The first step is the hardest

You heard about it, you've read about it. Even so, I couldn't let it pass without noting it. Let CNN have the headline.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced a cease-fire Tuesday, hailing it as a new opportunity for peace in the Middle East.

"We have agreed with Prime Minister Sharon to cease all violence against the Israelis and against the Palestinians, wherever they are," Abbas said after talks at their summit in Egypt. ...

Sharon said Israel will cease its military operations in all locations in return for Palestinians' ending violence against Israelis.

What's more, Egypt and Jordan will soon return their ambassadors to Israel.

As gladdening as that news is, we have to keep in mind that, as the Guardian (UK) noted, it was a verbal agreement. There is nothing formal, nothing written, nothing signed. Rather, the two men made speeches stating they had an agreement.

But that may be to the good. I said the other day that the sides needed to be wary of moving too fast, and it seems they are aware of just that.

This time, all sides are proceeding cautiously[, the New York Times reported,] avoiding triumphant announcements that might prove hollow. A senior Israeli official said the Israelis and Palestinians were heading toward "understandings, not a formal agreement."

And the Jerusalem Post reported that

Sharon said: "We must move forward cautiously. This is a very fragile opportunity, one that the extremists will want to exploit. They want to close the window of opportunity for us and allow our two peoples to drown in their blood." He said if the two sides did not act now, the extremists "may be successful in their scheme."

(Which, it seems to me, is something else I just said.)

For his part, Abbas said the agreement "is simply the beginning of the process of bridging the gap," AP said. And there is still a yawning divide to be crossed, including the cynicism and suspicion among the people on both sides, not to mention their governments:

A furious debate has erupted in Mr. Sharon's cabinet [and among Israeli politicians generally - see the Jerusalem Post article] between advocates of responding to the cease-fire with positive steps and opponents who fear that the cease-fire is only "a timeout" from violent attacks, giving the Palestinian attackers time to regroup.

So far, Israeli officials say, the advocates of concessions have won the day, but Mr. Sharon is not going to be able to go much further - for example, to meet American and Palestinian demands for dismantling scores of illegal settlement "outposts" in the West Bank and freezing the growth of settlements near Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Not, at least, until Abbas can show he is not only serious about a ceasefire, which I think can be safely accepted, but is able to keep Hamas, which pointedly noted it was not a party to the agreement and didn't feel bound by it, on board.

But still, overall, the meeting brings some cautions hope - and the very caution is one of the more hopeful things about it.

According to Israeli diplomatic officials, the tone of Sharon's meeting with Abbas was very "serious," there was no euphoria, no elation, and the meeting was held in a very sober and business-like atmosphere. It lasted about an hour and a quarter.

Another Israeli official said "there was a great atmosphere in the talks ... smiles and joking." Those two statements are somewhat contradictory, but there's no reason things couldn't be smiles and jokes but sober when they got down to business.

Two things from the Israeli side struck me as significant. One was that

[p]rivately, Israeli officials made clear their halt in military operations depended on an end to Palestinian violence. And although they do not expect the Palestinian leadership to crack down on militants immediately, that must be done in the long-term, they said. [emphasis added]

That is a much more realistic response than earlier demands that the "infrastructure" of the militants be "dismantled" before any progress can be made. It also suggests to me that the Israelis believe Abbas is sincere in his intentions (or at least are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt), even if they continue to question his ability to carry them through.

The other came from Sharon himself.

Addressing "our Palestinian neighbors," Sharon made clear that Israel has given up its dream of Greater Eretz Yisrael.

"I assure you that we have a genuine intention to respect your right to live independently and in dignity," he said. "I have already said that Israel has no desire to continue to govern over you and control your fate. We in Israel have had to awaken from our dreams, painfully; we are determined to overcome every obstacle that might stand in our path in order to realize the new chance that has been created."

If he intends to be true to his word, including the possibility of compromises even more painful than surrendering the idea of Greater Israel (I'm thinking of Jerusalem), he could be a man who proves key to ending nearly 50 years of war, blood, fear, and oppression. And how would that be for a legacy?

Footnote: One other good thing is the proposal by the White House

to provide the Palestinian Authority with $350 million in U.S. funds to help rebuild infrastructure damaged or destroyed in the Palestinian territories after four years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In addition, another $40 million will be "reprogrammed" from money already authorized for a desalination plant and used for immediate assistance in similar infrastructure programs, Rice said.

See? Even Shrub can't be wrong all the time.

Back to the future

Perhaps trying to keep up the feeling of post-election euphoria, a "senior military official" told CNN on Tuesday that

[t]he U.S. military faces between 13,000 and 17,000 insurgents in Iraq, the large majority of them backers of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party....

Of those, the source said 5,000 to 7,000 are considered "committed" fighters, with the rest considered "fence-sitters," criminals or "facilitators" who contribute material support or sanctuary to the guerrillas.

Just 5,000-7,000 fighters! Well, that's certainly good news! It's quite a change from the 20,000 fighters the US estimated it was facing in September. And oh my gee, it was just in November they were saying there were 3,000-5,000 in Fallujah alone! What's more, they're all just those mean old nasty Saddam supporters, not anybody who might have any sort of, you know, legitimate grievance or just might object to being invaded.

We really have made progress!

Except, well.... When the insurgency first broke out, Defense Secretary Donald Rumpled called them Baathist "dead-enders" and in December 2003, the Pentagon estimated the number of fighters (just fighters, not supporters) at, yep, 5,000. So based on what we're being told now, by their own words, after 15 more months of blood and pain we have gotten by the best interpretation precisely nowhere. And that's even if they're both honest and right. And catch the coda:

The official who provided Tuesday's estimate said the U.S. military believes it killed between 10,000 and 15,000 guerillas in combat last year - perhaps as many as 3,000 during the November push to retake the western Iraqi city of Falluja from insurgents.

So we say we've killed two to three times as many as there were to begin with and there are still at least as many as there were at the start.

Like the man said, war is "friend only to the undertaker."

STDD/GTHO

SOS!

Save Our Security! According to a recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll, Americans are buying into the notion of a looming "crisis" is Social Security, as 64% agreed the system will be "bankrupt" by 2042 if "major changes" aren't made.

Of course, that's complete nonsense. The worst that could be said about Social Security is that it might - emphasize might, as it depends on future economic performance - need some minor tinkering to meet currently-promised benefits.

But if that's the bad news, here's the good news: Based on the same report, Americans have a pretty good idea of what needs to be done: The wealthy should pick up the slack.

More than two-thirds of 1,010 adults contacted from Friday to Sunday said it would be a good idea to limit benefits for wealthier retirees and for higher income workers to pay Social Security taxes on all their wages.

Currently, the cap on wages taxed for Social Security is set at $90,000.

Other options to change Social Security fell far behind - 40 percent of respondents said reducing benefits for early retirement is a good idea; 37 percent said increasing the tax for all workers would be a good idea; 35 percent said the government should increase the age at which people could receive full benefits; and 29 percent said reducing benefits for people under 55 was acceptable. ...

About 55 percent of respondents thought Bush's proposal that would allow wage earners to invest some of their Social Security taxes in private investment accounts in the future is a "bad idea" - the same percentage as a month ago before the president began his campaign for the plan.

I've been saying all along that what the rightists want to do is create a sense of panic where the only issue becomes what sort of drastic change is to be made rather than if such change is needed at all. What's particularly interesting here is that based on this poll, pushing the panic button seems to be having an effect but it's not translating into the results the Bushites want. Happily, undermining Social Security may prove to be a harder sell than even the Shrub team thought.

There is no way to peace...

...peace is the way, said A. J. Muste.

It's so easy, so very easy, to forget that the "terrorists," the "evil" people we condemn, are still human beings. Occasionally, in a case such as Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, we are forcibly reminded of their humanity, but even then we tend to think of them as victims, not as perpetrators. We think of them as having been swept up somehow, as entrapped innocents.

And in fact, many were just more or less swept up off the streets, especially at Abu Ghraib. But try a little experiment: Imagine that all the prisoners at Abu Ghraib, all those in the infamous photos, were known for an uncontested fact to be terrorists, people who had participated in beheadings or attempted suicide bombings or bombings of civilian targets. No doubt, everyone knows it, they themselves freely admit it.

Then think about this and be honest with yourself: Would that in any way, to any degree, change your reaction to their mistreatment? Would it in any way, to any degree, soften your outrage? I suspect that for most of us the answer would be yes: It would make a difference. Which is why it's good to see things like the following, to remind us that even the "evil" can change. It's from the Christian Science Monitor for February 4.

