Cutting through the machinations and effects of the US empire
Herb ``garden''
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Looks a bit sad now at the end of the season, but this small backdoor planter provided lots of fresh herbs over the summer.
Still no frost. What seemed like buckets of rain this morning amounted to only about 15 mm. You can see the wet steps above.
Ridiculous Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) held naked in hearing
This is a good example of what I was writing about in a post called ``Cardassian justice'' about a week ago.TOM SULLIVAN (a lawyer representing men held for years in Gitmo w/o evidence): When they started out in these hearings, these [Combatant Status Review Tribunals], they were presumed guilty. There had already been a finding they were enemy combatants. The determination had been made. No witness or evidence was presented by the government. . . .
Cornyn is more full of shit than practically any of the full-of-shit Republican senators. It's a shame and a disgrace, a stain on America, the way these detainees are being handled.
And then they put in some classified evidence. I've been down to the secure facility. It's a joke. It's a sham.
I've read the classified evidence. I'm not free to disclose it, but I can tell you it's a sham.
There was no lawyer given to the defendants. They didn't speak English, most of them. They were young men who had no training in law. There were no rules of evidence applicable. . . .
No cross-examination was allowed. There wasn't any objection to physical evidence, because there wasn't any produced.
Now, you call that due process, Your Honor? Do you?
This is a historic moment in our time. To suspend the writ of habeas corpus without hearings, rushing it through just before elections, where people are afraid to vote against this bill because somebody on the other side is going to hold up a TV commercial and criticize them for it, is phony.
The worst thing that would happen with this bill is that habeas corpus would be denied for the innocent people held by the US. (At least 85% of those held have no evidence against them, except perhaps for a finger pointed at them for bounty). This is so disturbing. I wish a Democrat would stand up against it.
More morning glories
Getting scared there'll be frost soon and these beauties will shut down
I especially like that one in the middle. A spindly vine and one little purple flower just popped up amongst the broccoli.
An old Yes lyric keeps running through my head after I heard it on Stephen King's radio station (100.3 FM in Bangor) a few days ago.
Yesterday a morning came, a smile upon your face.
Caesar's palace, morning glory, silly human race,
On a sailing ship to nowhere, leaving any place,
If the summer changed to winter, yours is no disgrace.
Does this mean something? The song I believe is from The Yes Album, which I have around here somewhere.
The wholly-owned US subsidiary in Iraq has more torture there than ever; President to get blank check to define torture techniques and keep them secret
UN Envoy: More Torture in Iraq Today than Under SaddamThe United Nations leading campaigner against torture has issued a grim assessment of Iraq under US occupation. Manfred Nowak, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, says more Iraqis are being tortured today than when Saddam Hussein was in power. His comments come one day after the UN said more than sixty-six hundred Iraqi civilians were killed in July and August.
Funny how in all the recent protestations from President Bush--``The United States does not torture. It's against our laws, and it's against our values. I have not authorized it -- and I will not authorize it''--there is no longer much of his once-common campaign talk of how the Iraqi people are free of torture.
Torture/Geneva fix: make it secret
The new Republican ``deal'' on detainee treatment allows President Bush ``to write secret rules on how to treat suspected terrorists during interrogations.'' Furthermore, according to the Washington Post, the ``abuse can continue'' because President Bush will be able to write ``his own interpretation of the Geneva Conventions in an executive order.''
The list of ``techniques'' used on detainees will be kept secret under the dubious argument that the detainees do not know what they are, so we don't want to let them know how to prepare for them.
Well, we do know what the methods and techniques are. They fall under the misnomer of ``psychological'' techniques. And contrary to common wisdom, they are effective in destroying a human being--these offenses are torture.
Historian Alfred McCoy explains this in his book A Question of Torture, and in this article on TomDispatch...thanks to recent revelations from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, we are now all too familiar with these methods, even if many Americans still have no idea of their history. Upon careful examination, those photographs of nude bodies expose the CIA's most basic torture techniques -- stress positions, sensory deprivation, and sexual humiliation.
