Decisions, decisions

All right students, time for today's analytical exercise. Compare and contrast these two situations:

Decision One, from AP for Tuesday:

A federal judge has denied prosecutors' efforts to keep anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles jailed pending his trial on charges he lied in a bid to become a U.S. citizen.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone ruled Friday that Posada, 79, should be released. Prosecutors immediately asked her to delay the order, but she refused the request late Monday.

Posada, a former CIA asset, is a known terrorist wanted in both Cuba and Venezuela for his role in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner in which 73 people were killed. In fact, when the Department for the Security of the Fatherland made an interim decision to refuse to release him pending trial, the letter informing him of the decision included this:

You have a history of engaging in criminal activity, associating with individuals involved in criminal activity, and participating in violent acts that indicate a disregard for the safety of the general public and a propensity for engaging in activities proscribed within the provisions of INA § 212(a), that pose a risk to the national security of the United States. Further, you have shown a cavalier attitude towards the impact your actions have had on the safety and well being of persons and properly. Open source information and your own statements link you to the planning and coordination of a series of hotel and restaurant bombings that occurred in Cuba over a several month period in 1997.

He's also a clear flight risk with, prosecutors charged, "a demonstrated and recent ability to travel under cover and avoid detection" who has already been ordered deported. (The article falsely claims that he hasn't been deported because the US has been unable to find a country willing to take him. In fact, Venezuela wants him to be tried in the airliner bombing but the US refuses to send him there because in a sudden burst of tender concern it fears he might be tortured.)

But nope, nope, the judge says, he's got to go free pending trial. After all, it's only fair, right?

Decision Two, as reported by Reuters on Wednesday:

A U.S. federal court judge has refused to dismiss terrorism charges against alleged al Qaeda operative Jose Padilla who says he was tortured while held at a U.S. military brig for more than 3-1/2 years.

U.S. District Court Judge Marcia Cooke, in an order late on Monday, rejected Padilla's October 2006 motion for dismissal of the case due to "outrageous government conduct," clearing the way for the expected April 16 start of his high-profile trial.

Padilla was initially accused of plotting to detonate a "dirty bomb" - but in the years since his arrest, the charges gradually evaporated, leaving only the by-definition vague accusation of "offering material support" to "terrorists." When Padilla, a US citizen was arrested in Chicago in May 2002, he was labeled an "enemy combatant," setting off a legal battle that went to the Supreme Court - which, to its shame, punted on the narrow technical grounds that Padilla had filed his suit in the wrong federal court, making him start all over again.

After getting a favorable ruling in the Fourth Circuit Appeals Court, in November 2005 the Shrub team short-circuited a possible return to the Supreme Court by switching Padilla to civilian custody and saying he'd be tried in a civilian court.

But there was still that little matter of, uh, well, not to put too fine a point on it, but the torture to which he was subjected during the time he was in military custody and so was entitled, the Bushites insisted, to no legal rights at all. Torture including isolation and sensory deprivation so severe, with such debilitating effects on his mental status, that serious questions have been raised about his ability to even participate in his own defense. Short version: They broke him mentally.

"Hey, no problem" said Judge Cooke.

Cooke rejected the dismissal motion out of hand, saying it had no bearing on charges....

"Mr. Padilla fails to present a cognizable claim of outrageous government conduct entitling him to dismissal of the indictment," Cooke said in her order denying the dismissal motion.

She did not dispute the claim that Padilla had been abused and tortured but said the argument for dismissal of the charges against him suffered from "numerous legal infirmities."

So yeah, he may well have been tortured but who cares? Because as we all know, "legal infirmities" are more important than human rights or government following the rule of law.

Footnote one: At least she's consistent: Last month, Cooke ruled that Padilla's constitutional right to a speedy trial had not been violated because the three and a half-years he was held in solitary confinement in a military prison did not count.

Footnote two: According to AP, the prosecution in the case plans to have a CIA agent testify in disguise and under a false name. Padilla's lawyers are protesting and Cook says she'll have a wrtten order. Gee, I'm on tenterhooks wondering which way she'll decide.

Footnote three: Despite its implications, our "paper of record" tossed off this Padilla story in a single paragraph.

It only counts in horseshoes

Damn, they keep coming so close but when it comes right down to it, the Democrats just can't pull off a really good impression of a vertebrate. I refer to the statement from Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in response to Bush's "invitation" regarding war funding, a statement which was deeply disappointing and a sign of the Democrats' refusal to stand up to the White House thugs.

First, the background. It seems that yesterday, our Cacoepist-In-Chief

invited Democrats to discuss their standoff over a war-spending bill, but he made clear he would not change his position opposing troop withdrawals. The White House bluntly said the meeting would not be a negotiation. ...