When Judge Hamoud al-Hitar announced that he and four other Islamic scholars would challenge Yemen's Al Qaeda prisoners to a theological contest, Western antiterrorism experts warned that this high-stakes gamble would end in disaster.

Nervous as he faced five captured, yet defiant, Al Qaeda members in a Sanaa prison, Judge Hitar was inclined to agree. But banishing his doubts, the youthful cleric threw down the gauntlet, in the hope of bringing peace to his troubled homeland.

"If you can convince us that your ideas are justified by the Koran, then we will join you in your struggle," Hitar told the militants. "But if we succeed in convincing you of our ideas, then you must agree to renounce violence."

The prisoners eagerly agreed.

Now, two years later, not only have those prisoners been released, but a relative peace reigns in Yemen. And the same Western experts who doubted this experiment are courting Hitar, eager to hear how his "theological dialogues" with captured Islamic militants have helped pacify this wild and mountainous country, previously seen by the US as a failed state, like Iraq and Afghanistan.

As the article notes, there is more to the quiet than this; Sanaa has undertaken numerous steps, some more democratic than others, in the name of security. And tension still pervades the atmosphere. But the degree of quiet - there have been no attacks in over two years - is significant.

Hitar says his method - at first thought dangerously naive and still regarded as such by some - is simple: He invites the prisoners to use the Koran to justify attacks on civilians. He listens to them and he respects them. But when they fail,

he shows them numerous passages commanding Muslims not to attack civilians, to respect other religions, and fight only in self-defense. ...

If, after weeks of debate, the prisoners renounce violence they are released and offered vocational training courses and help to find jobs.

Hitar says that US diplomats have approached him about seeing if his methods can be applied to Iraq.

"Before the dialogues began, there was only one way to fight terrorism, and that was through force," he says. "Now there is another way: dialogue."

Ultimately, peace, even in age of terror, is the way.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Queen Elizabeth I?

JEOPARDY!
Hippopourri for $200

The hippo is closely related to this porcine farm animal.

Attack of the Killer Geeks

[scale: the bar = 50 microns, or 50 millionths of a meter]

The more we learn about life, the more amazing it seems. Life is much more tenacious than we once imagined and we keep discovering it in places that not so long ago we thought it couldn't exist.

Tiny single-celled creatures, many of them previously unknown to science, have been found at the deepest point in the world's oceans, almost 11km[, nearly seven miles,] down.

The soft-walled foraminifera, a form of plankton, were recovered by the Japanese remote submersible Kaiko. ...

[T]he organisms have become adapted to the crushing pressures that exist in a location of the Marianas Trench known as Challenger Deep.

This hole in the ocean floor is totally dark and the immense column of water above pushes down with a force that is over a thousand times greater than that at the surface - about 110,000 kilopascals.

Foraminifera are thought to be the most abundant form of life in the seas after bacteria.

They typically have shells, but these organisms are soft because there is insufficient calcium carbonate at such depth to build hard parts.

The Japanese team which made the discovery noted that these single-cell creatures belong to the lineage with has provided "the only species to have invaded fresh water and land" - that is, this is kin to where we came from.

Kaiko was lost on a mission to the Nankai Trough in 2003. There is currently no remotely operated vehicle in service that can reach the bottom of the Marianas Trench.

Whenever I hear or read about someone worrying that science is taking the wonder out of existence, making everything into cold calculation, I think of things like this and I say again, as I have before, "keep your gods: The universe is wonder enough for me."
 

Signs of the times

The degree of just blind, unbelievable, conceited arrogance displayed by the Shrub team is becoming SOP for the entire executive branch of the federal government. I'm sure you've heard about the case, but wait for the punch line:

In a rebuke of the Bush administration's treatment of suspected terrorists, a federal judge ruled yesterday that military tribunals set up at the Guantanamo Bay naval base to allow detainees to contest their imprisonment are unfair and illegal, and failed to provide due process to suspects. ...

At issue was whether a Navy-run review panel set up last year to evaluate each prisoner's status as an "enemy combatant" satisfied a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that detainees deserve a case-by-case review.

In a blow to the Pentagon, [District Court Judge Joyce Hens] Green said it did not.

In her ruling, Green cited allegations of torture at Gitmo while blasting the so-called "Combatant Status Review Tribunals," run by the Navy, in which captives appealing their confinement are denied legal representation and are unable to challenge or even see intelligence reports used against them - that is, the case against them is a secret.

The judge also noted that some Guantanamo detainees were "captured hundreds of thousands of miles from a battle zone in the traditional sense of that term." Prisoners were swept up in Gambia, Zambia, Bosnia and as recently as four months ago in Thailand, she said.

Even the "necessity" of "strong action" against "enormous and unprecedented threats" cannot be allowed to override "most basic fundamental rights for which the people of this country have fought and died for well over 200 years." she wrote.

A pretty thorough thrashing, it would seem, and directly contrary to the idiotic ruling of Judge Richard Leon last month that while prisoners could file for habeas corpus relief there is no way they can actually get it.

But - here comes that punch line - she hadn't taken into account the utter contempt in which the administration holds all contrary opinion.

In a statement, the Defense Department said: "We believe that Judge Leon's decision recognized the authority and responsibility of the president to detain enemy combatants. The Defense Department is using necessary, lawful and appropriate means to defend the United States and our troops."

That is, their response to the ruling is to declare that she actually ruled in their favor and so they can go on doing what they damn please!

Just appalling. Then again, it's much the same as what the WHS* did under the original Supreme Court ruling from last June that the prisoners had the right to have their status considered by the courts and remanded the matter to lower courts for consideration of the cases on the merits: They simply went back into court and made the same arguments over again, as if the Supreme Court had never ruled!

Their contempt for Constitutional government is palpable.

*WHS = White House Sociopaths

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

Two steps forward, two steps back. But you're free! Free as a bird!

Afghanistan is full of young widows. The wars and violence that have plagued the country for the past 25 years have decimated the male population[, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) said on January 31].

Once a woman is married, under Afghan tradition, she becomes a member of her husband's household, and hence is subject to the will of her husband's father.

They are expected to marry their brother-in-law or another close relative of her husband; if they don't, it can be considered the same as running away, with violent consequences. Marrying someone outside the family puts them at risk of being killed.

Interestingly, women were in this way freer under the Taliban: Islamic law does not require that a widow marry within her husband's family and in 1999 Taliban leader Mullah Omar issued an edict saying so. But since their overthrow, that limited freedom has eroded despite efforts of the government to work with religious leaders to "break the hold these traditions have on the population."

"But tradition," as the article says, "dies hard in Afghanistan."

Even in Kabul, supposedly "the most progressive place in the country for women," there are clear limits, as another IWPR article shows.

From the outside, there’s no hint that what lies beyond the glass door is anything other than what the red sign out front indicates: a beauty salon.

But inside, there is not only a modern salon for haircuts, makeup and nails, used most often by brides and their attendants, but also Afghanistan's first fitness club for women of all ages, single and married, to get in shape.

It is the first and so far the only. While sports clubs for single young women interested in joining a local team or even eventually turning pro have appeared in various parts of Afghanistan, the idea of a fitness club for all women to attend just for heath and beauty is still so outre that both the name and the location of the place are secret.

"We don't dare to name our club, because people would think negative things, and our fitness club could be bombed and all of us killed," said Shakila, 35, who works for a non-governmental organisation, and was exercising at the club. ...

When ask by a reporter what they thought about a women's fitness club being located in their neighbourhood, several shopkeepers expressed concern. ...

A local mullah also expressed his disapproval of such a fitness centre.

"If a women or girl gets a chance to spend time outside for sport or entertainment, she may make immoral bonds," said Mullah Mohammad Shoaib of Kabul, referring to the potential for out-of-wedlock sexual relations between women and men.

But - wait! We invaded, we threw out the old repressive government, we arranged for a new constitution, there were elections and everything! And, and, and, George even said that ending the oppression of women was one of the things that made what we did so good! So there isn't any oppression! So, so, so, so this is all made up! That's it! You made it up! You, you, LIBERAL! Can't trust you people....

Be careful what you wish for, election footnote

Columnist Scott Burchill, writing in The Age (Australia) for February 7 declares the fact that elections took place in Iraq is "a good thing" - but he then reminds us that

[c]ontrary to media reporting, particularly in outlets that led the cheerleading for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the United States and Britain were strongly opposed to elections and had to be dragged kicking and screaming to accept a ballot.