Fools in the media paint this as just some sort of fun and games, Geneva shmeeva. These are minimum just deserts for those who the president says want to kill us. But they miss the point.
For over 2,000 years, from ancient Athens through the Inquisition, interrogators found that the infliction of physical pain often produced heightened resistance or unreliable information -- the strong defied pain while the weak blurted out whatever was necessary to stop it. By contrast, the CIA's psychological torture paradigm used two new methods, sensory disorientation and "self-inflicted pain," both of which were aimed at causing victims to feel responsible for their own suffering and so to capitulate more readily to their torturers. A week after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, General Geoffrey Miller, U.S. prison commander in Iraq (and formerly in Guantanamo), offered an unwitting summary of this two-phase torture. "We will no longer, in any circumstances, hood any of the detainees," the general said. "We will no longer use stress positions in any of our interrogations. And we will no longer use sleep deprivation in any of our interrogations."
Under field conditions since the start of the Afghan War, Agency and allied interrogators have often added to their no-touch repertoire physical methods reminiscent of the Inquisition's trademark tortures -- strappado, question de l'eau, "crippling stork," and "masks of mockery." At the CIA's center near Kabul in 2002, for instance, American interrogators forced prisoners "to stand with their hands chained to the ceiling and their feet shackled," an effect similar to the strappado. Instead of the Inquisition's iron-framed "crippling stork" to contort the victim's body, CIA interrogators made their victims assume similar "stress positions" without any external mechanism, aiming again for the psychological effect of self-induced pain
It's impossible for any human being with an ounce of soul to not see how these techniques so dear to Bush are not humiliating, degrading, cruel, and inhuman tortures. They are the tools of domination, not of protection. And therein lies the reason why President Bush wants to rewrite the rules for his own benefit and not tell the damning secrets.
Occupation at Olympia Snowe's office in Bangor
Connie reads, in front of the Federal Building in Bangor, September 21
Below is an oped from Monday's Bangor Daily News. It describes the Declaration of Peace, a call for our Congressional leaders to end the horrorible death and destruction caused by the occupation in Iraq with a ``concrete, comprehensive and rapid withdrawal plan.''
Today, the unresponsive Snowe's office was occupied and about a dozen activists were arrested in a non-violent protest. I'll post some video later. Meanwhile, the oped:
Civil disobedience ... again
By Nancy Galland and Richard Stander
Published Monday Sept. 18; Bangor Daily NewsTwo hundred and thirty-three years ago in 1773, after repeatedly petitioning the governor of Massachusetts for relief of disastrous taxes on tea, a large band of Bostonians seized three English ships full of tea and tossed it overboard. The Boston Tea Party was the first American Act of Civil Disobedience, and the spark that changed history for all of us.
Three years later, the American Revolution swept the British out of power. Since then, the American legacy of nonviolent civil disobedience has continued to change the history of this country in ways that have benefitted every one of us alive today: think Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Philip Berrigan and countless others whose courage to disobey the "law" brought peace, justice and equality to fruition when no other means proved effective.
Fast-forward to 2006: Sept. 21 is the deadline for Congress to respond to The Declaration of Peace, a nationally circulated pledge calling for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. If Congress does not act on a concrete, comprehensive and rapid withdrawal plan before they recess for fall elections, Declaration supporters will take to the streets in marches and rallies all over the country. Some, in the spirit of those who came before, will be led by conscience to engage in civil disobedience and risk arrest to signify their principled commitment to oppose this war of aggression.
These actions will continue throughout the week of Sept. 21-30. There is little hope that the members of Congress will meet the deadline.
In cities and towns all over Maine, including Bangor, large bands of people will gather to protest congressional failure to respond to the majority of Americans who do not support the war. On Sept. 30, a march and rally will be held from 1 p.m to 3 p.m. at the Waterfront Park in Bangor.