"At this meeting, the leaders in Congress can report on progress on getting an emergency spending bill to my desk," Bush said. "We can discuss the way forward on a bill that is a clean bill, a bill that funds our troops without artificial timetables for withdrawal and without handcuffing our generals on the ground."

What, then, is the Congress supposed to be like a coporate project manager being called to the boss's office in order to explain themselves? What the crap is this "report" nonsense? Does Bush even think of Congress as a co-equal branch of government?

[White House deputy press secretary Dana] Perino said Democrats could benefit by meeting with Bush.... "Maybe they need to hear again from the president about why he thinks it is foolish to set arbitrary timetables for withdrawal," she said.

Okay, I take it back. Congress is not supposed to be a corporate project manager being called to the the boss's office. It's supposed to be a recalcitrant grade school student being called to the principal's office.

In response, Democrats, doing their very best to look like evolved creatures, declared that they were ready to talk with Bush, but, in the words of Harry Reid, in order for that to happen

Bush must agree to "take a seat at the table of negotiation, of compromise, of direction change."

So far, so good. But, as one might expect, the Dummycrats couldn't leave it at "good." That might leave the wrong impression. So Reid and Pelosi issued a joint statement staking out a Democratic Party position on Iraq. This is it, quoted in full (the introductory paragraph of the press release is not included):

The American people want the President and the Congress to work together to bring a responsible end to the war in Iraq. Congressional Democrats are willing to meet with the President at any time, but we believe that any discussion of an issue as critical as Iraq must be accomplished by conducting serious negotiations without any preconditions. Our goal should be to produce an Iraq supplemental bill that both fully funds our troops and gives them a strategy for success.

With his threat to veto such a plan for change in Iraq, President Bush is ignoring the clear message of the American people: We must protect our troops, hold the Iraqi government accountable, rebuild our military, provide for our veterans and bring our troops home.

The President is demanding that we renew his blank check for a war without end. Despite the fact that the President persists in trying to score political points at the expense of our troops, congressional Democrats have repeatedly reached out in the spirit of cooperation. We renew our request to work with him to produce a bipartisan bill that provides our troops and our veterans with every penny they need, but in turn, demands accountability.

This statement, received well in various parts of the lefty blogosphere (for example here and here) is actually a mismosh of nonsense and bullshit, both internally contradictory and vacuous.

Look, let's cut to the chase. Reid and Pelosi insist they want to "bring our troops home." They want us to believe and accept and come next year vote on the basis of the Democrats being the antiwar party, the "bring 'em home" party. This in the same statement where they declare their desire for a supplemental bill that "fully funds" Bush's war and produces a "strategy for success."

Just what the hell is a "strategy for success" in Iraq? In fact, what the hell constitutes success, much less a strategy for it? Four years in, hundreds of thousands of dead, hundreds of billions of dollars spent and, it feels like, a lie for every dollar, a history of deceit, ignorance, hubris, and greed that has chaos and civil war as its only progency, and people want to talk about a "strategy?" About success? Just how blind, how removed from reality, how stupid can some people be?

No, that's not right. Not stupid. Rather, how motivated by partisan ambition can some people be? Refine it further: We know how motivated by partisan ambition the Bushites can be, we've had six years of seeing it. But now we're seeing just how motivated by the same the Democrats can be. This is not a statement of position but of positioning, not of policy but of politicking, carefully designed to appear antiwar while fleeing in terror from the prospect of being called "anti-troop" or "wishing for defeat."

It is, in fact, just another attempt to straddle the divide, to say "We're for the troops! We're for victory! We're for ending the war!" all at the same time. And what's more, "We want 'accountability!' But we won't take any steps to enforce it." Reading their statement made me feel like the Robot going "It does not compute!"

Because it doesn't. Not so long as George W. Shrub can say, and has said, essentially the same thing: "I want the troops home as soon as possible but we have to support them and we can't withdraw before victory."

To put it calmly, despite the good sign that others take the Reid/Pelosi statement to be, I am singularly unimpressed. And until the Dems offer an actual "strategy for success" that involves "bringing the troops home" instead of "supporting them" by prolonging the bloodshed, I will remain so.

Footnote: Perino said that

We understand that Congress has a role to play. We understand what that role is.

It would have been amusing and, I suspect, instructive if someone had asked "And just what is that role?"

Maybe the world isn't completely going to hell after all

It was nothing, it seemed, nothing, that is, that affected my life in any discernible way. Surely nothing Earth-shattering. But still, there is was: Agence France Presse reporting that

[v]ote counting began in East Timor Monday after a peaceful presidential election which saw long queues at polling stations and raised hopes for an end to the cycle of violence that has gripped the nation.

