1969, the Selective Service System instituted a new, "fair" means of how people were selected for the draft: a lottery based on birthdates. That is, each year the dates of the year were chosen in a (supposedly) random order and people were drafted in order of those birthdates. The number you were assigned was from the lottery for the year you turned 19. The lower the number, the more likely you were to be drafted. (You want to know if some guy is of that era? Ask him his lottery number. Chances are he still remembers; I even knew several people in the military at the time who knew theirs.) My lottery number was 281, meaning I had very little chance of being drafted. (In fact, in no year did the SSS get higher than 195.)

However, by that time my ethical opposition to the draft was so strong that I could no longer accept any level of cooperation. At a Moratorium Day demonstration on October 13, 1971, I turned in my draft card to the local board. (All violations of the Selective Service Act carried the same possible penalties: five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.) This is the speech I gave at that demonstration; note that it incidentally reveals that what we're experiencing today is not unique and is not a feature of a particular administration or political party but rather of war:

I think we'd all agree that the war has both magnified and made clear the fact that militarism is a part of American life. I don't mean that America is military-minded, in the sense that it glories in the parade and the uniform bedecked with ribbons - because it isn't and it doesn't - but rather that it is militaristic, which is both more destructive and more dangerous, because it means that the business of killing and preparation for killing has invaded and become part of our lives. It means that people accept the demands and power plays of the Pentagon simply because it is the Pentagon. It means that people come to regard fear - the fear of "the enemy," whoever the current enemy may be - as a normal part of their lives. It means that the very nature of our lives is warped: bent into the service of death, and warped so thoroughly that it becomes difficult to recognize how and where the warps occur. Militarism is destructive. It deals in death and feeds on hate and fear. If we expect to build the just society we talk about, we're going to have to be constructive. We're going to have to deal in life and feed on love and hope. Which means that we're going to have to rid our lives of militarism and of the attitudes that sustain it. And the first step in doing that is to analyze the basis for its existence. What I propose to do here is offer some of my thoughts on the basis of one of the most obvious aspects of militarism: the draft.

It's obvious that every system has a few basic preconceptions of reality on which that system is based. A few preconceptions about the proper order of things; in a sense, a few prejudices, prejudices in the sense that they are so rarely challenged and indeed can't be challenged without threatening the existence of the entire system. What may not be so obvious is the basic idea on which the draft system is based. The government - that is, the State - gives us three reasons for the draft: It tells us that it's necessary for national security. It tells us that it's necessary to maintain a large army. And it tells us that men have a duty to serve their country. But none of these could be called that basic idea supporting the draft system - because they can be challenged or even rejected without affecting the system in any way other than its outward form. We can question the necessity of the draft to national security. We can question the need for an army of the present size. And we can question whether or not the draft - and through it the Army - is the only way to serve. And yet even after asking all these questions - even after rejecting all the given reasons - we haven't questioned the draft, only the current need for it. The reason for this is that the basic idea of the draft system is something far more basic than any of these so-called justifications. That basic idea is the something that gives the State its power to force us to kill and die for its idea of national security - no matter what that idea should happen to be -, the something that gives the State its power to force us to participate in an institution as destructive as the Army - no matter what its size should happen to be - the something that gives the State its power to force us to serve its interests - whether or not the Army is considered the "only" way to serve. And that idea, that basic idea behind the draft system, is the idea that the State owns your life. That you belong to the State, body and soul, and it can use you as it seen fit. That you are a plaything to the whims of the State. We can question the current necessity of the draft. We can question if there's ever a need for the draft. And yet in doing all this we don't question the right of the State to force us to serve its interests, only the current necessity of using that right. In short, we don't question the idea that the State owns our lives. But that's what the draft - any draft - means. The very word draft is a euphemism, a euphemism for military conscription, which is itself a euphemism for slavery. Under the draft you are expected to have no free will. You are expected to not question the dictates of the State. You are expected to go willingly to kill, maim, bomb, and torture whoever the State tells you to, or happily die in the attempt. You are, in fact, expected to be even less than a slave: You are expected to be a robot, to become inhuman by being nonhuman. The draft secures nothing but militarism, it maintains nothing but militarism, and it serves nothing but militarism.

The draft is, in fact, militarism's main prop. It's the draft that provides a continuous source of manpower - a proper term in this case - for whatever new adventure the Pentagon has dreamed up, supporting militarism by providing a continual flow of new "enemies" or continued "threats" by old ones. And it's the draft that maintains militarism by teaching young men - us - who are the State's main cannon fodder, to live in fear of the State. Those who doubt that the intention is to make us feel trapped and helpless before the seeming omnipotence of the State should read the now-famous "Channelling" memo issued by Selective Service in 1965. It was withdrawn after resistance groups began to delight in publishing it, but it's still a good indication of the attitudes of the draft system. The system literally delights in the awareness of this feeling of helplessness in those whose lives it seeks to control. And the system is fully aware that it does this by creating in our lives an atmosphere of fear: Our fear of being lost in a maze of constantly-changing rules, our fear that the "out" we fashion for ourselves will disappear at the whim of our local draft board - or the Director of Selective Service - or the president - or maybe somebody else, some mysterious someone we've never heard about, and, most importantly, our fear of the consequences of challenging the prerogatives of the State. The draft makes fear a normal part of the lives of those young men sane enough to not want to kill other human beings. And in creating that life of fear - in forcing us to follow the dictates of fear rather than those of our consciences - the State advances its power over our lives, and thereby advances its power over all people's lives. Because if the State can force one group to obey through fear, it can force the rest to obey through fear, fear either of what the State will do to them if they object, or the darker, always undefined threat of "the enemy."

We can't live in fear and live just lives. We have to challenge that fear and the militarism that makes it grow. To do that, we have to challenge militarism's main prop: the draft. And to challenge the draft, we have to challenge the basic idea behind the draft. We have to deny the idea that the State can use us as it sees fit. We have to deny the idea that we must serve the State's interests. We have to deny the idea that the State owns our lives. We have to deny the idea that the prerogatives of the State are more important than the prerogatives of our consciences. We have to deny the idea that the State can define the conditions under which we will live our lives. We must, in short, say "No."

But saying all this - having decided all this - is not, in itself, enough. The State can accept any number of people just saying "No." Militarism is woven into the culture, into our very lives, and it can't be talked out of existence. So saying "No" isn't enough. We must also do "No." We must act on our beliefs.