During the week, many who oppose Bush’s continued escalation of violence in Iraq, after three years of being ignored and denied an audience with Sen. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, will commit acts of conscience. Once again, people will be asking : Why do people commit civil disobedience?
Why do people choose to risk arrest, risk a criminal record, risk time from their lives and risk the consequences of conviction?
We put this question recently to a group of people who chose to commit acts of conscience on two recent occasions: first at the onset of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and again in December of last year. Some in this group are old enough to have been arrested during protests against the war in Vietnam, an opposition which ultimately brought about the end of the war, but not before more than 52,000 American and a million Vietnamese deaths, leaving a legacy of grief and regret.
Others are new to political activism. All are mature, reasonable people who hold positions of value in their communities: teachers, administrators, carpenters and builders, farmers, artists, parents and grandparents. Here are some of their thoughts about why they felt compelled, during these times, to commit civil disobedience:
-- "The mass media aren’t covering the real costs of the war, nor the wide-spread opposition to it. We have to get the word out. The stakes keep rising and my anger with it. My fear is that where we go from here is even more frightening."
-- "I do it [civil disobedience] for my children and all children. To remain silent is to be complicit. We’ve tried every other means to reach our senators, without any meaningful response. It’s the last resort."
-- "Government is powerless against civil disobedience. It’s the best way I can think to show moral commitment, moral courage."
-- "I agree with the historian, Howard Zinn, that the problem is not ‘civil disobedience,’ but rather too much ‘civil obedience.’ Until a critical mass of people turn out in the streets and interrupt business as usual, no one will pay attention and things will just get worse."
The week of Sept. 21-30 will offer an opportunity for everyone who believes in their heart that this war is wrong, that something must be done to stop it, to come out and let their feelings be known.
It is time to take a hard look at how ordinary people can influence history — or not.
FBI-listed terrorists free in America
Thirty years ago today a car bomb exploded on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, DC claiming the lives of Chilean diplomat Orlando Latelier and Institute for Policy Studies employee Ronni Karpen Moffitt. This terrorist act carried out by agents of then-Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet often was considered the worst ever carried out on American soil, until 9/11/2001.
Democracy Now! carried an interview featuring Francisco Letelier, son of Orlando Letelier, and writer Peter Kornbluh. Kornbluh described some connections between the Latelier assassins and Cuban anti-Castro terrorists who currently are allowed to walk free in America:PETER KORNBLUH: Well, there’s a loose connection. Anti-Castro Cubans that were part of an umbrella terrorist group, according to the FBI, were involved working with the Chilean secret police to assassinate the former foreign minister and former ambassador to Washington, Orlando Letelier, and his American colleague, Ronni Karpen Moffitt, 30 years ago this morning. And those same anti-Castro Cubans were part of a group that planned a series of terrorist attacks across Latin America in the summer of 1976, culminating in the infamous bombing of the Cubana Flight 455 on October 6. And that's where largely the connection lies. [Luis Posada Carriles] was a mastermind of this attack, according to --the plane attack-- according to declassified documents.
Posada for the moment is in detention, but could be freed soon to join Orlando Bosch, another of the Flight 455 bombers, now living freely in Florida.
Here's a case where proven terrorists friendly to the US administration are treated very differently from persons from the wrong country and religion.
Last summer weekend
Itty bitty spider
Late rose
And summer it is supposed to be... 25 or 26C with partly cloudy skies all weekend. Note: Blogger was messed up for a while so this post was delayed.
Bush & Pentagon would have power secretly to declare guilt for pre-crime
I've had for some time a desire to put together a serious post on the dangers of Bush's legislation defining military commission for Terror War detainees that Congress is trying to push through following rebuke of the Administration in the Supreme Court Hamden decision. But science fiction references keep coming up in my head.