East Timor has certainly had its share of pain and violence. The invasion by Indonesia in 1975 initiated 25 years of repression and mass murder that killed over 100,000 people, perhaps as many as 200,000, in a nation with a population considerably less than 1 million. Another wave of violence swept the country when in the wake of a 1999 vote for independence, militias loyal to Indonesia "went on the rampage, murdering hundreds and reducing towns to ruins," as the BBC put it.

Then, about a year ago, fighting broke out again in a dispute between parts of the army that lead to months of violence and instability, echoes of which rang as recently as February and March of this year.

East Timor has a long way to go. There are persistent divisions and unresolved enmities. It has economic potential but lacks the infrastructure to take advantage of it and so will need outside help for some time.

But still, look again, and there it still is:

Vote counting began in East Timor Monday after a peaceful presidential election....

The words "East Timor" and "peaceful" in the same sentence. It's a moment to be savored - especially by the people there who have lived through the things they have seen.

Interesting to note

Kenneth Walsh, chief White House correspondent for US News & World Report, says that

Republican strategists with close ties to Congress predict that majority Democrats and President Bush will find a compromise on the Iraq funding issue sooner rather than later once the legislators and the president return to Washington from their spring break. ...

One possible outcome ... would be for the White House accepts [sic] some form of nonbinding "bench marks" for success in Iraq as part of legislation to increase supplemental funding for the war, while at the same time the Democrats delete a mandatory withdrawal timetable from the funding bill.

Interestingly, this "compromise," which substitutes meaningless blather for anything that even pretends to be a means of enforcement (and it really was a pretense but even that was better than this), is exactly what Sen. Carl Craven (D-WeSupportTheTroops!Really!) suggested as a possibility on Sunday. So was that actually a trial balloon? Or perhaps a signal of something in the works?

It'd certainly be smart politics for the White House, which is what spurs doubts, since the Shrub gang is more prone to petulant foot-stamping and stick-your-tongue-out stubbornness than to smart politics. Nonetheless, they are not complete dunderheads and a bill that would give Bush everything he wants without constraints that can't be "certified" away or even ignored if necessary while at the same time undercutting attempts to actually enforce an end to the madness (efforts which were contingent on his vetoing the supplemental) would seem to be a dream deal. A dream deal brought to him, to you, to all of us by, yes indeed, your "we are so against the war" Democratic Congress.

Thanks to Raw Story for the link.

Fourth footnote

It is, if you will, a top-down view of the already-present effects of global warming.

Mountaineers are bringing back firsthand accounts of vanishing glaciers, melting ice routes, crumbling rock formations and flood-prone lakes where glaciers once rose.

The observations are transforming a growing number of alpine and ice climbers, some of whom have scientific training, into eyewitnesses of global warming. ...

"I personally have done a bunch of ice climbs around the world that no longer exist," said Yvon Chouinard, a renowned climber and surfer and founder of Patagonia, an outdoor clothing and gear company that champions the environment. ...

Already, Switzerland's Matterhorn had to be closed to some climbing at times because of recent summer rockfall attributed to global warming, and its Great Aletsch Glacier — Europe's largest — has retreated a couple miles from its peak of 14 miles in length in 1860. The Swiss Alps' icy soil that glues its rock faces together is thawing, causing instability.

At Montana's Glacier National Park, glaciers are vanishing like the storied snows of Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro. In South America, the great ice fields of Patagonia in Argentina and Chile are shrinking; Bolivia hopes to keep its only ski area open by using artificial snow as the Chacaltaya Glacier fades.

The glacier from which Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made their first ascent of 29,035-foot Mount Everest in 1953 has retreated so much that mountaineers now walk hours longer to reach it.

A mile-long lake replaced the glacier at 20,305-foot Island Peak in Nepal's Everest region.

"So who ya gonna believe," sneer the skeptics. "Me or your lying eyes?" Fortunately, it seems that fewer and fewer people are listening.

Third footnote

Subtitled, perhaps, the revenge of the nerds. The IPCC Summary for Policymakers is just that: a summary. The real facts are contained in the technical summary, which will not be edited by politicians and will be released to the public.

Some highlights, not included in the 23-page already released summary:

- "More than one-sixth of the world population live in glacier- or snowmelt-fed river basins and will be affected by decrease of water volume." And depending on how much fossil fuels are burned in the future, "262-983 million people are likely to move into the water-stressed category" by 2050.

- Global warming could increase the number of hungry in 2080 by between 140 million and 1 billion, depending on how much greenhouse gas is emitted in coming decades.