Citing the facts that the US resisted elections and agreed to them only under pressure from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and others, Burchill calls the celebratory coverage "a stunning case of wilful amnesia."

That's an excellent point, but I want to focus on something else he said.

The US said Iraq was too turbulent for full elections and that a vote couldn't be held until a complete national census was held. Sistani's aides countered that food-ration cards issued to every Iraqi family could be used as registration documents for the elections. And that's what's happening now.

File this with the Unintended Consequences Division. Interpress Service (Italy) reported after the election that

[m]any Iraqis said Monday that their names were marked on a list provided by the government agency that provides monthly food rations before they were allowed to vote. ...

"Two of the food dealers I know told me personally that our food rations would be withheld if we did not vote," said Saeed Jodhet, a 21-year-old engineering student who voted in the Hay al-Jihad district of Baghdad. ...

Many Iraqis had expressed fears before the election that their monthly food rations would be cut if they did not vote. They said they had to sign voter registration forms in order to pick up their food supplies.

The marking of the names on the list may have simply been a way of preventing double voting, just as voter registration lists are used in the US. But the fact remains that the use of ration cards as voter registration cards very likely artificially inflated the vote totals because voting became linked, intentionally or otherwise, with receiving the food rations on which almost every Iraqi family depends.

That idea is backed up by a report from the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) last week, which described people voting because after their experiences with "elections" under Saddam Hussein, they were afraid to not vote, afraid of the potential consequences. As a result,

[t]hat legacy of fear, paradoxically, drove a minority of voters in the southern city of Karbala to come out for the January 30 ballot for the wrong reasons.

Oda Sakran, a 63-year-old farmer in this mainly Shia region, failed to take part in the 2002 elections, in which official figures showed that Saddam received nearly 100 per cent of the vote.

For his omission Sakran was arrested and tortured, and his food rations were then severely cut. This year, he felt obliged to vote because of that bitter experience. "I don't want to have problems with those [political] parties because they don't respect anyone," he said, by way of explanation.

Other Karbala resident said rumours were circulating that people would be arrested if they didn't turn up for the polls.

Fatima Hasan, a 50-year-old illiterate woman, said she went to the polls for fear of being kicked out of her home. "I participated in the election to protect myself and my children," she said. "But we don't want to interfere in politics as it will bring us difficulties."

Voters were seen putting blank ballots in the boxes, fearing to chose one slate lest the others get angry with them. Others checked off all the lists, saying they supported them all, likely for the same reason.

Even at that, the early estimate of 72% turnout, which I suspected was much too high, has been cut back to 60% and could drop further. Farid Ayar, a spokesman for the Independent Electoral Commission for Iraq, said the earlier figure

was "only guessing" and "just an estimate...." He added that it will be some time before the IECI can issue accurate figures on the turnout.

"Percentages and numbers come only after counting and will be announced when it's over," he said. "It is too soon to say that those were the official numbers."

I think Burchill had it exactly right: the fact that an election happened was a good thing. But it does seem that the election, both in turnout and in prospects for the future, simply isn't all we were expected to believe.

Be careful what you wish for

Preliminary returns from the Iraqi elections show clearly who will be the dominant party in the new constitutional assembly: the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance lead by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Dawa Party. The UIA has gotten about 2/3 of the vote from the 10 of Iraq's 18 provinces where vote counting is well along; the list lead by current prime minister Iyad Allawi is running a distant second.

While those 10 are ones where the UIA was expected to do well, the lead is so big that even as it shrinks as votes from other areas are tallied (as it no doubt will) it will still be the dominant force and could possibly have an absolute majority when the final results are announced, probably on Thursday.

In light of those results, says Monday's Christian Science Monitor,

slowly and cautiously, the leading Shiite politicians in the United Iraqi Alliance are beginning to lay out their political demands and expectations.

Iraq's next prime minister will probably be a member of their coalition - not Iyad Allawi, the current interim prime minister and America's favorite. And Islam, they say, will play a bigger role in government than ever before in modern Iraq.

What they mean by "a bigger role" is spelled out more in Sunday's New York Times:

With religious Shiite parties poised to take power in the new constitutional assembly, leading Shiite clerics are pushing for Islam to be recognized as the guiding principle of the new constitution. ...

At the very least, the clerics say, the constitution should ensure that legal measures overseeing personal matters like marriage, divorce and family inheritance fall under Shariah, or Koranic law. ...

On other issues, opinion varies, with the more conservative leaders insisting that Shariah be the foundation for all legislation. ...

[But] the clerics generally agree that the constitution must ensure that no laws passed by the state contradict a basic understanding of Shariah as laid out in the Koran. Women should not be treated as the equals of men in matters of marriage, divorce and family inheritance, they say. Nor should men be prevented from having multiple wives, they add.

One tenet of Shariah mandates that in dividing family property, male children get twice as much as female children.

"We don't want to see equality between men and women because according to Islamic law, men should have double of women," said Muhammad Kuraidy, a spokesman for Ayatollah Yacoubi. "This is written in the Koran and according to God."

This has come up before; just over a year ago, the Iraqi Governing Council tried to impose Sharia law about family matters. Women's groups protested and, perhaps more importantly, the US had the power to simply veto the idea, so it died. Now, however, while it obviously still has considerable leverage, the US is at least technically out of the picture and not really in a political position to dictate terms. Last March I suggested that Shiites were willing to compromise on matters like an interim constitution and an interim government, even though they were not the result of the direct elections they wanted, because they were biding their time, figuring that at some point the system would enable them to achieve the position of authority they felt was their due by virtue of being the majority. Now, they may well be thinking, that moment is at hand.

The leading Shiite clerics say they have no intention of taking executive office and following the Iranian model of wilayat al-faqih, or direct governance by religious scholars. But the clerics also say the Shiite politicians ultimately answer to them, and that the top religious leaders, collectively known as the marjaiya, will shape the constitution through the politicians.

"Don't worry: We won't hold offices, we'll just control things from behind the scenes." Pretty cold comfort for those who got used to living in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, probably the most secular nation in the Middle East. And in fact,

[s]ome effects are already being felt locally. In Basra, the second-largest city in Iraq, where one of Ayatollah Sistani's closest aides has enormous influence, Shiite religious parties have been transforming the city into an Islamic fief since the toppling of Mr. Hussein. Militias have driven alcohol sellers off the streets. Women are harassed if they walk the streets in anything less than head-to-toe black. Conservative judges are invoking Shariah in some courts.

There are, of course, any number of reasons why this might not come off as intended: US opposition (a constitution establishing an Islamic government that openly declares the authority of God to oppress women is not exactly the example Shrub wants to hold up to the world as his great achievement for "freedom"), Sunni opposition, opposition from women's groups and secularists - it's even possible the UIA could fracture during the negotiating and jockeying for position.

And then there is the often-forgotten party, the Kurds.

Kurdish political leader Jalal Talabani said he would seek the office of either president or prime minister when the National Assembly convenes[, AP reported last Thursday].

"We as Kurds want one of those two posts and we will not give it up," Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said at a news conference alongside the other main Kurdish leader, Massoud Barzani.

The Shiites, probably unable to force a constitution through over Kurdish opposition, could possibly buy them off, if you will, with the largely-ceremonial presidency and some guarantees regarding autonomy. It would limit their ability to impose Sharia on the Kurds or dominate them in other ways, but I doubt that's a fight they want to take on in any event.

And so the outlines of what we have wrought at a cost of over 100,000 lives and nearly $200 billion are becoming clearer and sharper, looking ever-more like the jagged edges of shattered glass, bloodying everyone who comes near. Congratulations, Georgie. That's one hell of a legacy.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is 3Com Park?

FINAL JEOPARDY!
Royalty

Bette Davis, Glenda Jackson, and Dame Judi Dench have all played her on film.

Inch by inch

Row by row.... Just thinking about some of the deeper meaning that could be plucked out of that song after reading how the New York Times reports that

[a] New York State judge in Manhattan ruled yesterday that a state law that effectively denied gay couples the right to marry violated the state Constitution, a decision that raised the possibility that the city would begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples as soon as next month.

The ruling, by Justice Doris Ling-Cohan, was the first on the state level to side with proponents of gay marriage. In her 62-page decision, she wrote that the state's Domestic Relations Law, which dates to 1909 and limits marriage to unions between opposite-sex couples, deprived gay couples of equal protection and due process rights under the state Constitution.