Demonstrations have been called publicity stunts. And that's what this one, at least, is: a publicity stunt. It's an attempt to get publicity for an idea: the idea that there is an alternative to the draft. I don't mean an alternative to the Army, and I don't mean all the deferments and exemptions written into the law, which only release one man the State feels it can do without in favor of forcing a different man into slavery, and which in any event leave the system intact, but an alternative to the draft itself. An alternative to the death. An alternative to the oppression. An alternative to the slavery. And that is the alternative of saying - and then doing - "No." Of recapturing the free will that was taken from you the day you registered. Of retaking control over your own life. Of saying "My life is mine" - and then acting on that belief.

I think we have to recognize that there is no way in which we can cooperate with the draft and still call our lives our own. That as long as we accept the draft we are in fact accepting the idea that we are ready to kill anyone the State thinks needs to be killed. That we are accepting the idea that we are slaves.

If we want to build that just society, we have to refuse to be slaves. We have to refuse to be robots. We have to refuse the demands made on us by a government that appears to have gone murderously insane.

After this rally is over, there's a march up to the offices of the draft board. While that board is being picketed, some of us are going to go up to the board and give them some draft cards. After that - for those of us who do this - the draft system will cease to exist. From that time on, the State will no longer own our lives. From that time on, our lives will be our own.

I invite you to join us. To take your draft card and recognize it for what it is: your signed contract into slavery. Your signed contract into the service of militarism. Your signed contract into the service of death. I say again, you can't serve militarism and justice at the same time. To build a just society, we must end militarism. To end militarism, we must end the draft. And to end the draft, we must say - and do - "No!"

Two months later, on December 10, 1971, the regulation creating class 1-Y was revoked. All 1-Ys were to be reclassified as 1-A, 1-H (over draft age), or 4-F (physically unfit to be drafted). Nearly a year later, on November 26, 1972, my local draft board got around to reclassifying me 4-F.

Non-silly meme

Matthew at Scary Shit is trying to get a meme going involving contributions to the ACLU. His declared goal is to raise a million dollars by the end of the month, which I have to admit I think is out of range, but the cause is certainly a good one. He also encourages folks to drop him a line to say they've contributed so he can track the total.

I've contributed to the ACLU on several occasions but I think I can scrape together a few bucks to send along to take part. How about you?

Part of this, like any good web meme, is to directly challenge three other websites to contribute and post. So here you go, Tim, James, and David and Sara. Your turn.

Update on a recent post #3

On August 4 I expressed my deep dismay along with, I expect was obvious, my lack of surprise at the cave by the Dummycrats on the FISA bill. As a follow-up, look at Ken Silverstein's column at Harper's on August 10, to which I was alerted by BuzzFlash.

Silverstein cites an E.J. Dionne column in which he says that “about 20 House Democrats huddled in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office to decide what to do about a surveillance bill that had been dumped on them by the Senate before it left town.” Many were "furious," Dionne said, because they thought they had negotiated in good faith and gave the White House what it needed while preserving some oversight. This is Dionne as quoted by Silverstein:

At one point, according to participants in the Pelosi meeting, the passionate discussion veered toward the idea of standing up to the administration - even at the risk of handing President Bush a chance to bash Democrats on “national security,” as is his wont ... But the moment passed. Even some very liberal Democrats worried about the political costs of blocking action before the summer recess.

That is, Dionne said, the debate was "saturated by political calculation and the quest for short-term electoral advantage.”

So just like we said, just like so many of us said, the Dimcrats' main focus is not on doing their jobs, not on keeping their promises, not on acting on the mandate given them last fall, but on positioning for 2008!

It can't be said often enough: We told you so.

Update on a recent post #2

On August 2 I mentioned the report that a covert operation is underway to target leaders of the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers Party. The word is that over the last two years the PKK has been staging more cross-border raids from Kurdish-controlled Iraq into Turkey and Turkey has been responding with cross-border shelling and recently, increasingly ominous threats of going after the PKK in Iraq.

Last week, AP reported,

Turkey and Iraq agreed ... to try to root out a Kurdish rebel group from northern Iraq, but Iraq's prime minister said his parliament would have the final say on efforts to halt the guerrillas' cross-border attacks into Turkey. ...

"We have reached an agreement to spend all efforts to end the presence of the Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK in Iraq," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a news conference with his Iraqi counterpart, Nouri al-Maliki.

However, it may not be all that simple. For one thing, al-Maliki's seriously-weakened government is in no position to alienate the Kurds. The US, which likes to point to the largely-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq as an invasion success story, does not want to rock the boat, either. As a result,

[w]hile reaching agreement on Kurdish rebels, al-Maliki refused to sign the counterterrorism agreement requested by the Turkish authorities. He said it was not in his power to commit Baghdad to the agreement without first putting it before parliament and his Cabinet, an Iraqi government official said. ...

The official said al-Maliki refused to sign the anti-terrorism pact because of Kurdish objections to a description of the PKK as a terrorist organization.

The Kurds told al-Maliki that such language would give the Turks a pretext to invade, according to the official.

Actually, the Turks probably figure they already have all the pretext they need, including the fact the the US officially considers the PKK a terrorist group, and I suspect the first part of the statement is more truthful: The Kurds just don't want the PKK labeled as terrorists, less because of what it could prompt Turkey to do in Iraq than what it would be used to justify doing in Turkey. Which may be part of the impetus behind that covert operation: It would be a way to make everybody happy - Turkey, the US, Iraq, even the Kurdish administration, which isn't all that taken with the PKK - while allowing them all to declare they had nothing to do with it.

It's a dangerous game and there's a hell of a lot that could go wrong. The issue of the Kurds is still a great unresolved question, one that gets overlooked in the midst of the chaos elsewhere in Iraq, but one that will not go away.

Footnote: I don't know if I've mentioned this before, so I will here. Back in January, KTK at Lean Left declared himself "unfashionably unsympathetic to the Kurds," denying their right to a homeland. I responded in comments here (Comment #5 if you'd rather scroll than do the linky thing); his answer and my rejoinder follow right after. You might find it interesting.

Update on a recent post #1

On July 28 I wrote about the attempt by the British Airports Authority to prevent a week-long protest camp outside Heathrow Airport that was to address the airport's contribution to global warming and oppose construction of a third runway. The method chosen by BAA was to seek an injunction that would allow police to arrest any member of a long list of groups that attempted to take part in the protest, an injunction that would cover as many as five million people.

When the ruling came down a week ago, BAA got little of what it wanted, certainly not near enough to head off the protest. The groups considered it a great victory. Still, the outcome makes me quite itchy. From the BBC:

BAA has won a High Court ruling banning certain protesters from Heathrow during a week-long climate change camp.