- "Overall, a two- to three-fold increase of population to be flooded is expected by 2080."

- Malaria, diarrheal diseases, dengue fever, tick-borne diseases, heat-related deaths will all rise with global warming. But in the United Kingdom, the drop in cold-related deaths will be bigger than the increase in heatstroke-related deaths.

- In eastern North America, depending on fossil-fuel emissions, smog will increase and there would be a 4.5 percent increase in smog-related deaths.

- Because global warming will hurt the poor more, there will be more "social-equity" concerns and pressure for governments to do more.

The technical summary will also include the portions deleted from the policymakers' summary.

Second footnote

The Public Agenda/Foreign Affairs poll I mentioned on Friday considered global warming.

Three-quarters of those surveyed say they worry about global warming, up 7 points from six months ago. But the most notable shift is in the intensity of public feeling. Four in 10 (41 percent) said they worry "a lot" about global warming, and that's up 8 points. Those who said they worry somewhat held steady and the number who say they didn't worry about the issue at all dropped 6 points to 24 percent.

In addition, 70% of Americans expressed the belief that government can do "something" or "a lot" about the problem and nearly two-thirds agreed that international cooperation can result in a reduction in global warming. People also were aware of the shortcomings of those efforts: 61% gave the US no better than a "C" grade on working with other nations on the issue.

First footnote

Three studies that came out just before the IPCC report also point to the impact of climate change.

- Save the Children estimated that 50 million more children would be affected by climate-related disasters like droughts, floods and storms every year over the next 10 years as compared to the previous 10 years.

- Risk Management Solutions, a risk modeling firm, said that businesses are already starting to feel ill effects of global warming, with losses from weather-related disasters climbing an average of 2% per year since the 1970s.

- Great Britain's Environment Agency declared that temperatures would continue to rise for the next 40 years regardless of emissions curbs due to the effects of greenhouse gases already emitted.

A little late but still important

The vision presented was stark, frightening, even "near-apocalyptic." The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change minced few words, portraying a world of

hundreds of millions of people short of water, extreme food shortages in Africa, a landscape ravaged by floods and millions of species sentenced to extinction. ...

Africa will suffer the most, with up to a quarter of a billion people running short of water by 2020, and yields from rain-fed crops falling by half in many countries. The continent could spend at least 5% to 10% of its gross domestic product to adapt to rising sea levels, the report said.

But while Africa might suffer the most, it will hardly be the only area affected. Everywhere is at risk.

Asian coastal areas, especially the big cities in the seven "mega-deltas" from India's Ganges to China's Yangtze, will be at greatly increased risk of flooding, with an associated increase in death to due to diarrhoeal disease, while by 2050, crop yields in central and south Asia may drop by 30 per cent.

In Latin America, water supplies available for human consumption, agriculture and energy generation are predicted to be "significantly affected" by changes in rainfall patterns and the disappearance of Andean glaciers. Parts of the Amazon rainforest are likely to turn into semi-arid savannah.

And no, we don't get off, either.

North America can expect more hurricanes, floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires, the report said, and the coasts will be flooded by rising sea levels. Crop production will increase initially as the growing season gets longer, but climbing temperatures and water shortages will ultimately lead to sharp reductions.

And, as I reported just the other day, the poor - including poor nations and the poor in the wealthier nations - will in each case get the worst of it.

Global warming is not only real,

[t]he impacts are already visible, the report said, with significant changes due to rising temperatures now apparent in ice masses, water bodies, agriculture and ecosystems. Changes consistent with higher temperatures have been noted in 29,000 sets of data and 75 separate studies; they range from melting permafrost in Arctic regions to shifting distributions of fish populations, and earlier timing of spring events such as leaf-unfolding, bird-migration and egg-laying.

How bad will it be, really? Consider that this is a softened version of the report. The Summary for Policymakers was the subject of five days of negotiations and bitter arguments between governments and scientists. Tensions ran high enough that

[s]ome of the world's best-informed climate change scientists walked out of an all-night drafting session of yesterday's report on global warming, as tempers flared.

Among those who left was Cynthia Rosenzweig, a senior researcher at NASA and one of the report's authors.

The fractious nature of the meeting of representatives of 115 countries and 52 scientists was driven by the determination of certain nations - the US, China, and Saudi Arabia primary among them - to change the report to their benefit. The final result was several deletions that affected the intensity of the report and removed timelines related to development of effects, to the frustration of the scientists.

"The science got hijacked by the political bureaucrats at the late stage of the game," said John Walsh, a climate expert at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who helped write a chapter on the polar regions. ...

Several scientists vowed afterward that they would never participate in the process again because of the interference.