She likened the law to those that once barred interracial marriages and said that words currently used in defining legal marriages - husband and wife, groom and bride - "shall be construed to apply equally to either men or women."

The Times goes on to note that the ruling only applies to New York City and that other judges in other counties have upheld the old law. At some point, the state's highest court, the Court of Appeals, will have to settle the matter.

Meanwhile,

if the city does not appeal within 30 days, the city clerk's office would be required to issue a license to any gay couple that applies, something gay couples across the city and state have been seeking for years. And in her ruling, Justice Ling-Cohan all but ordered the city clerk to do so.

Not surprisingly, Gov. George Pataki

"strongly believes that the judge's decision is wrong," said Kevin Quinn, a spokesman for Mr. Pataki. "New York's marriage laws are clear that marriage is between a man and a woman and any changes to our laws should be made through the legislative process, not by a judge or local officials."

That is, the same old crap that wingers always trot out about judges "making law." In addition to invalidating a significant part of judicial review, these cretins conveniently and self-servingly overlook a basic fact: The constitution is the law, it's the highest law, the law to which all others must conform. That's what it's there for. A state judge who declares a law invalid because it violates the state constitution is not making law, they are following the law. If you want to disagree with Judge Ling-Cohan's ruling, if you want to say her logic is wrong and the law is valid, fine. But you cannot rationally dispute her on the grounds of what the state law says when the issue is what the state constitution says.

Could it be?

Well, I'm gobsmacked. Could some reality actually be seeping through the cracks and into the Shrub team?

First we have Secretary of State CantBe Right saying on Friday, as reported by CNN, that

an attack on Iran over its nuclear program is "not on the agenda at this point."

"We have many diplomatic tools still at our disposal and we intend to pursue them fully," Rice told a news conference Friday after a meeting with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

And now Donald Rumpelstiltskin has followed up by declaring

Iran is believed to be years away from having a nuclear weapon and the United States has decided to use diplomacy, not military action, in dealing with the issue,

CNN said on Sunday.

Now, let it be noted clearly that they left themselves considerable wiggle room. Rumpy said "I don't know if the [intelligence] estimates [of Iran's capabilities] are correct or not." And Veep "The Big" Dick Cheney called Iran

"a potential source for instability" in the region.

"It's a regime, obviously, that we've got major problems with, not only because of their search for nuclear weapons, also the fact they've been a prime state sponsor of terror over the years," Cheney said,

echoing language used in the buildup to the invasion of Iraq. Still, Rice and Rumsfeld have taken a clear step back from the much more threatening rhetoric used of late. As recently as January 17 Shrub pointedly refused to "take any option off the table."

I can't help but wonder if this has anything to do with the recent departures of some of the high-profile neocons from the administration, Doug Feith being the most recent example. Did their leaving allow for the change? Or did they leave because they were losing the debate over the next steps the Shrub team was going to take?

Or is this an attempt to defuse Seymour Hersh's report that the US is already carrying out secret reconnaissance missions in Iran?

Or, here's one more possibility: Did they undertake those missions and realize, as others have, that Iran's nuclear program, whatever its intentions, is so spread out at so many facilities, that an attack simply is not a practical notion - and they decided to make lemonade?

Whatever the reason - and I do suspect that the departure of the neocons is in some way connected - it's still a step down in the rhetoric and that is a good thing.

Bulgegate Revisited

The story is a little old now but still well worth noting. The January/February issue of Extra!, the journal of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), contains an article about Bush's bulge, the one in the back of his jacket observed during the first presidential debate with John Kerry.

It runs down the attempts by NASA scientist Robert Nelson to get press attention to his enhanced photography (which clearly shows something under Shrub's jacket) and the unwillingness of the mainstream media to treat it seriously. What was most interesting to me, and which I hadn't heard before, is that after originally asserting through a source that Dr. Nelson's information got tossed on the "nutpile," the New York Times admitted through its ombudsman, Daniel Okrent, that in fact reporters had worked the story. But, he said, quoting executive editor Bill Keller, "In the end, nobody, including the scientist who brought it up, could take the story beyond speculation. In the crush of election-finale stories, it died a quiet, unlamented death."

Unlamented by who?

The only "speculation" that could be involved is just what the bulge was. Short of a White House confession, there would seem no way to resolve that. So is that the standard? Anything short of an official confession makes a story unrunnable?

There clearly, undeniably, was something there. The White House initially claimed the photos had been doctored, then blamed it on a "badly tailored suit," then Shrub said it was a "poorly tailored shirt," and then a source said it was a bulletproof vest (even though Bush had specifically denied that and, according to the FAIR article, "no known vests have rear protuberances resembling the image discovered by Nelson").

The Times, then, was presented with story not only involving likely cheating in the debate but one where the White House blatantly lied four different ways. When the story could be considered odd or amusing, when it could be used as an example of how a "rumor" among "political conspiracists ... takes hold in dark corners of the public imagination," it got covered. But when it turned serious, it was spiked, allowed to die "a quiet, unlamented death."

I ask again: Unlamented by who?

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who are the (Washington) Redskins

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
NFL Home Stadiums for $2000

The San Francisco 49ers play home games in this park.

TOMORROW'S FINAL JEOPARDY! CATEGORY
Royalty

Math lesson

From Harper's Index for the January, 2005 issue of Harper's, drawing on figures from research by Les Roberts at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore:

- Factor by which an Iraqi is more likely to die today than in the last year of the Hussein regime : 2.5

- Factor by which the cause of death is more likely to be violence : 58

Memory lane

There is a difference between being firm in your convictions and just being dumb-ass pig-headed. To illustrate, consider this passage, brilliantly spied by someone at Buzzflash or one of their readers.

According to Gary Ott, who was then a reporter for the Plainview [Texas] Daily Herald, Bush stopped by the paper's little office "maybe five or six times. He'd sit down at my desk; he was a fun guy. He was very outgoing, very friendly, and we would argue politics since I was a liberal." ... Bush criticized energy policy, federal land use policy, subsidized housing, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration ("a misuse of power," he said), and he warned that Social Security would go bust in ten years unless people were given a chance to invest the money themselves. [emphasis added]

The source is the Texas Observer for June 25, 1999, talking about then-candidate for the GOPper presidential nomination, George Dubya Bush. The incidents described took place during Shrub's first run for Congress - in 1978.

So far, Social Security going "bust" is 17 years overdue by his calendar. But it's just around the corner! Really, really, this time! It is!

Really!

Close cover before striking

Silly advice surrounds us. Like the warning I've been told about that's found on a certain brand's baby buggy: "Remove child before folding." (My personal favorite from an informal competition run by New Scientist magazine.) And then there were some of the things our parents told us, like "Be sure to wear clean underwear in case you get in an accident." Which, unfortunately, served only to give many children the idea that if they never changed their underwear, they'd never get in an accident.

But then again, some advice is worth heeding - like "Read all the way to the end before you make up your mind." Case in point:

Washington (Reuters, February 1) - A group of asbestos defendant companies and insurers has declared its opposition to a Senate proposal curbing asbestos claims, and warned that industry groups working on the plan do not necessarily represent them.

The group sent a letter dated Jan. 28 to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, complaining the latest draft of his plan for a compensation fund to replace asbestos suits "raises serious concerns."

Faced with literally hundreds of thousands of injury claimed related to asbestos, two industry alliances have been negotiating with Congress to set up a $140 billion fund for claimants with the proviso that the industry would be shielded from further liability.

So wait - this fund would limit the companies' liability and yet this group of defendants is opposing it? What gives?

Rather than set up [the] fund, as Specter's plan suggests, it was time to consider other solutions, the group said - such as legislation setting medical criteria for asbestos victims to bring claims against companies.

Ah. So the idea here is that the limitation on corporate liability is actually too good a deal for victims of asbestos-related conditions and what we should do is make it harder for anyone to make a claim in the first place.

Whew. Balance is restored.

Stay calm

Don't get excited. It may mean nothing at all. Too many times, that's exactly what such things have meant: nothing. Still, I can't help but see a glimmer of hope in the fact of some other nothings, that is, in what hasn't happened between Israel and the Palestinians.

For one thing, despite the occurrence of some incidents, some shootings, of a sort that in the past would have been used as an excuse to undo any developing rapprochement, talks are continuing, contacts have not been broken amid threats and accusations.