The injunction applies to Plane Stupid, which has a history of "direct action", and protesters from two other groups,

those being Hacan Clearskies and the No Third Runway Action Group. Now, I think it's bad enough that a government feels it can tell people they can't take part in a protest because of what it thinks they might do, but catch the reasoning:

Mrs Justice Swift ruled at the High Court that there was a risk that "a terrorist group may use the disruption caused by the protesters to perpetrate a terrorist act".

Get that? People can be banned from taking part in a protest because of what some government twit imagines in a scare quote some unnamed and unknown third-party "terrorist group" might do. You as a protestor are no longer responsible just for your own actions but for others' as well, even if you have no connection with them, don't know who they are, and have no control over them. The use of the "terrorist" boogeyman to shut down opposition has rarely been clearer.

Still, the protest will go on; in fact, it started a bit early, says RTTNews:

Climate change campaigners have set up camp outside UK's Heathrow on Sunday two days earlier than expected to protest against the airport's expansion plans and climate change.

About 150 protesters started building the Camp for Climate Action, just over half a mile outside the airport's perimeter, and the numbers are expected to swell to 3,000 by Tuesday for a weeklong protest aimed at highlighting the link between global warming and aviation.

Additionally, more than 150,000 activists from across Europe will join them Monday at the Imperial College sports ground, between the villages of Sipson and Harlington.

Undeterred by its loss at court, the government has switched to intimidation and abuse of authority, as the Guardian (UK) informs us:

Armed police will use anti-terrorism powers to "deal robustly" with climate change protesters at Heathrow next week, as confrontations threaten to bring major delays to the already overstretched airport. ...

Scotland Yard's plans for handling the protests are revealed in a document seen by the Guardian, which was produced by Met commander Peter Broadhurst during a legal hearing at the high court which imposed restrictions on a number of named campaigners. ...

The police report makes it clear that the government has encouraged police forces to make greater use of terrorism powers "especially the use of stop and search powers under s44 Terrorism Act 2000".

The law gives police powers to:

· Stop and search people and vehicles for anything that could be used in connection with terrorism

· Search people even if they do not have evidence to suspect them

· Hold people for up to a month without charge

· Search homes and remove protesters' outer clothes, such as hats, shoes and coats.

Last night the protesters said they would not be intimidated.

Good for them. Let's hope they follow through. The best defense against these kinds of tactics is just that: refuse to be intimidated; do what you were going to do anyway.

This is not the first time UK police have engaged in heavy-handed tactics against legal demonstrators: The Guardian article recalls a 2003 anti-war demonstration at RAF Fairford: Police detained, searched, and ultimately turned back two busloads of protestors on their way to the legal demo. Law lords ultimately ruled the stop illegal. Even so,

[p]olice used section 44 of the act 995 times at the Fairford peace camp, even though there was no suggestion of terrorist overtones.

But perhaps the most 1984-ish quote that came out of this was this one:

"With the current terrorism threat, keeping Heathrow safe and secure is a very serious business," said Mark Bullock, BAA Heathrow's managing director.

"Any action taken by the protestors that distracts us or the police from this task is irresponsible and unlawful."

So now for a demonstration to be illegal, it doesn't have to be destructive, disrupting, disabling, even disturbance-causing - it merely needs to be distracting. What's next, disrespectful to its elders?

Another anniversary

Not all memories of August 9 are bad ones.

It is also the anniversary, August 9, 1974, of the resignation of Richard Nixon.

Ah, good times, good times.

The other one

This is slightly garbled and more than slightly rambling. But after I sat down to write it this evening, I quickly found that the more I wrote the more I wanted to write, the more sources I wanted to cite - and I chose to cut myself off in order to get this up tonight. Take it as you find it.

The photo above was taken by Japanese photographer Yosuke Yamahata. The date was August 10, 1945. The place was Nagasaki. One day earlier it had become the second city, the "other" city, hit with - devastated by, leveled by, ruined by - a nuclear bomb, an event which was in a number of ways an even greater crime than Hiroshima.

A crime? A war crime? Yes.

The shock of that first blast was still reverberating through Japan's councils of war when Nagasaki was attacked. Three days was simply not time enough to take it all in, not time enough to decide to admit total defeat. Not time enough to truly understand, as our own difficulty in understanding, in comprehending the level of destruction, even at this distance, makes more than clear.

But if the military and political leaders in the US grasped that fact, they apparently didn't care: The second bombing was originally scheduled for August 20 but was moved up to August 11 when the fissionable material became available sooner than expected. It was then pushed forward to August 9 by a day-and-night effort in order to get the next attack in ahead of some days of bad weather predicted for Japan. General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project, claimed that speed was the only consideration:

Admiral Purnell and I had often discussed the importance of having the second blow follow the first one quickly so that the Japanese would not have time to recover their balance.

The statement has an oddly forced quality about it: After all, if the intent was to drop the second bomb "quickly," why not wait a bit on the first one so you actually have two bombs ready to go instead of being prepared initially to wait two weeks? But take Groves at his word. It is then legitimate to ask if the purpose was to stun the Japanese into instant surrender - or to get the second bombing in before it had a chance to.

Bear in mind first that the minutes of the meeting of the Target Committee on May 10-11, 1945 specified the three factors the Committee determined for deciding on targets for atomic weapons. They were:

(1) they be important targets in a large urban area of more than three miles in diameter, (2) they be capable of being damaged effectively by a blast, and (3) they are unlikely to be attacked by next August. [Emphasis added.]

When the bombing order came down on July 25, 1945, it contained no references to civilians.

So while there certainly were military considerations involved, there was a good deal more of "Let's see what these babies can do." If Japan surrendered too quickly, well, that would mean fewer opportunities for what amounted to nuclear experiments. That didn't matter; after all, they were only Japanese - only "Nips." And indeed, one of the uses for atomic weapons was, in the words of Secretary of State James Byrnes, to allow the US "to dictate our own terms [with the USSR] at the end of the war" and "make Russia more manageable in Europe." How can you do that if you don't prove you have not only the technology but also the willingness to use it?

Bear in mind next this excerpt from Article VI of the Nuremberg Principles, which were declared, eerily enough, on August 8, 1945:

The following acts, or any of them, are crimes coming within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal for which there shall be individual responsibility:

(c) Crimes against humanity: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian populations, before or during the war....

Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan.