"Once is enough," said Walsh, who was not present during the negotiations in Brussels but was kept abreast of developments with a steady stream of e-mails from colleagues. "I was receiving hourly reports that grew increasingly frustrated."

In the words of another, "The authors lost. ... I have had it with them (the IPCC)."

I understand the frustration, understand the anger of scientists finding their years of work being picked over by political operatives and bureaucrats more concerned with PR than the future of humanity. But that very weakness of the report is also its strength. Consider:

Negotiators pored over the 21-page draft meant to be a policy guide for governments. The summary pares down the full 1,572-page scientific assessment of the evidence of climate change....

Each word was approved by consensus, and any change had to be approved by the scientists who drew up that section of the report.

Let me repeat that: Each word was approved by consensus. Each. And. Every. Word. Take that to those idiot global warming deniers and stuff it down their throats. This is a consensus document that reflects the unified opinion of thousands of scientists and representatives of well over 100 countries. These. Are. The. Facts!

So hey, deniers: You lost the scientific debate some time ago. You have now lost the political debate, as all those nations have signed on to what this summary says. So grow up. And shut up.

Footnore to the preceding, Someone Tell Levin Div.

In his annual Easter "Urbi et Orbi" (to the city and the world) message, Pope Benedict XVI declared

"[n]othing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees,"

and denounced

"the thousand faces of violence which some people attempt to justify in the name of religion."

I believe the official name for the latter is "sectarian violence."

I knew it

The no-good, mother-fucking, yellow-bellied assholes. I knew it. Didn't I say it? Didn't I say just a week ago that "follow through ... is still a definite 'if'" and "I don't want to get sucked in again?" Didn't I?

The Senate will not stop paying for the Iraq war or relent from insisting that President Bush keep pressing the Baghdad government for a negotiated end to the violence, a top Democrat said Sunday.

Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, the Senate Armed Service Committee chairman, took issue with an effort by Majority Leader Harry Reid to cut off money for the war next year as a way to end U.S. involvement.

"We're not going to vote to cut funding, period," Levin said. "But what we should do, and we're going to do, is continue to press this president to put some pressure on the Iraqi leaders to reach a political settlement."

Press him exactly how, you gutless nitwit? How are you going to do it? Tut-tut at him? Talk to him sternly? Express your "disappointment?" Pass another non-binding - read "utterly meaningless" - resolution? The one power that everyone agrees Congress has is the power of the purse - and that is the one power which you have now insisted that Congress will never, ever, oh dear me perish the very thought, use.

Oh god, I swear this makes me sick to my stomach. I find it impossible to adequately express the anger, the disgust, the contempt I'm feeling. Just how bad was Senator Craven's performance? This bad:

"We can keep the benchmarks part of the bill without saying that the troops must begin to come back within four months," Levin said. "If that doesn't work and the president vetoes because of that, and he will, then that part of it is removed, because we're going to fund the troops."

So in other words, Bush was right when he said it was all a pose, just "a political statement" so hurry up and send me a bill so I can veto it so we can get this silly posturing out of the way so you can get back to giving me what I want. You really aren't serious about ending the war. Just like I said about your House counterparts a month ago, this is

about saying you oppose the war while at the same time running away from any actual responsibility for doing anything about it. It's about, bottom line, positioning for the 2008 campaign and who gives a damn about the lives, American (and allied) and even more Iraqi, ruined in the meantime.

But oh no! cries Craven. We're Very Serious! Because

"what we will leave will be benchmarks, for instance, which would require the president to certify to the American people if the Iraqis are meeting the benchmarks for political settlement, which they, the Iraqi leaders, have set for themselves," he said.

Oh, yeah, swell. Especially considering how well that's gone so far. In the New York Times last week, Leon E. Panetta, Clinton's chief of staff, ran down a list:

By early 2007, there was supposed to be a provincial election law. No progress has been made on it. There were supposed to be changes in de-Baathification laws in order to reintegrate officials of the former regime and Arab nationalists into public life. No progress there, either. There was supposed to be a law to "rein in sectarian militias." Ditto.

A referendum was supposed to happen by March on constitutional amendments. It didn't and no one knows when it will. By May, the still non-existent law about militias was to be enforced. Obviously, it won't be. By June, there were to have been provincial elections. They are not going to happen.

As for security issues, things are not going much better. The Iraqis have increased security spending over 2006 levels as promised, but they are falling behind on the number of battle-ready Army units.

By April, the Iraqis want to take over total control of the Iraq Army (not likely based on current progress).

By September, the Iraqis want to be given full civil control of all provinces (to date they control 3 of 18 provinces).