Some of us watched the old Star Trek Deep Space Nine series in the 1990s. One of the villain regimes in the series was Cardassia. There, if you were to be accused of a crime, the justice system proceeded something like this:
Let's combine these obviously absurd notions of justice with ``pre-crime'', from a different work of science fiction, Minority Report, made into a pretty bad movie starring Tom Cruise. Under pre-crime, the crimes for which you could be accused have not yet happened.
This is what President Bush says about Terror War suspects,In some cases, we determine that individuals we have captured pose a significant threat, or may have intelligence that we and our allies need to have to prevent new attacks. Many are al Qaeda operatives or Taliban fighters trying to conceal their identities, and they withhold information that could save American lives. In these cases, it has been necessary to move these individuals to an environment where they can be held secretly, questioned by experts, and -- when appropriate -- prosecuted for terrorist acts.
Wow, pre-crime. The suspects can be ``prosecuted for terrorist acts'' just because ``we [the president and presumably the Pentagon] determine that individuals we have captured pose a significant threat''.
The standard for detention, and probably conviction, is ``could save American lives'', not ``took lives'', as the regular notion of crime would suggest. Criminal law since the Magna Carta is out the window. A despotic executive now has the power to ``determine'' your status as a ``threat'', even if the threat is just what he says is in your mind.
And what about the trial. Here we go back to strictly Cardassian standards. Here is what the president's own sheet on Myth/Fact: The Administration's Legislation to Create Military Commissions says:...the new bill provides that before any classified evidence is introduced outside the accused’s presence, the head of the executive department that has classified the evidence must certify that sharing the evidence would harm national security...
Sure, there's a ton of utterly meaningless qualifiers included with this sheet, but there is the bottom line--the evidence CAN be secret as soon as ``the head of the executive department that has classified'' it says so. Cardassian to be sure.
It is mildly relieving to hear that a small group of Republican Senators, including one of our own, Susan Collins from Maine, has stood up for the moment against Cardassian justice. A vote in the Armed Services Committee has rejected Bush's bill.
But there is way too much silence, way too much cowering from the Republican accusations of ``surrender'' if Bush can not have his way, like what the insufferable Sen. Bill Frist issued last night on the News Hour:...I can tell you where our interest is: It's the safety and security of the American people.
The Democrats need to start standing up and saying that the way to protect America is not to throw away the American system of justice for the Cardassian one, as Bush, Frist, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and others think we should. Due process cannot be reduced to a mockery. We can not preserve our own desire to be free from terror by acting like a Terror state, the Cardassian state, where human rights of the accused are unprotected.
It is going to be a wake-up call to the Democrats who basically belittle in many ways this war on terror, who do want to wave this white flag and surrender. And surrender is just simply not a solution, and that's very likely going to play out here over the next several weeks, as we address these bills that you talked about on the floor of the Senate.
The accusations of ``surrender'' and ``Democrats are more interested in the rights of terrorists than the safety of America'' are so wrong headed. We cannot protect ourselves by violating the human rights of anyone we think looks like a terrorist and turning over our system of justice to a Cardassian executive authority.
Future of Iraq being decided in Abu Dhabi
Curious how some Bush-used notions appear in a release from an Iraqi deputy prime minister at a recent US-run conference in the UAE:A top Iraqi official called for partnerships with international companies to boost his country's oil industry on Sunday, saying Iraq's emergence as a ``secure petro-democracy" could quell rampant sectarian violence.
There are very curious things here. First, why does Iraq need to have a ``US-sponsored'' donor conference and be prodded quickly to sign over concessions over rights to its oil? As I have blogged before, Iraq should be in the driver seat, rather than give up control along with a great deal of its wealth to so-called PSAs, or production sharing agreements.
Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh, a Kurd, conceded disputes between local officials and the central government over who controls oil proceeds were one of many obstacles to making improvements. But he said he was hopeful that oil would be a ``unifying force for Iraqis rather than a resource to fight over.''
He spoke of Iraq emerging as a "secure petro-democracy" with the strength to put an end to the violence that threatens to tear the country apart.