So were the bombings war crimes? Is deliberately choosing to bomb "a large urban area" while making no mention of avoiding or reducing civilian casualties a war crime? Is doing so for the purpose of finding out just how destructive to an urban area the bomb can be a war crime? How can it not be? Yes, I'm fully aware that the prohibition on bombing civilians had already been broken, in Hamburg, in Dresden, in Tokyo. But one immorality does not excuse another, committing one crime does not free you to commit others, guilt there is not exoneration here. (And yes, I'm also fully aware of the Blitz. But the Blitz was spread over eight months, over which time total casualties did not match those inflicted on any one of those three cities in their one day of infamy. More importantly, it's irrelevant: Someone else's guilt in one case is not evidence of your innocence in a different one.)

And please, no, none of the "necessary to end the war, saved lives, blah blah." They were not necessary and even the much-mentioned land invasion of Japan - projected casualties supposedly associated with which grew like Topsy over the years - was not necessary, as growing numbers of historians agree. Many of them agree that the bombings may have shortened the war but, because the invasion was not necessary, reject the claim that lives were saved on either side. Now, however, Ward Wilson of Rethinking Nuclear Weapons has gone beyond that, declaring in the Spring 2007 issue of the Harvard University-based "International Security" that

[my] historical research shows that the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had apparently little or no impact on the Japanese decision to surrender,

relating it more to Japan's overall state of defeat and the Soviet Union's declaration of war on Japan on August 9, 1945. (Full article here in .pdf format.)

But still, that leaves on last thing: a greater crime than Hiroshima? Yes. Because even among those who will call the bombing of Hiroshima "a necessary evil," there are many who will call Nagasaki "a tragic mistake" and wholly unnecessary. Even the defenders of devastation cringe at Nagasaki. Yes, a greater crime.

Footnote: Not all of the painful memories of Nagasaki reside with the hibakusha. NPR for August 9 tells the story of South Dakota farmer Rudi Bohlmann.

Bohlmann's ship received orders to sail to Nagasaki, where the sailors could smell the stench of death before they arrived.

"We knew something was up - the stink," Bohlmann says. "You just about gagged, just by breathing it. I hadn't eaten breakfast yet that morning, 'cause I'd just come off watch. And I couldn't go eat. Nobody could eat."

The ship pulled into Nagasaki harbor on Sept. 23, 1945. It was the first U.S. ship there.

Bohlmann remembers how sailors tossed oranges and apples down to two Japanese boys who helped tie the ship to the dock. The starving boys - covered in festering sores and exhibiting other symptoms of radiation sickness = devoured every one.

The boys were the only living people anyone on the Tyrrell saw in Nagasaki - and the ship moored there for five days. ...

Massive cranes in the shipyard were crumpled like pretzels, Bohlmann recalls. He says when looked through binoculars, he couldn't even make out where streets had been - just a few concrete foundations here and there, the stone remains of a shrine. ...

When Bohlmann came home from the war to South Dakota, his father wanted to celebrate his safe return with smoked fish, then a real delicacy on the prairie. But for Bohlmann, it only reminded him of what he'd experienced at Nagasaki.

He took one bite, got up, walked outside, and threw up. His mother asked what was wrong, and he told her he could not eat the fish.

"And I says, 'Boy, I can't tell you, something in the back of my mouth, it just smells like it was over in Japan,'" Bohlmann says. "And to this day I don't eat … smoked fish. I don't even try it no more."

No, his pain is not the same as those who were actually targeted. That makes it no less real.

It's happened

The newest addition to the right hand column here, added a week or two ago, is the running total of "Iraqi Deaths Due to U.S. Invasion" provided by Just Foreign Policy. As a base, the counter total used last year's study published in The Lancet that said there had been about 650,000 "excess deaths" in Iraq as a result of the invasion, of which 601,000 were due to violence. It then uses the Iraq Body Count's tabulation of civilian deaths to estimate the rate at which those excess deaths by violence are increasing and updates the number displayed accordingly. The entire methodology is explained in more detail here.

Just a little while ago, sometime this afternoon, it ticked over to 1,000,985.

Over one million.

One million.

One million dead because of our hubris, our stupidity, our greed, our murderous violence. One million. One million.

Amid all our talk of "surges" and "schedules" and "drawdowns" and "deadlines," this is what it actually means: One. Million. Dead. One million people who would have been alive today had some among us not decided to act out their imperialist fantasies and the rest of us had not allowed ourselves to be stampeded with lies and fear-mongering. After this, I do not want to hear any shit from anyone about Saddam Hussein. Not one freaking word.

Yes, it's an estimate. Yes, it's a calculation. Yes, the number could be lower - which also means it could be higher. I don't care. It's the best guess we have now. And it's over one million.

Twilight Geek: The Eye of the Beholder

Two recent bits of news on the medical front, both via the BBC.

1) "Minimally Conscious State" is a neurological state where the person exhibits intermittent or greatly limited signs of awareness. It's differentiated both from a coma, where the person is deeply unconscious, and a persistent vegetative state, or PVS, which is characterized by wakefulness but no awareness. For some time, it was felt there was little that could be done for people in a minimally conscious state and institutional care with the hope of spontaneous recovery (which did happen) was the usual course.

Now, that may have changed. Consider this case of a man badly beaten six years ago, causing brain damage that left him in a minimally conscious state.

Deep brain stimulation with electrical pulses may offer hope for patients trapped in a minimally conscious state.

Treatment of a 38-year-old man with a severe brain injury enabled him to use words and gestures, chew and swallow and drink from a cup, say US doctors.

Before the stimulation, done through electrodes implanted in his brain, he could only make slight eye or finger movements, the team report in Nature. ...

The procedure involves electrodes implanted with millimetre accuracy to specific areas of the brain. ...

Over a period of six months the researchers alternated periods of electrical stimulation with fake stimulation to assess whether it was having an effect.

Within 48 hours of the first stimulation, the patient was able to keep his eyes open, turn his head, and utter words.

After several treatments he is now able to perform complex tasks such as brushing his hair, although with difficulty due to severe immobility caused by his condition.

And he can chew and swallow his food where before he needed a feeding tube.

One example, of course, is not conclusive: There have, again, been enough spontaneous recoveries to hold off judgment. But the FDA has now approved tests on 12 additional patients and if the results are replicated, it could dramatically change the standard of care and radically improve their chances of getting better.

2) A disease whose seriousness is often overlooked because its effects tend to be cumulative over a period of years, is diabetes. Those effects can indeed be devastating: blindness; ulceration, even gangrene, of the feet; nerve damage; kidney failure; heart disease. But something new has come up that may make the condition, while incurable, even more manageable than it is now.