By December, the Iraqis, with United States support, want to achieve total security self-reliance (too early to tell, but does anyone really find this likely?).

This is the sort of record you want us to rely on? What are you going to do when the benchmarks are not met, or when Bush issues phony "certifications," or when he tells you to shove your certifications and dares you to do anything about it? What are you going to do, since you've already taken funding cuts off the table?

You toad-sucking, ass-licking, pathetic excuse for a moron. You and every other lamebrain Democrat cowering and weeping like a cliché victim in a slasher movie at the first hint of being called "against the troops" because you're more interested in keeping your perk-sodden ass in your comfy office chairs than in doing the right thing. You disgust me.

A video of the pathetic performance can be found here. By the way, why was it presented as a "Democratic response" to Bush when it also featured a GOPper supporter of Shrub?

Footnote: Senator Arlen Specter said

"We cannot leave the troops unfunded in the field. That just can't be done. And Congress is not in a position to micromanage the war. But we do not have any good alternative. Right now, you can't see the end of the tunnel, let alone a light at the end of the tunnel."

Specter said he was not prepared "to withdraw funding at this time. But my patience, like many others, is growing very thin."

Just how bad have things gotten when Arlen Specter sounds more antiwar than leading Democrats?

One other footnote: This slam, for the moment, does not apply to Harry Reid, Russ Feingold, and John Kerry (and any others, if there are any) who have pledged to support a cutoff of funding as of next March if Bush vetoes the limitations in the funding bill.

Footnote to the preceding

Point:
"The business of America is business."

Counterpoint:
"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"

Will wonders never cease

The wonder in this case is that even the Bush administration can't be wrong all the time. As reported by the New York Times for Saturday,

the law in the United States requires that virtually all its donated food be grown in America and shipped at great expense across oceans, mostly on vessels that fly American flags and employ American crews — a process that typically takes four to six months.

For a third year, the Bush administration, which has pushed to make foreign aid more efficient, is trying to change the law to allow the United States to use up to a quarter of the budget of its main food aid program to buy food in developing countries during emergencies. The proposal has run into stiff opposition from a potent alliance of agribusiness, shipping and charitable groups with deep financial stakes in the current food aid system.

The article presents a number of objections to the change from Congressional, corporate, and nonprofit sources, objections ranging from the perhaps reasonable through the patently ridiculous before landing at the transparently greedy. It's a rather short flight.

Get past the let's just call it questionable claim that "American food is safer and of higher quality" than that available locally and the condescending hand-wringing over the risks of stolen cash and "badly managed" local programs and you get to the real nub:

Agribusiness ... defend[s] the idea that federal spending should benefit American business and farming interests, as well as the hungry. Without support from such interest groups, food aid budgets from Congress would wither, they say.

“It would be at extreme risk of being diminished,” said Paul B. Green, a consultant to the North American Millers’ Association, a trade group for the milling industry that counts Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge and Horizon Milling, a joint venture of Cargill and CHS Inc. among its members.

Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, and Cargill, along with Cal Western Packaging Corporation, have for the past three years sold the federal government well over a billion dollars in food to be used in relief programs, over half the total. Shipping companies, which also oppose the proposed change, were paid $1.3 billion over the same period to move the food overseas.

The claim of "diminished" support if the White House's proposed change goes through was echoed by Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, who said last year that

decoupling food aid from American maritime and agribusiness interests was “beyond insane.”

“It is a mistake of gigantic proportions,” he said, “because support for such a program will vanish overnight, overnight.”

This despite that fact that, according to James Kunder of USAID, the proposal would affect less 0.5% of US agricultural exports and that the agency estimates that under it, the US could feed a million more people for six months and save 50,000 additional lives every year.

So let's be clear here, completely clear: These voices in industry and in the Democratic Congress - I'll repeat that for the blind partisans among us, the Democratic Congress - are saying in so many words that US support for aiding the hungry, the poor, the needy, the destitute, is contingent on there being enough bucks to be made in the process. That unless wallets enough are fattened enough, the rest of the world can just go somewhere and die. It's hard to imagine a clearer or colder celebration of selfishness.

And make no mistake about it, people are dying as the result of this greedhead callousness. The same NY Times article opens by describing the plight of people in Zambia who are among the half-million people who are facing the prospect of their food rations, supplied by the the United Nations World Food Program, running out in the next few weeks. In some places, rations have already been halved to stretch them out.

Hoping to forestall such a dire outcome, the World Food Program made an urgent appeal in February for cash donations so it could buy corn from Zambia’s own bountiful harvest, piled in towering stacks in the warehouses of the capital, Lusaka.