"I don't underestimate the gravity of the situation in Iraq," Saleh said during a U.N.- and U.S.-sponsored Iraq donor conference in the Emirates capital of Abu Dhabi. "We are in a very critical situation." [emphasis added]
Also, the rhetorical positioning of oil-as-unifying-force seems to take right after President Bush, who said of Iraq's oil on June 12 that it is ``something that I view as a very positive part of Iraqi future'' and that Iraq ought to ``use the oil as a way to unite the country and ought to think about having a tangible fund for the people, so the people have faith in central government''.
It is difficult to know just what is going on here. Perhaps a clue appeared in the New York Times in a deeply-buried lead in a story about Vice President Cheney's waning influence (thanks, Jonathan):For instance, Mr. Bush has turned to another Washington insider, James A. Baker III, who served Mr. Bush's father as secretary of state, for help as the co-chairman of an outside group developing options for dealing with Iraq. One group member said, ``You get the sense that the president now realizes, perhaps a little late, that he needs Baker to find him an exit door.''
Wow. They recognize the need for new ``options'' and an ``exit door''. Hardly seems like all this ``stay the course'' nonsense we've been hearing lately.
Here is a guess about what this means. The US, its puppets in Iraq who just happen to have a lot of influence in the oil sector, and the multinational oil companies are keen to get solid long-term contracts maximizing wealth extraction from the country, under the recognition that the political battle could be totally lost really soon. (Remember, Baker is the guy hired to work out Iraq's mountain of debt, but quickly turned to double-dealing evidently at Iraq's expense.) The assumption is that the oil will be pumping long after the current violence subsides, at which point the US can pull back and hope that the the constitution it imposed on Iraq will hold up to legal muster. Nothing is certain yet due to the resistance, so the troops have to stay in the meanwhile to at least hold the line of colonial control until the PSAs are the facts on the ground.
Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling impression
Jonathan Schwarz digs up an evidently-forgotten mea culpa in the Washington Post.
Dead at 73
My favorite quote from the eminently quotable Ann Richards concerned then-president George H. W. Bush at a joyous moment after a presidential debate in October 1992:He's done, stick a fork in him.
It looked like we would be able to get rid of a Bush, and we did. So long ago...
Please see winding road for a very interesting perspective on Ann Richards.
Because I read the Eschaton blog in a feed reader, I did not notice until now that one of my recent readers & commenters was a guest blogger over there for a few days. Good work, Avedon!
Now Avedon's post I referred to has become a sort of weird controversy. I have little to say about this, except that I will mention that on 9/11/2001, I was fast asleep in Westbrook, Maine at the moment Atta checked in at the Portland Jetport about two miles away. Still gives me the creeps.
Anyone catch this Chris Matthews thing on what Atta was doing in Portland on 9/10/2001?
Update: Make sure to visit Avedon Carol's blog, The Sideshow. This post addresses the ``idiot'' Brendan Nyhan. More important, we are implored to write our reps. so that Arlen Spector's bill granting Bush dictatorial powers be stopped.
``Why?'' question still not examined, looks in the mirror not on the agenda
This is an extreme example, but I think it shows us something about the far-too-common jingoism branch of the American intellectual class and how they understand 9/11:Remember 9-11 without denial
Riesman, identified as a faculty member at the University of Maine at Machias, goes on to paint essentially the Rums-Chen-Bushian image of an epic global struggle against the mad, ruthless force of ``Islamo-fascist" killers from a ``pool of 12,000 homicide bombers''.
By Jon Reisman
I watched the attacks on the World Trade Center on a perfect blue September morning five years ago. As I watched the world change with my two young sons I thought that I didn't want to be at war. I really wanted to deny the reality of that awful day and its consequences. Apparently many of my fellow citizens feel the same way. Denial may ultimately bring peace through appeasement and defeat, but I can't recommend it....