A simple vitamin deficiency may be the cause of many of the side effects of diabetes, a study suggests.

Researchers found people with the disease expelled thiamine - vitamin B1 - from their bodies at 15 times the normal rate in a study of 94 people.

The study, done by a team at Warwick University, found thiamine levels in the blood plasma of diabetes patients at levels 75% lower than they should be. This hadn't been noticed before, the team said, because it turned out that the standard test to determine thiamine levels wasn't necessarily revealing. This is important because

[t]hiamine is key to warding off vascular problems such as kidney, retina and nerve damage as well as heart disease and stroke.

It works by helping protect cells against the effect of high glucose levels.

Trials are now being carried out to see if supplementing diet with thiamine could return levels to normal.

As usual, the caveat "more research is needed" applies, but as Matt Hunt of Diabetes UK, which helped to fund the study, said, this "could potentially have very exciting outcomes."

My wife is diabetic and suffered from diabetic retinopathy as a side effect of the disease. My mother was diabetic. She wound up with cataracts of both eyes, had trouble walking because of loss of circulation in her legs and feet, and died of kidney failure - all related to diabetes. I want that exciting outcome.

Twilight Geek: Where Is Everybody?

Not that long ago, astronomers were wondering if there could be life "out there." One argument, favored by Carl Sagan, was that there are so many stars that there must be a large number of them that have planets and thus so many planets that it was likely that some form of life arose on some of them. Put another way, no matter how small you wanted to make the chances of life developing, there are likely so many opportunities that life should have appeared in a goodly number of places.

That argument, of course, was logic drawn from probabilities. And life has still never been found anywhere other than Earth. But with what is being learned now, the question really is shifting from "Is there life out there?" to "How can there not be life out there?" For example, astronomers have actually mapped the climate of a planet called HD 189733b, which orbits a star some 63 light-years away in the constellation Vulpecula. Last month, World-Science.net reported that

[r]esearchers say they have found the best evidence to date that planets outside our solar system have water.

“Water is the quintessence of life as we know it,” said Yuk Yung, a professor of planetary science at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. It’s “exciting to find that it is as abundant in another solar system as it is in ours.” Yung is co-author of a paper on the finding, appearing in this week’s issue of the research journal Nature. ...

Researchers had predicted that planets of its class, called “hot Jupiters,” would contain water vapor; recent observations had also suggested as much. The new research confirmed this, using the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope’s particularly keen ability to study near­by stars and their planets, scientists said. ...

“Finding water on this planet implies that other planets in the universe, possibly even rocky ones, could also have water,” said co-author Sean Carey of the Spitzer Science Center at Cal­tech.

We know that water ice and water vapor exist on Mars and it's possible that liquid water still flows occasionally on the surface in brief spurts. Icy water geysers may well be on Saturn's moon Enceladus. There might be water on Pluto's moon Charon. We know Jupiter's moon Europa has a surface covered with water ice - and it probably has a liquid ocean underneath the frozen surface. Even our own Moon might harbor water, at least in the form of frost. We're finding water all over our solar system - and now elsewhere in the galaxy as well.

On top of that, within the last year, astronomers have found three molecules in space carrying a negative electrical charge. Big whoop, you say? It is. You see, scientists had discovered about 130 neutral and about a dozen positively-charged molecules in space but thought negatively-charged ones wouldn't be found because radiation would knock off the excess electrons, which carry the negative electrical charge, leaving the molecule either neutral or positive.

Still big whoop? Try this:

“This discovery continues to add to the diversity and complexity that is already seen in the chemistry of interstellar space,” said Anthony J. Remijan of the Charlottesville, Va.-based National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

“It also adds to the number of paths available for making the complex organic molecules,” the ingredients of life, he added. Such substances are thought to have formed in the same giant clouds that give rise to stars and planets.

Get it now? The discovery adds to the number of ways that organic molecules on which life is based could arise, making the formation of such molecules - and thus life - that much more likely.

No, this doesn't mean that SETI will hit paydirt any day now. It doesn't even mean that there is another intelligent species anywhere out there (and please no cracks about if there's intelligence here). It does make it increasingly likely that whether it be brainiacs or bacteria, the universe in all its wonder is glowing with life.

Something you didn't know

Sure, you didn't.

It appears that people are finally starting to question the received corporate (And GOPper. And Democrat.) wisdom that unfettered free trade is an unquestionable, everybody-wear-a-smiley-face boon to all workers. McClatchy News brings it on:

“For decades we took for granted that everyone agreed with us economists that free trade is good, protectionism is bad. Somewhere along the way, that stopped being the conventional wisdom,” acknowledged U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab, in an interview with McClatchy Newspapers. “And whereas the default vote on a trade bill in Congress used to be a ‘yes’ vote, the default vote on a trade bill now in Congress is a ‘no’ vote.” Why? Because lots of people are no longer convinced that a rising tide of trade lifts all boats - and there's evidence to back them up.

For three decades, the richest 10 percent of Americans have been growing even richer much faster than everyone else. Over the past five years, real wages for all the rest of American workers have been almost flat. Many blame globalization.

During a mid-July congressional hearing, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke contended that education levels largely determine income inequality. But he was angrily interrupted by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who declared, “Mr. Bernanke, that’s simply not true.”

Frank said that the 29 percent of Americans who have bachelor’s and even master's degrees haven't seen real income growth, on average, over the past five years. ...

Frank quoted repeatedly from a new report published by the Financial Services Forum, a think tank run by President Bush’s close friend, former Commerce Secretary Donald Evans. The report was co-written by Matthew Slaughter, a former member of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers.

The report concluded that “over time, the pressures of global engagement spread economy-wide to alter the earnings of even those not directly exposed to international competition.”

Since 2000, the report said, most American workers have seen meager income growth. Only “a small share of workers at the very high end has enjoyed strong growth in incomes.” This occurred despite strong productivity growth, which in the past raised wages and salaries.

In short, the rich have been getting richer, the poor have been getting poorer, and the folks in the middle have been going nowhere. Ain't we got fun.

This shift in opinion against a long-dominant presumption that free trade provides broad net benefits to the U.S. economy is rooted not only in the experience of stagnant incomes, but it's also gaining intellectual respectability as economic theory. Alan Blinder, a Princeton economist and a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, was a lifelong free-trader, like most economists, until he began looking hard at how globalization is evolving.

Recently he shocked free-trade orthodoxy by warning that modern technology and trade practices will put at risk as many as 40 million American jobs within a decade or two.