But again, due to the opposition of largely corporate interests, the US government cannot offer cash assistance. Even in an emergency. Even as people face starvation. Even as they begin to die.

While we congratulate ourselves on our generosity and goodness.

Footnote: Oxfam is among groups supporting the proposed change, arguing it will not only enable the US to feed people more quickly in emergencies, it can help alleviate poverty in poor countries by supporting local farmers. The Zambian office of the World Food Program, which imports food during lean years, buys locally-grown corn during good years - and in so doing has injected more than $1 billion into local economies since 2001.

Another small victory in the struggle

And it is a small one, but like the song says, "every victory brings another." The Independent (UK) reported on Saturday that the Disney Company has apparently had a change of heart about how it treats gay couples wanting to "participate in the saccharine-sweet, faux adventure that is a Disney-arranged marriage."

Previously,

it emerged that Disney had ruled that while gay couples could organise their own weddings or commitment ceremonies at rented rooms at their resorts in California and Florida, they were not eligible to purchase their fairytale wedding packages. The packages consist of various options to ensure "your wedding day is everything you have always dreamt it would be. This is the magic of Disney's Fairy Tale Weddings".

Now, however, same-sex couples can fork over the $8000 (and up) to get the full Mickey (and Minnie) Mouse treatment. Disney representatives denied the change had anything to do with criticism from gay rights groups and tried to downplay it, referring to it as a change only in what venues ceremonies could take place - but it had been that very limitation that blocked same-sex couples from getting one of the "fairytale wedding packages," which take place in the previously-off-limits pavilions.

Oddly enough, Disney had previously been slammed by the theocratic right for being too gay-friendly: The Southern Baptist Convention spent eight years pushing a boycott of Disney,

criticising it for corporate policies such as providing health benefits to same-sex partners of employees, allowing "Gay Day" celebrations at its theme parks and airing a prime-time television show on its ABC network featuring the lesbian comedian Ellen DeGeneres. The boycott was dropped only in 2005.

As I recall, the SBC declared in abandoning the campaign that it had "made its point" or some such face-saving blather. The real reason was that when asked their reaction to the news, Disney reps said (in very politic language) "Boycott? What boycott?"

Just a quick note

My apologies for the intermittent posting the past few days. I haven't been feeling too well just at the time that there's a little more activity involving work. Bear with me for a bit longer.

After all, my vast audience - numbered, I can confidently claim, in the high single figures - deserves my best and I want to give it.

Lookin' bad - is that good?

You can decide for yourself if the implications of this survey are good news or not. Personally, I think they're very good news. Not unalloyed good news, but still good. (Thanks to Juan Cole.)

According to a Wednesday press release from Public Agenda and Foreign Affairs, their latest survey of public confidence in US foreign policy "provides striking evidence that Americans' anguish over Iraq is spilling over to other areas of foreign policy."

The Spring 2007 Anxiety Indicator stands at 137, well above the neutral mid-point of 100 and a seven point increase since September 2006. "The Anxiety Indicator is moving closer to the 150 mark, the 'red zone' that to me would signal a full blown crisis of public confidence," said Public Agenda Chairman Daniel Yankelovich.

Among the points providing "striking evidence" are these:
- 84% are worried about the way things are going for the US in world affairs
- 82% say the world is becoming more dangerous for the Americans
- 73% say the US is not doing a good job as a leader in creating a better world
- 68% believe the rest of the world sees the US negatively
- 67% say US relations with the rest of the world are on the wrong track

And in what the the report calls the spill-over from Iraq,
- Only 8% (!) support military action against Iran. Indeed, "public support for military solutions in many scenarios is virtually off the table."
- Meanwhile, 31% say the accusation that the US has been too quick to resort to war is "totally" justified and another 39% say it's "partly" justified.
- On how to resist terrorism, more effort on diplomacy beats our more effort on military action by 67%-27%.
- 84% say it's important to "initiate military force only when we have the support of our allies." A majority, 51% call it "very important."

In the short run, such figures are impressive and important. I doubt they mean a whole long in the longer run; we have seem too many times before how people, fed up and distressed with a particular war, begin to critique war in general and the militarism that feeds it (and off which it feeds, in a morbid symbiosis) - only to be stampeded into the next Great Campaign, waving banners (and in our case, yellow ribbons) all the while. I can't help but remember that these same sort of sentiments were being expressed in the same sort of percentages in the last years of Vietnam - but just five years later we were electing Ronald Reagan.

Still, in the short run the numbers matter because they will impact foreign policy in the near future. And to the extent they do, that impact will be a good one.

Public Agenda's discussion of the report and its findings are in a series of linked pages beginning with this one; the full report is available in .pdf format at this link.