Why? They do it for glory--``certain cultures are apparently glorifying such actions'' and that is ``disturbing.''
For how long will the war continue? Until there is ``peace'':Peace will come when we either win or lose the war. At the moment we're losing, but we'd be in greater peril if we had accepted the 2001 status quo in the Middle East. If we want peace either the three large Persian Gulf regimes must change, or Israel must cease to exist. One Persian Gulf regime has been replaced, and another is developing nuclear weapons and flouting the United Nations. Either that regime will succeed, eradicate Israel and win the war, or they will not.
And Israel is the linchpin of Middle East righteousness. When Israel disappears under (I guess) Iran's mushroom cloud, it'll be the end of ``America, capitalism and freedom.''
Never mind Israel's advanced nuclear armaments pointed all over the Arab & Persian world? No threat there?
Over the last week or so, a media drumbeat of 9/11 5-yr anniversary programs sought answers to the question, ``Are we more secure?'' Every answer came from a point of view similar to Mr. Reisman's.
I went to a forum yesterday where my friend Doug, a philosophy professor and academic with a more serious analysis, made an observation I have found quite compelling: ``Only a very small percentage of our insecurity has anything to do with terrorists flying planes into buildings. We need to deepen and expand our notions of security....People flying planes into the World Trade Center, or suicide bombers, those are real concerns. But what I’d like to suggest is these are less than one percent of the real concerns about insecurity in the world that are not being addressed.''
The list of unaddressed security issues are very familiar to those of us not fortunate enough to belong to the upper classes: lack of jobs, the health care crisis, school decay, soaring energy prices.
Meanwhile, the United State continues to lead a Terror War steeped in false premises and manipulation of intelligence. The consequences of the US invasion of Iraq has visited the equivalent of one 9/11 per month on the Iraqis, as the Iraqi people have suffered untold detention, torture, and death at the hands of the Americans.
Yes, the post 9/11 Terror war started up whole new programs of attempted US domination around the world. But it is funny to listen to administration officials make the ridiculous argument that 9/11 could not be about US policy because Iraq had not yet been invaded at that time. These arguments presume that history itself started on 9/11/2001. Here is a quote from Vice President Cheney from a couple of weeks ago,I know some have suggested that by liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein, we simply stirred up a hornet's nest. They overlook a fundamental fact: We were not in Iraq on September 11th, 2001, and the terrorists hit us anyway. As President Bush has said, the hatred of the radicals existed before Iraq was an issue, and it will exist after Iraq is no longer an excuse.
In fact there was history before 9/11. Rarely were US actions purely beneficent. The savagery of American policy over the last few decades hardly can be underestimated.
Here is how Guardian writer Seamus Milne put it in a September 13, 2001 comment:Shock, rage and grief there has been aplenty. But any glimmer of recognition of why people might have been driven to carry out such atrocities, sacrificing their own lives in the process - or why the United States is hated with such bitterness, not only in Arab and Muslim countries, but across the developing world - seems almost entirely absent. Perhaps it is too much to hope that, as rescue workers struggle to pull firefighters from the rubble, any but a small minority might make the connection between what has been visited upon them and what their government has visited upon large parts of the world....
Now President Bush wants us to believe his utterly failed war that has destroyed Iraq is some kind of global line in the ``struggle between tyranny and freedom'' where ``the worst mistake'' would be to ``pull out'' because the terrorists we have attracted to Iraq ``will follow us'' home.
As Mahatma Gandhi famously remarked when asked his opinion of western civilisation, it would be a good idea. Since George Bush's father inaugurated his new world order a decade ago, the US, supported by its British ally, bestrides the world like a colossus. Unconstrained by any superpower rival or system of global governance, the US giant has rewritten the global financial and trading system in its own interest; ripped up a string of treaties it finds inconvenient; sent troops to every corner of the globe; bombed Afghanistan, Sudan, Yugoslavia and Iraq without troubling the United Nations; maintained a string of murderous embargos against recalcitrant regimes; and recklessly thrown its weight behind Israel's 34-year illegal military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as the Palestinian intifada rages.