Still, the old bromides and the old fear-mongering refuse to die. The appropriately-named Blinder, for example, wants to maintain "free trade," just with some job retraining and some more tax breaks to "give incentives to firms to produce here," the article says - which, of course, really means tax breaks to major corporations, ones big enough where the "produce here or there" decision is a practical consideration.

And the sly fears still sneak through. There's this:

Small but already negotiated trade deals with Panama, Colombia and Peru are being held up. While those deals wouldn't affect the U.S. economy greatly, given how small those economies are, they're important to those countries and their blockage sends signals worldwide about changing U.S. attitudes.

Meanwhile, Asian nations continue integrating into the fast-growing Chinese economy's sphere of influence.

An economic variation on military foreign policy (not that the two are ever far apart), preaching The Chinese are coming! while throwing up the image of the faithless, doesn't-keep-its-word US. And then there was this:

The Financial Services Forum report [cited by Frank] backs similar solutions [as Blinder's] as necessary to head off a turn toward outright protectionism, which helped prolong the Great Depression in the 1930s.

See? The alternative will just make things worse! I mean, yeah, all this globalization crap hasn't worked out like we said it would and yeah, only the richest are actually benefitting, but that doesn't mean we should do anything about it. Except teach people how to do different jobs, usuaully for less money. And if those sorts of jobs are found nowhere around where you live, what then?

That's a question I think both important and too rarely asked. I raised it over 13 years ago, in November 1993, in a letter to a friend. Discussing NAFTA and GATT, I noted that while the number of jobs was much discussed in the debate over "free trade," the types of jobs was not. I then went on:

This is without even considering how the changes would impact on different industries and different regions. If, again for example, one sort of industry mostly in the southwest loses those theoretical million jobs and another sort in New England gains them, overall employment would again be the same - but the economic effects on both those regions, not to mention the social disruption, could be enormous. According to a report by the General Accounting Office, exactly that kind of regional “dislocation” is a real risk of NAFTA.

That, in turn, raises another issue which predates NAFTA (and GATT) but is closely connected to them: loss of community or, rather, the creation of what I call rootless workers. For a few decades now, capital has become more and more mobile, shifting from place to place more by electronic transfers than by the movement of actual bonds, bills, and coins. (You’ve heard of “virtual reality;” this is like virtual money.) Corporations have become freer than ever to chase around a country or the world, leaping from enterprise to enterprise, even industry to industry, in pursuit of profit. The result has been regional booms and busts as one area competes with others to see who could offer the most to Big Business in a downward spiral of self-flagellation that inevitably left the losers gasping for economic breath - and, often, the “winners” with a temporary if not downright pyrrhic “victory.” (Consider Texas, whose “boom towns” of the ‘70s became the empty husks of the ‘80s; consider Korea, whose “economic miracle” of the ‘80s, built on the infusion of transnational capital in search of low-wage labor, is turning sour as corporations move on to the Philippines in search of even lower-wage labor.)

The corporate response to this undeniable reality has been to trumpet “emerging opportunities,” “growth regions,” and “market expansion.” Implicit in all this staged euphoria is the notion that working stiffs, ordinary folks, everyday people, or whatever other folksy label we want to put on the 90% of us left out of the considerations of the powerful, are no different than the parts on a machine: replaceable, disposable, even interchangeable. And that the only way for us to survive in this bold new economic future is to be as mobile as capital - that is, to chase work around the country or the world as rapidly as money chases profit. We dare not attach ourselves to a place, a people, a community, or even a particular sort of work because we may have to abandon it on short notice for the sake of our own and our families’ survival, perpetually chasing behind - always, of course, behind - capital in what gives a new, more sinister meaning to “the rat race.”

We have to drink the shallow economic water that runs on the surface of a local economy because if we dare to set down roots and try to drink from a deeper source, we may find the watershed pumped away to feed another, distant, plain, leaving the earth cracked, dry, and barren and ourselves (and the stable communities we hoped to find) to wither. We must, that is, become nomads - no, not even nomads, which implies purposeful ranging over well-known territory, but mere wanderers, emotionally isolated in order to be emotionally insulated against the constant risk and frequent reality of loss. We must be homeless, placeless, rootless.

If that sounds melodramatic it’s because it describes not what’s fully formed today but the end of a process that has been going for some time and will only be accelerated by NAFTA and GATT, which make the macroeconomics of transnational corporations and not the microeconomics of actual human beings not merely the central (that’d be nothing new) but increasingly the only economic standard of measure. On the other hand, if it sounds melancholic, that’s because it is.

I've quoted that passage twice before in different contexts, but it does seem to bear repeating here. Because finally, finally, it may be sinking in that giving transnational corporations their head is not the route to prosperity for any but the already-prosperous, not the source of economic power for any but the already-powerful, not the basis of security for any but the already-secure. That's a small enough ray of hope, but these days we should take what we can find.

Okay, maybe I can't leave it yet

I just came across this via Raw Story, quoting Secrecy News, a blog of the Federation of American Scientists.

On Friday, Bush signed into law legislation implementing recommendations of the 8/11 Commission. He surely wasn't happy about all the provisions, but he signed it.

One such provision required making public the formerly-secret national intelligence budget. On Monday, GOPper Rep. Darrell Issa of California filed an amendment to the Defense Appropriations Act that would undo the requirement to reveal the intelligence budget. Democrat and antiwar hero Rep. John Murtha announced the amendment was accepted. No discussion. No debate. No chance for dissent.

The matter now goes to a House-Senate conference. Considering what just happened with FISA, I have no confidence any Democrat is going to go to the wall to maintain a bill to reveal what previously had been classified information. This is the Democratic Party on which we are supposed to bank our future.

A little more about this...

...before I, you'll pardon the expression, move on.

My post from last week about the weakness of the antiwar movement, which I argued arose from being "too god damned concerned with being seen as respectable [and] serious" and the associated practice of slicing off any supposedly "radical" elements, got a little bit of attention. Avedon Carol said of the part about respectability "I think that's a lot of it." Matt at ScaryShit followed her link, decided it was "an extremely important post," and quoted a couple of paragraphs. And Armando "Big Tent Democrat" Llorens at Talk Left also took note via Avadon and quoted a bit. However, he was of a different mind:

I think Larry is right about the anti-war Netroots failing miserably in 2007 but I think he is wrong on the why it is failing. ...