And now, despite the Palestinian Authority's foolish depiction of a proposed prisoner release by Israel as "insulting," something that in the past could have lead to Ariel Sharon (literally) throwing up his hands, declaring "they don't want peace," and undertaking some new offensive, Haaretz (Israel) says that

Israel and the Palestinians agreed in talks Saturday night on the establishment of a special committee to deal with the thorny issue of prisoner release, and to address the issue in earnest following the completion of the summit meeting in the Egyptian resort of Sharm al-Sheikh on Tuesday.

How this plays out remains to be seen: According to Haaretz, there is division within the Israeli government on the hardest of the prisoner issues: dealing with those who have killed Israelis. The defense minister and the chief of staff say they should be eligible for release, while the head of Shin Bet, (the counter-intelligence and internal security service) is opposed with Sharon leaning toward the latter. In addition,

President Moshe Katsav also told Sharon Saturday that he would not be prepared to authorize the release of Palestinian prisoners who killed Israelis - regardless of government decisions on the issue. Katsav has the authority to grant amnesty to prisoners.

An agreement to release any such prisoners, therefore, could provoke a government crisis. That could prove to be a bigger stumbling block than the actual negotiations over the prisoners, since it's doubtful that Sharon, already in a near-constant political struggle over his Gaza withdrawal plan, would want to pick another very public fight.

But still, take some hope - calm, not excited hope, but some hope - in the simple fact that the two sides have actually agreed to talk about it. Again, as always, they come in with very different agendas: Israel will discuss the prisoners; the PA will want to arrange for their release. I hope - there's that word again - that each side realizes that and has already thought about some approaches to deal with it. But at least they will be in the same room.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who are the (Detroit) Lions?

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
NFL Home Stadiums for $1200

FedEx Field really delivers for this NFC team.

Too much of a good thing?

Updated I've been trying to post something about the rapid developments in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for at least a few days now but events keep running ahead of my writing. There certainly is a lot going on. Perhaps the biggest news is that

[a] regional summit will take place at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Tuesday, attended by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah of Jordan.

Government sources said that the summit would conclude with the announcement of new security understandings between Israel and the PA. The details of the understandings were concluded in a series of talks between Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and former PA security minister Mohammed Dahlan, and will be approved today by a special ministerial committee.

The sources also said that Egypt and Jordan would announce at the summit the return of their ambassadors to Israel, though not necessarily immediately,

Haaretz (Israel) reported on Thursday.

There was some dispute about the genesis of the meeting, but like so many other things in the struggle there, it's hard to tell what's true, what's misunderstanding, and what's being said just for effect. For example, Haaretz also reported that

[a]ccording to the Israeli version of things, the invitation to the summit meeting ... caught Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his aides by surprise. ...

[Egyptian intelligence chief Omar] showed up at the PMO [Prime Minister's Office] yesterday[, February 2,] and began the discussion by saying that in light of the significant progress in the area of security and the pending new Israel-Palestinian Authority security arrangement, Mubarak wanted to host a meeting between Sharon and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Sharm el-Sheikh rather than Jerusalem, and with Jordan's King Abdullah in attendance too.

Sharon gave his immediate nod, and the meeting with Suleiman lasted a mere 40 minutes.

On the other hand,

[s]enior Palestinian officials complained ... that the summit was cooked up by Egypt and Israel alone, with the PA being informed only after the fact. They charged that Israeli officials failed to mention the summit initiative during any of the high-level Israeli-Palestinian talks of the past few days, including the Mofaz-Dahlan meeting.

Even so, both sides have agreed to go and a summit that was thought to be weeks or months off is suddenly just days away.

And oddly, that may not be the best news. With things developing so fast, expectations can easily become unrealistic. It's happened before, when hopes have spiralled up only to come crashing down because there was no solid mutual understanding of what needed to be done to support them. While a readiness, even an eagerness, for a settlement would be a welcome change on both sides, some moderation of speed might be even better.

The thing is, summits usually work best when they are the culmination of lots of spadework, when agreements are already pretty much in hand. The sources quoted above do suggest some agreements will come out of the meeting, but each side is coming in with its own agenda and there is not much overlap between them. Palestinians want to focus on areas such as release of Palestinian prisoners, removal of checkpoints, and Israeli withdrawal from West Bank cities. But "Israeli sources say the summit meeting will focus on security issues," which usually means demands for crackdowns on militant groups.

How far there is to go can be seen in the fact that each side has made some gestures toward the other only to have them downplayed or outright dissed. For example,

Khaled Meshal, head of Hamas' political bureau, said that Hamas has already agreed to a cease-fire in principle, but "the lull will not last long if the rights of the Palestinian people are not restored, including regarding Jerusalem and the refugees,"

which would seem to indicate Abbas's efforts to win militant cooperation are having some success. What's more,

[i]n Gaza, calm was restored ... after a few days of renewed violence, and senior Israel Defense Forces commanders praised the PA's efforts in this regard. They particularly commended the PA's discovery and destruction of an arms smuggling tunnel on the Gazan-Egyptian border.

That would seem to be a good thing. However, in a statement just two days later, and less than a week after praising Palestinian efforts and saying, according to CNN, that conditions are "ripe" for "a historic breakthrough," Ariel Sharon complained in an official statement that the PA was not

taking substantive steps to fight terror....

The prime minister stressed that getting into the road map will happen only after the Palestinians halt terrorist activity, dismantle the [terror] infrastructures and carry out governmental reforms....

Does that mean the praise by the IDF for the efforts made was wrong? Or just irrelevant? Meanwhile, on the other side, Palestinian officials

on Thursday rejected the Israeli offer to release 900 prisoners as a gesture to Abbas, calling the proposal "insulting."

Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erakat criticized Israel's offer, saying it was freeing only people serving relatively short terms.

That is, Israel was only releasing people who would have been released soon anyway. That may well be true, but "insulting" still hardly seems a fair (or wise) description. They should have called it a "positive development" and that they looked forward to further agreements on prisoner releases that would address those held under longer sentences.

The fact that at least publicly each side sees only problems and recalcitrance on the other side instead of (even if grudging) progress may be all we need to know about how great a divide is still to be crossed.

And still in the background lurk the radicals on both sides, the ones who would wreck any hopes for peace if they could and who still well might, for their own varying reasons, try to do just that. Some are obvious and require no reminders: the militants, the murderers, the suicide bombers who have targeted shopping malls and buses. Some are obvious but we do need to be reminded of them:

[Israeli] Attorney General Menachem Mazuz said Thursday that administrative detention would be increased as punishment for settlers who resist evacuation under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan.

The attorney general said that Jews could be arrested if proof is shown that they intend to carry out hostile attacks to obstruct the evacuation planned for Gaza and West Bank settlements.

And it's not just obstructionism involved: Ariel Sharon, like Yitzhak Rabin before him, in greater physical danger from the Israeli rejectionist front that he ever will be from the Palestinian one.

And finally, some of those in the background have been dragged into the daylight, as a commentary by journalist Jonathan Cook in the Daily Star (Lebanon) lays out:

The latest legal maneuvers by the Israeli government to confiscate Palestinian land in East Jerusalem have rightly caused outrage, even among senior Israeli officials.

Last summer, it emerged that the government secretly resurrected a 55-year-old piece of legislation drafted in the immediate aftermath of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Using the 1950 Absentee Property Law, Israeli officials have the right to seize [without compensation] the holdings of any Palestinian landowner they define as "absent."

The renewed application of the law came to light only after an Israeli lawyer pressed the army for a promised entry permit into Israel for his client, Johnny Atik, a Bethlehem farmer who needed to reach his fields. His land lies on the Jerusalem side of the "security barrier." The permit never arrived; instead Atik received a letter advising him that his land had been passed to the office of the Custodian of Absentee Property. His fields now declared state property, he is ineligible for compensation.

The outrage was great enough that, even though the commentary says there is evidence he oversaw the implementation of the policy last year,

Israel's attorney general has told the government to call an immediate halt to confiscating Palestinian property in East Jerusalem under a 1950 land law.

Meni Mazuz said he was never consulted about the policy, which was secretly approved by the cabinet last summer.