Mr. Bush then says, ``The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad.'' He may be right, but he has it backwards. Then only victory possible at this point is a Pyrrhic victory where possibly decades of struggle against American domination by Iraqi resistance and their supporters will be the only thing that follows.
It's turned out just like I wrote the week before the invasion:US taking of Iraq will increase, not lessen, the chance of terrorism against Americans....Bush is in the process of whipping up such strong anti-American sentiment throughout the world that pathetically weak Iraq is near the back of the line of potential attackers who will remain angry for a long, long time. In the run-up to the attack, the terrorism threat is being played like an accordion with the flood of alerts and news of bin Laden tapes and al-Qa'ida connections to Hussein. Listen to the din carefully and you will hear the dissonance: Powell tells the U.N about al-Qa'ida in Iraq, but there are disclaimers on the terror alerts that want to direct us away from thinking there is a link to the coming war....Unfortunately, the anger generated by this approach will leave America the target of terror for years to come.
It really didn't take a genius to see this then, nor does it take one to see where all this is still heading right now.
...An extended, dangerous period of escalation of application of U.S. power in an attempt to hold and control its expanding spoils of war can be expected. Despite their arrogance and hubris, Bush and his team should not have much confidence that the chaos of the post-invasion period can be kept benign. There is great uncertainty about the controllability of forces that could be unleashed as America commits to new global management requirements far beyond its present substantial deployments. Current U.S. planning envisions a three-phase transition of Iraq from American military administration to some form of American-style government led by current Iraqi exiles. This process will be highly problematic and will probably require considerable force to pacify the disparate populations within Iraq. Beyond Iraq, the U.S. intends to insure that the behavior of Saudi Arabia and other countries with strategic resources align with its hegemonic goals, thus inviting a radical anti-american response.
I suppose this has been the genius of the Bush regime. They have taken an extreme demonstration of vulnerability in the technological age--``Nineteen men attacked us with a barbarity unequaled in our history''--and turned that into an ``offensive in a war unlike any we have fought before.''
But the Terror War is a failure. The ``offensive'' sweeps up mostly the innocent. Americans still don't get it. Provoking people around the world against by killing their kin while we wallow in our victimhood is hardly going to protect us. Our attention to the real question of why someone would want to hurt us is lost.
Five years ago this week I wrote this about justice for 9/11:Naturally, our first reaction is that we want those responsible punished. And they should be punished. But I have a great deal of fear that the U.S. will retaliate, blindly, with actions that would put us on the same disgusting moral level of terrorism of the hijackers. If we as a generous, free, peace-loving people, want justice, there should be justice, not just vengeance. This is no time for blind patriotism that could become the justification for the killing of innocents in the manner of the hijackers. Justice must be calm and measured in a fair Court of Law. Justice must involve not only punishment of perpetrators, but also an examination of the conditions giving those perpetrators the passions they possess lest such attacks will happen again. We must ask and answer fully—Why?
What President Bush and his administration have done, the multiple 9/11s they have inflicted upon others, unfortunately has come to pass with far too little resistance at home. We won't be safe until we can take a good hard look in the mirror and act on to correct the moral failings that we would see.
Doc-u-drama and elections
Airdate: January 5, 2003; Executive Producer: Robert Greenwald; Co-Executive Producer: Alys Shanti; Supervising Producer: Philip Kleinbart; Writer: Steven Mazur; Director: Penelope Spheeris; Cast: Brian Dennehy, Mike Farrell, Shannon Elizabeth, Cameron Bancroft, Christian KaneMR. BLUE (Brian Dennehy): This is America--life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness--you see something you want, you just take it.
Curious thing about the airdate of this 2-hr made-for-TV depiction of the Enron collapse, it was pulled from it's original airdate just before the 2002 mid-term election.