Larry's critique is based on worrying about imaging. That was not the problem. The problem was deciding to NOT pressure the Democratic Congress. To instead be, led by Tom Mattzie of Move On, coopted by the Democratic Congress. I do not think the protests against the war worried anyone.

In my reply in comments I said

My concern was not about "imaging," which makes it sound like I was talking about PR, but with the sense the "leaders" of the "movement" have of their own image, which is not the same thing. In fact, I see what you call the problem - "deciding to NOT pressure the Democratic Congress" - as the result of that concern with image, not something apart from it.

That is, too many of the leading lights - such as MoveOn - felt and feel pushing for stronger measures on the war, such as the one we agreed on (don't pass an appropriation), would brand them as "too radical" and therefore as not "serious," undermining the image they've cultivated. It would cost them access - and access is, as a lot of MSM reporters will confess (once they've retired), a powerful narcotic, both soporific and addictive.

Ultimately, they have sought "respectability" in the halls of power - and have, as have so many before them, wound up entangled in the web of limitations that status weaves and so have lost the ability to speak truth to that power. That is why they have failed.

We have failed by standing by and not acting on our own apart from that failed leadership.

Related to that is that yes, demonstrations did bother some of those same forces. For a post I was writing some time ago I started to compile a list of Big Name Bloggers and other "leaders" who either dismissed, advised against, sneered at, or even attacked various demonstrations. I threw it away because I decided what I wanted to go after was an attitude, not particular individuals. Clearly, I should have kept it. It would have proved useful.

(The link to my earlier post is added here and was not in the actual reply at Talk Left. I will say here that two names on that list were Ezra Klein and Todd Gitlin.)

While this was going on another example arose indirectly illuminating what I say is the problem. Matt Stoller, another Big Name Blogger, expressed his thoughts on "Why the Progressive Movement Couldn't Stop FISA." First, he said, we need to "consider the possibility that these 57 Democrats believe in a more expansive security state and do not support civil liberties. They ... just don't agree with us. " Okay, fair enough.

But he then addressed the opposition to the bill. Why did it fail? Where was the breakdown, he wondered? Certainly not in the Netroots, oh no.

[A]s a movement, we have only one crop of politicians in office, those elected in 2006. ...

Given the age of our movement, it shouldn't be a surprise that the progressive caucus is weaker than it could be....

Right. There was never any attempt to elect "liberal" Democrats before, say, 2004 and those that were supported in 2006 who voted to kill the Fourth Amendment - such as Jim Webb - well, you can't blame them, it's just because the "movement" is, uh, young. Really young. And, therefore apparently and of course understandably, feeble. Yes, indeed. Not our fault, no siree.

So it's not fault of the Netroots that were too busy preparing for and then celebrating their supposed influence at YearlyKos to notice. And it's not the fault of the Democrats who actually voted for the thing. Nor is it the fault of the Democratic leadership which could have killed the bill in either house of Congress. Nope, all of them entirely innocent. So whose fault was it?

According to Stoller, it was the fault of the "immense and unforgivable incompetence" of the American Civil Liberties Union!

Yes, that ACLU. The one that sent out repeated announcements and action alerts. The one that, as Llorens mentioned in his own case, was the source for "anything and everything" he learned about the bill, something which I strongly suspect that, beyond the vague, often confusing and generally unhelpful last-minute press coverage, was true for most of the rest of us as well. The one that, contrary to Stoller, did push both Reid and Pelosi, but

[t]hey did not listen to us. ... We met with them. They rebuffed our arguments. ...

We gave it the full court press: with action alerts, meetings with Members of Congress and Senators and their staff.

Pelosi and friends spent the entire week negotiating with the DNI and cut out ALL the civil liberties groups - not just the ACLU.

That ACLU, that's the one on whose shoulders lies the entire blame for the failure of effective opposition in Congress to this latest egregious exercise in power-hunger. Or so Stoller tells us.

In fairness to Stoller, he did post the ACLU's emailed answer to his post. But he didn't respond to it, neither apologizing for his outburst nor making any attempt to refute the group's defense. So we are left to ponder his original assertion. And in doing so we are left with, yet again, a movement (or, to be more precise, the "leaders" of a "movement") more concerned with being "respectabile" than effective. A "movement" too afraid of making a fuss, too afraid of not being "serious," of embarrassing the oh-so-important leaders at whose tables of power they eagerly dine on crumbs. The failure must have been - must have been - someone else's fault.

And so what we got was what Llorens called "a vicious cheap shot at the ACLU," adding that

[i]t takes some nerve for a failing Netroots to go potshotting like this. Let's look in our mirrors first.

To which I could only reply "Damn effing straight."

Footnote: The graphic appears to be making the rounds, but I first came across it at The Left End of the Dial.

Passing thought

Here's something that I think indicates the kind of farcical, all-hail-the-Democrats thinking that passes for a "movement" these days which I complained about the other day:

On Wednesday, Avedon Carol, who sometimes posts at Eschaton under the nom de screen "Not Atrios," had this to say:

Lambert wants to ask the Democratic candidates, "What is the Democrats' plan to restore Constitutional Government?"

Hm. Maybe we should ask our reps, too.

She provided links to the House and Senate webpages with contact information. Sometime later, she added this:

Update: Look, I'm not saying we should bash the Dems. I'm saying it's a real issue and no one else is going to ask them, so we have to. ...

It's a question about one of the important issues of the day, and they should be able to answer it.

That is, she felt she had to justify asking Democrats questions other than softball ones that they want to be asked! In comments, the original question was called "the anti-Dems thing," "anti-Democratic," and an "attack." Just really discouraging.

Aaaaaaahhhh!!!

Updated Tell me again, go on, try to tell me again why it was so fucking important to elect Democrats. Just try.

The Senate, in a high-stakes showdown over national security, voted late Friday to temporarily give President Bush expanded authority to eavesdrop on suspected foreign terrorists without court warrants[, Associated Press reports].

The House, meanwhile, rejected a Democratic version of the bill.

Democratic leaders there were working on a plan to bring up the Senate-passed measure and vote on it Saturday in response to Bush's demand that Congress give him expanded powers before leaving for vacation this weekend. ...

Senate Democrats reluctantly voted for a plan largely crafted by the White House after Bush promised to veto a stricter proposal that would have required a court review to begin within 10 days.

And why is it a "temporary" measure, supposedly just for six months? Because taking the time to work on a final, permanent bill would have screwed up their fucking summer vacation, that's why. And oh, yeah, I'm damn sure the version they'll come up with later will take back the "temporary" expanded powers to snoop poke prod and pry, just like those provisions of the Traitor Act with "sunset" clauses - and we all remember how well that worked out.