He wrote to the finance minister saying the law could not be used for people absent from their property because of Israeli security measures,

the BBC reported on February 1. Suspicion - which would appear justified - is rife that the purpose of the land grab, which has involved hundreds of hectares (1 hectare = 10,000 square meters = a touch less than 2.5 acres) over the last few months, was to seize all Palestinian land around Jerusalem that lay within the "separation fence," thus cementing Israeli control over the disputed eastern part of the city; Cook asserts that Mazuz issued his finding only because of the bad press the practice brought to Israel.

Still, in the face of it all - the forces arrayed against it; the suspicions and hatreds; the lengthy, depressing list of failures - there is cause for hope. Even Secretary of State CantBe Right

recently said peace was impossible unless the Palestinians gained a state of their own that satisfies their aspirations....

And they are talking. And they are meeting. And some progress is being made, some things offered by both sides. Michel Rocard, a former prime minister of France and now a member of the European parliament, wrote in the Daily Star for Thursday that he could attest to "the gathering momentum toward peace" from his experience as an international monitor for the Palestinian elections. He went on to say that

[t]here is no question that current conditions present a unique window of opportunity. But we must keep in mind the major difficulties that can limit our ability to seize this opportunity, and the international community must make these difficulties very clear to both parties.

The first difficulty is that, although Sharon evidently intends to go through with his military withdrawal from Gaza, he is vague about what he wants to achieve in future negotiations. Indeed, he has never made the slightest allusion to the idea of including the West Bank and Jerusalem in such negotiations. But, for the Palestinians, there can be no negotiations that do not include both issues.

The second difficulty concerns the fact that Sharon has always appeared to believe that it is within the means of the Palestinian Authority to eradicate all terrorism arising from inside the Palestinian territories and aimed at Israel. However, external observers know that this is not the case, even if Abbas can succeed in reducing the level and number of attacks.

In order for the Palestinian people as a whole to cease to glorify, support and shelter terrorists, they need to discover real hope for a new life for themselves. That, in turn, depends on an economic recovery in the Occupied Territories and a belief that concrete steps toward a negotiated political solution are being taken.

The creation of such hope now depends exclusively on Israel, which must act immediately to give a boost to the many Palestinians who yearn for peace rather than continue focusing on a total disappearance of terrorism. Delay on this front will only delay the disappearance of the terrorists.

The third difficulty concerns the fact that, on both sides, most religious authorities, rabbis and imams alike, have maintained a hard-line stance. They continue to preach that the respective "taboos" of their communities, the very issues that block all efforts to make peace - in particular the status of Jerusalem and the "right of return" to Israel for Palestinian refugees - are non-negotiable. To make these religious authorities acknowledge their responsibility is a duty that all of international civil society, including religious leaders, must embrace.

None of these efforts are undoable. All will be demanding. But a chance to achieve real, lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians has clearly arrived. We must seize this moment.

Which, at least on the first two points, seems to me pretty much exactly what I've been saying.

And yes, we must seize this moment. But we - that is, they, the Israelis and Palestinians who truly want peace, have to make sure they do not run so hard and so fast after that so-far elusive goal that they again fall flat on the blood-soaked sands.

Updated to add the links to info about Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon, Jonathan Cook and Michel Rocard.

Robot Geek

The Hubble space telescope strikes again. It's latest image, released Thursday, is a beautiful shot of swirling clouds of interstellar dust illuminated by the light from an exploding star.

Astronomers first detected the exploding red supergiant star back in 2002 and, since then, have captured a series of dramatic images as the light pulse explosion expands at a speed of 186,000 miles per second.

The exploding star is known as V838 Mon and is some 20,000 light years away from the Earth in the direction of the constellation Monoceros, on the very edge of the Milky Way.

Another image consists of six smaller images of the same star dating back to May 2002. For something extra cool, go to this link at HubbleSite where you can get a video of those six images blending from one into the next.

During its 15 years, Hubble has offered convincing proof of black holes, provided insight into huge explosions of energy known as gamma ray bursts, captured images of the earliest galaxies that formed after the Big Bang and measured the speed at which the universe is expanding.

And raised some interesting questions. Here's one, one of those things that you don't realize until someone points out what should have been obvious. I just came across it in this, from Space.com for April 2, 2003, and I admit the thought hadn't occurred to me before now:

Clarity is what astronomers and the public have come to expect from the Hubble Space Telescope. But the sharpness with which Hubble photographs distant galaxies has scientists pondering why the pictures are not blurry, as some new calculations suggest they should be, and whether some basic assumptions about space, time and gravity might have to be rethought.

Simply put, the best current scientific hypothesis about the root structure of spacetime is that it's a sort of seething foam, with bits constantly popping into and out of existence. Light traveling through that foam should be slightly disturbed and the further it travels, the more the disturbance should add up. As a result, the galaxies shown in pictures such as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field should be slightly "fuzzy" beyond that of the unavoidable imperfections of the equipment. But they're not.

Hubble pictures are crisp and clear, no matter the distance to the object.

And that, say two separate teams of researchers, might mean there are flaws in quantum theory.

And that could require a major rethink.

I've long had the suspicion that quantum physics is not the end. It just feels, I don't know, wrong somehow in a way I can't pinpoint. And I don't mean any of the so-called "quantum weirdness" (like particles being in two places at once) with which physicists love to torment non-scientists. I don't mean it defies common sense. Or, rather, it does defy common sense but since common sense deals with things on a human scale and quantum physics deals with things on a subatomic scale, there's no reason it should follow common sense. No, it's something else, just a sense for which I have no firm foundation. I guess what really got me going was one time talking with a physicist about how the issue of the arrow of time relates to quantum theory and at one point he would up telling me that an infinite amount of something could be equated with its nonexistence. That struck me as an example of what I call "hand-waving," getting rid of a problem by just waving it off as irrelevant or unimportant. (Note to science buffs: This was not a matter of renormalization.)

Let me be clear: I am not saying quantum physics is "wrong" or that I "don't believe it." No theory that has successfully and repeatedly predicted the outcome of experiments to over 30 decimal places can be called wrong. In fact, quantum and relativity physics (the latter of which also defies common sense) are the most spectacularly successful scientific theories ever.

What I'm saying is that just like Newton's laws of motion and of gravitation (which are still sufficiently accurate to land spacecraft on a moon of Saturn, among other things) were an approximation of reality more closely approached by Einstein's theory of special relativity, which in turn proved to be part of his deeper theory of general relativity, and which in its turn (to Einstein's chagrin) became one of the things that helped develop quantum physics, I have a suspicion that ultimately quantum physics - even after (or perhaps as part of) finding the Holy Grail of physics, a unification of quantum and relativity - will yield to something even deeper, even more profound, even more fascinating - and even further from common sense. 

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Andie MacDowell?

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
NFL Home Stadiums for $400

In 2002, this team began playing at Ford Field, which replaced the Pontiac Silverdome.

Passing thought

On January 27, U.S. diplomat Bruce Connuck told the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that the US "remains steadfastly committed to upholding its obligations under international law relating to the prohibition of torture."

Doesn't it say something about all that's been revealed that we found it necessary to actually say we're against torture? I mean, isn't that the sort of thing that one would, in a sane world, just be able to assume?

This ranks right up there with "I am not a crook." And just about as accurate.

Footnote: The full text of the Justice Department's December 30 memo on torture, the one that pretty much pulled an Emily Latella routine on the earlier, deservedly infamous memos, can be found here as a .pdf file. In reading through it, bear in mind this is an interpretation of law, it is not law. That is, it's about what laws against torture mean. In the hands of determined amoral people, meanings can be very flexible. Some of the earlier memos didn't actually approve of torture - they just redefined what the word "torture" means, restricting it to that which causes pain and suffering on a level associated with organ failure or death.

And as I noted back on November 14,

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

"'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.'"

Political correctness in action

Once upon a time, the term "politically correct" was used on the left as a self-corrective, as a way of expressing disdain for rigid adherence to a party or ideological (at the time, often Maoist) line. Of course, it couldn't just be left alone that way, and after playing a featuring role in a short-term fad on some college campuses of parsing every expression for any trace of bias of any sort whatsoever as a means of being politically-hipper-than-thou, it assumed a central place in right-wing PR mythology, where every objection to even the crudest racial and ethnic slurs was met with a chorus of charges of "political correctness," which was equated with "suppression of free speech" by "Stalinists," who were equated with "liberals."

Like much of what the nutzoids spew out, this demon threatening to undermine all we hold dear was largely spun out of whole cloth, this time by stringing together a handful of incidents, most of which, on sober reflection, turn out to have been misreported, misrepresented, or otherwise blown out of proportion by a scandal-hungry media more interested in profitable conflict than dull, boring old accuracy.