Really!

It's nice to have some bit of good news now and again. According to a press release from the ACLU on Thursday, the state legislature of Washington

passed a bill in a landslide to block implementation of the federal REAL ID Act. The action makes Washington the fourth state to pass legislation opposing the law, joining Maine, Idaho and Arkansas.

"The overwhelming margin of today's vote shows how truly bipartisan the opposition is to REAL ID. It would threaten personal privacy, as well as create a bureaucratic nightmare to implement," said ACLU of Washington Legislative Director Jennifer Shaw.

The vote was 95-2.

Less than a month ago, when I last posted about Real ID, only two states had rejected it, although several others were moving in that direction.

Passed by Congress in 2005, the REAL ID Act requires states to produce standardized driver's licenses and to store the drivers' information in nationally connected databases - creating a de facto national ID card. ...

REAL ID has drawn opposition from organizations across the political spectrum, including the American Bar Association, the American Conservative Union, the Council of State Governments, Gun Owners of America, the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, the National Conference of State Legislatures and the National Governors Association.

Not to mention both the ACLU itself and the Cato Institute. The ACLU has a scorecard of how well the proposed regulations governing Real ID, released at the start of March by the Department for the Protection of the Fatherland, deal with the concerns and objections raised by critics and officials. The unsurprising answer was "piss poorly." That report, in .pdf format, is here.

Oh, and by the way

Amnesty International is charging that a new facility at Guantánamo Bay is creating "even harsher conditions of extreme isolation and sensory deprivation."

Despite the US authorities describing Camp 6 as a "state-of-the-art modern facility" that is "more comfortable" for detainees, the conditions appear more severe than the most restrictive levels of "super-maximum" custody in the US. There is growing concern they could have a serious adverse effect on the psychological and physical health of many of the detainees.

Which is a polite way of saying that US officials are lying through their damn teeth. Not that such is a surprise, as there has been little other than lies coming from the White House and the Pentagon about Gitmo since it opened.

The organisation's UK director, Kate Allen, described the process at Guantanamo as "a travesty of justice"[, the BBC reported].

"With many prisoners already in despair at being held in indefinite detention... some are dangerously close to full-blown mental and physical breakdown.

"The US authorities should immediately stop pushing people to the edge with extreme isolation techniques and allow proper access for independent medical experts and human rights groups."

The full report can be found at this link.

Run away! Run away!

Now they said it...

Vice President Dick Cheney repeated his assertions of al-Qaida links to Saddam Hussein's Iraq on Thursday....

Cheney contended that al-Qaida was operating in Iraq before the March 2003 invasion led by U.S. forces and that terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was leading the Iraqi branch of al-Qaida. Others in al-Qaida planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organized the al-Qaida operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June," Cheney told radio host Rush Limbaugh during an interview. "As I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq."

...and now they didn't.

Interrogations of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and documents seized after the 2003 US-led invasion confirmed that his regime had not been cooperating with Al-Qaeda, the Washington Post reported on its website Friday. ...

The Post reported that a newly released declassified Department of Defense report said information obtained after the fall of Saddam confirmed the prewar position of the US Central Intelligence Agency and Pentagon intelligence that the Iraqi government had had no substantial contacts with Al-Qaeda.

In his continuing flight from reality, "The Big" Dick Cheney managed to ignore both that Zarqawi was a rival to bin Laden until after the invasion of Iraq and that while in Iraq, Zarqawi was operating out of the Kurdish north, an area beyond Saddam's control. Then again, facts were never very useful to the Shrub team - which, the report makes clear, knew there were no links and deliberately chose to ignore that fact.

I should make it clear that when I refer to Cheney's "flight from reality," I don't mean that he's delusional, as some are maintaining. I mean I envision him running down the street, being chased by a figure labeled "Reality," with his fingers in his ears shouting "LA LA LA LA - I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" He knows goddam well what the truth of the matter is - he just consciously refuses to admit to it.

Tales from the Geek

Filed under the heading "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," a saying that is usually misapplied in politics but has real meaning in science, is this from the Beeb for Thursday:

One of the rarest species of rabbit in the world has been spotted for only the third time in the last 35 years.

The Sumatran striped rabbit was photographed in late January on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the Wildlife Conservation Society said.

The species is listed as critically endangered by the World Conservation Union, due to loss of habitat.

The rabbit was previously photographed in 2000, with the last sighting by a scientist back in 1972. ...

"This rabbit is so poorly known that any proof of its continued existence at all is great news, and confirms the conservation importance of Sumatra's forests," Mr Poole said.

Numerous studies name habitat loss as the primary threat to endangered species.