This whole pile of crap started when an FISA court ruled against part of the Bushites warrantless eavesdropping and by the way, the AP article linked here gets that part wrong. It says the ruling

barred the government from eavesdropping on foreign suspects whose messages were being routed through U.S. communications carriers, including Internet sites.

Bzzzt! It did no such thing. It said such surveillance could not be done without a warrant from the FISA court because it was in effect domestic surveillance and the busybodies couldn't promise that domestic conversations would not also be intercepted.

The fact is, as a means of oversight, the FISA court is a joke: According to data compiled from the court's annual reports by the Federation of American Scientists and presented by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, in the period 1979-2005 the FISA court was presented with nearly 21,000 requests for electronic surveillance warrants and rejected precisely four. Even so, that was too much of a restriction for the Shrub gang, who, as they usually do when they're caught screwing around with the law, demanded the law be changed to let them do what they damn well pleased.

Now, truth be told there was an aspect of this that was (relatively) uncontroversial: Most if not all nations of the world, even if they're not quite so direct about it, reserve the right to spy, including the right to listen in on foreign communications - that is, cases where both sides of the conversation are in foreign countries. (In fact, a lot of countries feel no compunction about doing the same to domestic communications as well. Be grateful for small favors.) The thing is, due to changes in communication technologies, the routes information travels can go rather far afield. It would not be surprising for someone in Peru talking on their cell phone to someone in Japan to have their call routed through Seattle. Email packets can be scattered far and wide on their way from sender to recipient.

Since intercepting of foreign communications was accepted practice, the question became how to do surveillance of communications passing through the US without in effect engaging in warrantless domestic wiretapping. And who was going to decide if the measures to keep the two separate were adequate to the task.

Democrats initially wanted the FISA court to decide; that's pretty feeble protection but it's better than none at all, albeit it not by much. For its part, the White House wanted that power to be in the hands of - get this - the attorney general. That's right, the very man who has twisted himself into so many rhetorical knots to evade his patent mendacity that his name should be Earblot Slagzone.

And yes! the dynamic, the powerful, the Voice of the People Democrats stood their ground and forced the White House to retreat - all the way back to requiring both Slagzone and Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell to approve! What a victory! High-fives and tickertape parades all around! Tickertape being a good approximation of the strength of the Democrats' collective backbone.

The bill also, the Washington Post points out,

would expand the government's authority to intercept without a court order the phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States who are communicating with people overseas. ...

Privacy advocates accused the Democrats of selling out and charged that this bill gives the government more authority than it had under a controversial warrantless wiretapping program begun in secret after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Under that program, the government could conduct surveillance without judicial oversight only if it had a reason to believe that one party to the call was a member of or affiliated with al-Qaeda or a related terrorist organization. This bill drops that condition, they noted.

Democrats "have a Pavlovian reaction: Whenever the president says the word 'terrorism,' they roll over and play dead," said Caroline Fredrickson, Washington legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Fredrickson said the group is "hugely disappointed" and that the Democrats "let themselves be manipulated into accepting the White House proposal ... it's mind-boggling." No it isn't, Ms. Fredrickson, it's Democrats.

But oh, it's true that the fear merchants out in force, each one trying to outdo the other, for example:

- "I hope that there are no attacks before we are able to effectively update this important act." - Rep. Lamar Smith
- "We are not going to put our national security at risk. Time is short." - The Shrubbery-in-Chief
- "Al-Qaeda is not going on vacation this month." - Sen. Mitch McConnell
- "We're at war. The enemy wants to attack us." - Sen. Joe "The Zipperman" Lieberman

But for sheer paranoid wackoness, this is a prize-winner:

"Every day we don't have [this wiretap authority], we don't know what's going on outside the country," a senior White House official said. "All you need is one communication from, say, Pakistan to Afghanistan that's routed through Seattle that tells you 'I'm about to do a truck bomb in New York City' or 'about to do a truck bomb in Iraq,' and it's too late."

Omigod omigod OMIGOD! We might miss that message! Hurry hurry hurry! Oh please protect us Mister Bush, please oh please protect us from the very bad men using email!

This is the kind of mindless, cliché-ridden crap which stampeded Senate Democrats into endorsing virtually everything Bush wanted and House Democrats into rejecting better oversight and perhaps later today assuming the position like they do every time Bush puts on his petulant "my way or the highway" routine. While I have absolutely no expectation they will, what the Democrats - what any decent human being - should do is reply that they feel the call of the open road and Bush can take his power-hungry, lying, fear-mongering bullshit and cram it.

Footnote: But I really am being unfair, aren't I? After all, we know - don't we? - from experience that they'll act fairly and properly, just like our intelligence agencies always have.

As for Democrats, well, I mean, let's be fair and all, at least they'll stand fast and protect our future from any more wacko rightwing fruitcake judges Bush wants on the federal bench. Won't they?

Updated to note that Marty Lederman at Balkinization has a preliminary analysis of the atrocity passed by the Senate.

Okay, to make you feel a little better

AP reported a few days ago on

[t]wo teens from opposite coasts [who] are marching across the country for peace, hoping to gain followers and attention with each step.

Ashley Casale, 19, of Clinton Corners, N.Y., and Michael Israel, 18, of Jackson, Calif., had hoped others who oppose the war in Iraq would join them on their 3,000-mile walk from San Francisco to Washington. ...

The two met 10 minutes before beginning their journey. Casale just finished her freshman year at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, and Israel recently graduated from high school. ...

On Wednesday, the two stopped for lunch in Montezuma[, Iowa]. Wearing T-shirts and displaying deep tans, the two described the blisters and achy knees they have endured as they crossed the western deserts, the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains.

"We've never thought about quitting, but there are parts of the country that are so isolated and towns are so far between we feel like we're alone without any support, but then we come across a town and see the support we have and it helps," Casale said. ...

Israel said he felt good about what he and Casale have accomplished.

"I hope it inspires people to be more vocal and politically active and become more aware of what's going on around them," he said. ...

"Our message is about ending the war in Iraq, but it's more than that," Casale said. "It's about cultivating peace in our daily lives and responding to things in a peaceful, nonviolent way."

The pair - actually now the trio, as they picked up a third go-the-whole-way walker in Iowa - crossed the Mississippi River on Tuesday and hope to be in Washington DC on September 11. This is the kind of action that usually gets very little national press but can generate boatloads of local coverage. You can follow the progress and offer support at www.marchforpeace.info.