Nevertheless, there is such a thing as "political correctness," defined as that range of expression which is to be allowed in "reasonable" debate among "reasonable" people. Expressions beyond that range, expressions that are politically incorrect, are to be suppressed.

Two recent incidents reflect that divide. Read them and take note, if you will, of what is and isn't acceptable speech in our political culture.

1) In the wake of 9/11, Ward Churchill, a professor at the University of Colorado and chair of its ethnic studies program, wrote an essay and a follow-up book that called the attacks

a response to a long history of U.S. abuses....

Churchill has said he was not supporting the Sept. 11 attacks in his essay, but believes "such attacks are a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. policy."

In the essay, he also called those killed at the World Trade Center "little Eichmanns," apparently because many of the companies there were in some way involved with US economic domination of other nations.

No one really took any note of it until recently, when he was invited to take part in a panel discussion about 9/11 at a small college in upstate New York. Hundreds of relatives of 9/11 victims protested his invitation so angrily that the college, concerned about security, cancelled the program altogether.

That was the first result. Second result: He has been forced to resign his position as chair of ethnic studies. Third result: The state House and Senate of Colorado, with a total of one dissenting vote between them, have passed a resolution denouncing him, calling his statements "evil and inflammatory." Fourth result: Governor Bill Owens wants the university to fire him.

The Board of Regents "discussed the matter" but will not fire him - "at least not immediately." The reason given was not a commitment to academic freedom but that there is a process for firing a professor.

2) During a panel discussion in San Diego on Tuesday, Lt. Gen. James Mattis, who commanded Marines in Afghanistan and Iraq, said of his experiences

"Actually it's quite fun to fight them, you know. It's a hell of a hoot," Mattis said, prompting laughter from some military members in the audience. "It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up there with you. I like brawling.

"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil," Mattis said. "You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them."

First result: He has been actively defended by Marine commandant Gen. Michael Hagee, who called him

"a superb leader and one of the Corps' most courageous and experienced warriors.... I remain confident that he will continue to serve this nation with dedication and distinction."

He even insisted that Mattis "intended to reflect the unfortunate and harsh realities of war," which, apparently is "a hell of a hoot."

Second result: He was also praised by Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, claiming that his actions in combat "clearly show that he understands the value of proper leadership and the value of human life."

Hagee did concede, however, that Mattis should have chosen his words "more carefully." Exactly what words he should have chosen remain unclear. What is clear is that he will suffer no consequences for declaring it' s "hoot" and "a lot of fun" to kill people.

So we have two statements. One that the 9/11 attacks were a "natural and unavoidable consequence" of US policy and that some of the killed were "little Eichmanns." And another that declares what great fun it is to kill people. With the former, you are threatened, the state government denounces you, and the governor tries to get you fired. With the latter, your superiors praise you and defend you. That clearly tells us which one of those is outside, and which one is inside, the boundaries of acceptable speech.

I think that tells us something about who we are as a people.

Footnote: Please, please, please don't anyone start shouting that I'm justifying or agreeing with the characterization of people killed in the WTC as "little Eichmanns." I said nothing of the sort and you're only proving your inability to reason through what I am saying.

News flash: US Senate endorses torture

The votes are in and counted. To what should be no one's surprise, Alberto "It Used to be Albert but Now It's Alberto 'Cause That Way We Can Say You're a Racist if You're Against Me" Gonzales has been approved as Attorney General. It had, of course, been a foregone conclusion ever since, as the Washington Post said on Wednesday,

Democrats concluded they had neither the votes nor the political stomach to block confirmation of Gonzales.... After a bruising debate last week followed by the confirmation of Condoleezza Rice as the first black woman to be secretary of state, some Democrats were concerned that they would be perceived as opposing qualified minority candidates.

In other words, since the Dummycrats yet again decided to let the reactionaries define the terms of debate instead of standing in the Senate and labeling those who even imply such a thing as what they are: without honor, without decency, without morality, without honesty.

The vote was 60 - 36. The yes vote included 54 GOPpies and 6 Dummycrats; 35 Dums voted no along with Jim Jeffords (I-VT). One GOPper, Conrad Burns of Montana did not vote; neither did three Dums: Max Baucus (Montana), Kent Conrad (North Dakota), and Daniel Inouye (Hawai'i).

The roll of shame, in addition to the four who missed a chance to take a stand against torture, consists of all GOPpers plus these Dums:

Mary Landrieu (Louisiana), Joe Lieberman (Connecticut), Ben Nelson (Nebraska), Bill Nelson (Florida), Mark Pryor (Arkansas), and Ken Salazar (Colorado).

May shame and disgrace follow their names until they are blotted out.

Noted in passing

Forty-six years ago today was the day the music died.

One.
Two.
Three.

Housekeeping note

I've just become aware that some browsers misread my expression "STDD & GTHO." Usually done without quotes or the spaces, it stands for "Set the Damn Date and Get the Hell Out" of Iraq.

But apparently some browsers read the ampersand followed immediately by the GT as meaning a "greater than" sign so it comes out as STDD>HO. Which I expect was really confusing to people who came in after I started using the phrase regularly.

So I'm going to try doing it is STDD/GTHO from now on. Hopefully, fewer people will read a post about Iraq and end up going "huh?"

Well, I suppose some might anyway, but at least not for that reason.

Footnote to the preceding

One of the nuances of Social Security, and something the Bushites hope to change, is the fact that the initial benefit level that's set for a new retiree is pegged to wage growth, which is a different measure than inflation, which is based on price growth. Since over the longer term, wages tend to rise faster than prices (happily), benefits pegged to wage growth tend over that same longer term to outrun inflation. That's why retirees in 2042 can expert to get higher initial benefits in real terms than those retiring now.

One of the changes the Shrub team proposes for Social Security is to index those first year benefits to prices rather than wages. That would result in a sharp cut in anticipated benefits for future retirees - and of course the further off your retirement, the bigger the cut.

What's more, on Tuesday, Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) released the results of a study performed by the Congressional Research Service at his request that showed that Shrub's proposal

would have pushed seven million seniors into poverty this year, had the plan been in effect since the Social Security program began in 1940. ...

Currently, there are 3.5 million seniors who are living in poverty in the U.S. The report indicates, however, that 10.5 million seniors would be in poverty this year if the plan being seriously considered by the White House had been initiated in 1940, the first year in which Social Security benefits were issued. ...

If this proposal had been in place since the Social Security program began, workers with average earnings who retire at age 65 would be receiving benefits that are 60% lower than those that are currently being paid to them.

The full report can be found here; the report is in .pdf format, as is Baucus's press release linked above. Thanks to Buzzflash for the link.

State of the onion

So it seems that in his State of the Union address, Shrub claims that Social Security is "headed for bankruptcy."

Okay, let's go through this one more time. We'll start by defining our terms.

lie n. 1. A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood. 2. Something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression. --lie v. lied, ly-ing, lies. --intr. 1. To present false information with the intention of deceiving. 2. To convey a false image or impression. [American Heritage Dictionary]

By that definition, is the assertion that Social Security is going bankrupt a lie? Was Bush lying? Yes. Period.

Now, there is a narrow legal definition for use in bankruptcy proceedings under which being "bankrupt" is equated with being insolvent, that is, being unable to meet all current debts and without - this is an important part often overlooked - a reasonable expectation of being able to meet them in the future. In such a proceeding, the assets of the bankrupt party are taken by the court and distributed to creditors.

But no one imagines Social Security going into bankruptcy proceedings. There will be no creditors banging on its doors. And in fact if we're going to speak in narrow legal terms, there is no way SS could go "bankrupt" because technically, it does not have "debts." The money in the fund was not obtained by loans and it was not obtained by accepting services with a promise of future payment. In fact, by virtue of the bonds it buys, which are in effect a loan to the rest of the government, the system is a creditor, not a debtor.

The system has "obligations," which are not the same thing. Obligations are promises of future behavior as opposed to legal financial commitments arising from past behavior (which debts are). As a crude illustration, consider a union which has a contract with a company under which the workers are supposed to get a 3% raise next year. The employer has a contractual "obligation" to pay that raise, but is not in "debt" to the workers. If the employer pleads poverty, threatens to close up shop and move, and pressures the union into givebacks so that the raise becomes 1%, then that is now the obligation. The employer has not failed to pay any "debt" because the obligation for that extra 2% never came due.

The obligations Social Security has are ones it has as a federal government program, that is, ones it has taken on itself as a matter of law. It's a social contract rather than a legal one and one which the government has the legal authority to change as it sees fit. The government could, if it chose, simply slash future benefits to whatever degree it felt necessary and :poof: any "insolvency" is gone.

This does not mean that the system should just cut benefits (it shouldn't) or that it should not take steps to insure that all promises that have been made are kept (it should). It does mean it could take such steps and that therefore all the talk of debt, insolvency, and bankruptcy have no real meaning in this context.

What's more, and more important, it's safe to say that when people hear the word "bankrupt," they don't hear the legal definition, they hear instead the more colloquial meaning: "totally lacking in a specified resource or quality; depleted of valuable qualities or characteristics; totally depleted; destitute; ruined."

And I say that it's undeniable that George Bush intended for them to hear it that way, knew they would hear it that way.

But Social Security will not be destitute, will not be ruined, in the Dreaded Year Zero of 2042 even if the ridiculously pessimistic assumptions of the Social Security trustees prove by some bizarre chance accurate. (They project that over the next 75 years the economy will grow at an average rate of 1.8% a year, just slightly better than half that of the 3.4% per year average of the previous 75 years.) What will happen instead is that the surplus - specifically created and built up to see the system over the hump of the "baby boomer" retirement years - will be depleted and we will be back to the "pay as you go" system on which Social Security has functioned for most of its existence.

(The Congressional Budget Office, using a somewhat less pessimistic forecast, projects the fund will have to dip into the surplus in 2020 and will not deplete it until 2052. And while for the sake of future financial security a certain amount of caution is wise in such matters, it should be noted that if the economy grows as fast for the next 75 years as it has in the previous 75 years, the trust fund surplus will not even come close to being used up.)

Even if no changes are made, none, zero, the trustees' own figures say that benefits payable to new retirees in 2042 will be higher in real terms (i.e., after allowing for inflation) than those paid to new retirees now. With no changes, retirees in 2042 will get bigger benefits - will be able to buy more stuff with their checks - than those retiring now. That is a truly, truly bizarre definition of a "bankrupt system."

There is no way the White House does not know this. There is no way they can claim ignorance. There is no way they can honestly maintain the facts say anything different. They know that the system is not going under, that it will be there for those in their 60s, those in their 40s, those in their 20s, those who have not yet even entered the labor market. They know.

And they are lying through their damn teeth when they tell you otherwise.

Footnote: Beware of wingers bearing dictionaries. Already there are attempts being made to justify the word "bankruptcy" by pointing to the legal definition of the term and saying that if come 2042 (or whenever) SS can't pay all the benefits that are now promised, it therefore will be "bankrupt." These attempts to find a way to parse words and pluck out legal definitions as opposed to common understandings to escape the facts is as absurd as the "we never actually said the particular word 'imminent'" nonsense.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Mr. (Fred) Rogers?

JEOPARDY!
Honorary Degrees for $1000

South Carolina's Lander University gave a Humane Letters Degree to this Groundhog Day actress, but only once.

Hassles and irritations

I've had major, major problems tonight. I don't know if it's the phone system or AOL, but I can't seem to stay online for more than 2 minutes at a time. Hopefully, I can stay on long enough to post this explanation of why there hasn't been anything else up tonight and then to get Jeopardy! up. If things improve, there should be a few things posted overnight.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Nicholas Cage?

JEOPARDY!
Honorary Degrees for $600

It was a beautiful day in his neighborhood when he got a Ph.D. from Middlebury.

Gasp!

The "Oh My Goodness! What a Shock!" Award this week goes to that perennial winner, President Shrub, who

will outline ideas about strengthening Social Security but will not spell out all the details of a plan to fix the system's financial problems when he delivers his State of the Union address Wednesday night,

AP reports. The article goes on to say that offering an outline rather than details "reflects a split between the two houses of Congress" about how to deal with the issue.

That, however, is almost surely wrong. It has been the White House's strategy all along to offer as few details as possible, preferring to stoke the fires of "Crisis! Crisis!" In fact, the article itself says

Bush is nowhere near ready to propose actual legislation, and a senior administration official cast some doubt on whether the administration would even be ready to spell out details in late February or early March, as had earlier been suggested.

As I noted on December 20, this is smart politics but bad ethics. (Yeah, another shock, I know.) The whole idea is to stampede the public and through them Congress into believing Social Security is untenable, so the only issue becomes how change rather than whether to change, thus avoiding comparisons between his noodlings and the current system which repeatedly come out unfavorably for the former.

A key to watch for is, in his references to Social Security, how many times Our Only President makes reference to the year 2018. That's the year when, by current estimates, Social Security will begin paying out more in benefits than it collects in taxes. Some wingers are already floating the notion that at that time, there will have to be benefit cuts or tax increases "unless we act now!" Omigosh! The crisis is not 38 years in the future, it's only 14 years in the future! There's no time to lose! (The calculations were made in 2004.)

Not quite. It's true that if things go as predicted, after 2018 Social Security will indeed pay out more than it takes in. As a result, it will have to dip into its surplus to meet requirements - a surplus, and this is the important part, that was specifically created for just this purpose! It was specifically created because planners saw this coming and did something about it. So going to the surplus does not indicate a failing, either as a shortfall or a shortcoming, in Social Security. Rather, it indicates a strength.

There is no crisis in Social Security. Even if the very pessimistic economic assumptions of the trustees of Social Security were to prove accurate - and they haven't yet - no more than minor tinkering is required. (I'd start by lifting the ceiling on income on which Social Security taxes are collected.) We should keep hammering that same simple point: There is no crisis! Do not be buffaloed by the hirelings of the high and mighty into surrendering your future security. There is no crisis!

Learning your lesson

This is from a few days ago but still well worth noting. It the link is from Pharyngula via Lean Left.

Back at the beginning of December, I mentioned that Dover, Pennsylvania had achieved the dishonor of being the first place in the country to mandate the teaching of the intellectual fraud of "intelligent design" as a scientifically-valid alternative to evolution. As part of that, teachers were required to read a four-paragraph disclaimer at the beginning of the unit on evolution that boiled down to "don't put too much stock in this evolution stuff 'cause nobody actually knows and by the way, check out this book on intelligent design" and yes, it did refer to a specific book, one called Of Pandas and People, regarded as the founding document of the intelligent design movement.

But the National Center for Science Education reports that on January 5, eight high school science teachers in Dover delivered a letter to the district superintendent stating their refusal to read the required statement on the grounds that doing so would violate professional standards set down in state law. The letter said (emphasis as per the original)

INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT SCIENCE. INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT BIOLOGY. INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT AN ACCEPTED SCIENTIFIC THEORY.

I believe that if I as the classroom teacher read the required statement, my students will inevitably (and understandably) believe that Intelligent Design is a valid scientific theory, perhaps on par with the theory of evolution. That is not true. To refer the students to "Of Pandas and People" as if it is a scientific resource breaches my ethical obligation to provide them with scientific knowledge that is supported by recognized scientific proof or theory.

We've all had some bad ones, I know I certainly have, but the fact is that on the whole, teachers rock!

I'm reminded of the nonviolent resistance to Naziism undertaken by Norwegian teachers during World War II, who, by simply refusing to cooperate, undermined the attempts of the man whose name has come to mean "traitor," Vidkun Quisling, to establish Nazi organizations in Norway. "You have destroyed everything for me," he railed at them.

Now, let's be clear. Am I equating the risks the Dover teachers face - potentially, they could lose their jobs, although for the moment the administration is not pressing the issue - with the threats of forced labor camps and death faced by those in Norway? Of course not.

Am I equating the Nazi's drive for power with an ultimate desire of our "Christian" fundamentalists for a theocracy, for total control, for the ability to force all others to do, act, and even be taught to think as they would have them do, act, and think?

Damn straight I am.

Just remember that the risks of labor camps arose for the teachers only when the threat of job loss was not enough. If you really think that the fundies of this country would not, had they the power to do so, escalate from threats to firings and then beyond if firings did not prove sufficient to their ends, then you simply have not been paying attention. Back in December, I noted how William Rivers Pitt had written of being "down to the ethic of total opposition." At some point, and perhaps sooner than many of us would like to think, we may have to discover just what "total" means.

In the meantime, the more such exemplars as those Dover teachers we have, the more that day is put off and the more the likelihood of it dims.