Here's how the Washington Post reported the story at the time it did finally air, safely into January 2003:CBS originally scheduled its movie about the Enron corporate scandal for broadcast two days before the November elections, and the movie's director is questioning whether politics was behind a last-minute decision to move the air date to this Sunday ...
Darn media liberals, always out to get Bush and the Republicans, can't have that.
"The Crooked E: The Unshredded Truth About Enron" had been on CBS's schedule for Sunday, Nov. 3, just ahead of the Nov. 5 midterm elections.
Director Penelope Spheeris said today that she was surprised and unhappy when she received a call two weeks ahead of the broadcast informing her that the movie had been postponed.
"I didn't ever get a reason why," she said. "We were under such pressure to get the thing done. We were supposed to have it done in the last part of October when it was suddenly canceled. . . . We just dropped it."
A spokeswoman for CBS said the election played no part in the decision to move the air date. "I don't think politics had anything to do with the scheduling decision," she said, adding that she was unsure of the reason for originally scheduling the Enron movie just before the election.
But other people close to the project said they learned that CBS President Leslie Moonves and Entertainment President Nancy Tellem got cold feet as the November air date neared, growing uncomfortable at the prospect of appearing to criticize the Republican administration. Moonves is an active contributor to the Democratic Party but has also forged relationships in the Bush White House.
Meanwhile ABC's right-wing-friendly fictionalized doc-u-drama ``The Path to 9/11'' is, according to the rightist website NRO, ``locked and ready to air'' in its prime-time slots this Sunday and Monday. Media Matters is following the details of the story, with everything they have so far accessible here.
I think the reasons for the observed behavior of corporate media in these circumstances is clear. The orientation of executives is to curry favor with the government in power. As soon as it looked like media-consolidation-friendly Republicans might be threatened in the close 2002 Congressional election, no CBS exec felt like embarrassing them by waving their biggest scandal in front of them just prior to the voting.
On the other hand, ``The Path to 9/11'' reinforces Republican 9/11 mythology. The Terror War response to the attacks has always been the Republican strong suit with a voting public seeking power over an uncertain world. Slyly portraying Democratic weakness through scenes of not-enough-blood-and-guts moments prior to 9/11 in the previous administration serves this right-wing narrative well.
The lets-bomb-them-just-to-be-safe approach to the Terror War cuts across all political lines. It is the most powerful thing the Republicans have over the public, as is demonstrated by the way the Democrats whimper in the corner as Terror War measures are forcefully promoted by the Administration. ``The Path to 9/11'' seems to be out there to bash down ``September 10'' political notions that seem to be making a comeback following the Iraq debacle.
Glimpses of fall
Broccoli is late, only the third plant to mature
Staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina)
While the broccoli plants are developing nice, thick stems, the heads are hardly full. And it's been so slow to mature.
Meanwhile, sumac turning that incredible red-orange lines the road down to the Salmon Club Park.
Stirring the wingnuts
Richly deserved
Newt is on a marketing tour, promoting the Bush agenda of war and destruction of our social fabric for the benefit of right-wing Republican elites, like those at the despicable Maine Heritage Policy Center.
The headline for Newt's Wednesday appearance in South Portland, Maine was picked up by AP and sent far and wide around the world:
Gingrich Urges US: Get Tough with IranSOUTH PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says it's time for the United States to get tough with Iran's Islamic theocracy.
Does he mean that just to be safe, we ought to nuke Iran to oblivion? Where do you draw the line below which the form of aggression chosen against your perceived enemy amounts to appeasement?
Speaking before a conservative public policy group Wednesday, Gingrich said Americans should take Iranian leaders' threats seriously, before they acquire nuclear weapons.
``We have real enemies and they would like to kill us,'' said Gingrich, the Georgia Republican who engineered a GOP congressional takeover in 1994.
Gingrich, attending the Maine Heritage Center Policy Center's annual luncheon, said it's time for Americans to ``profoundly rethink'' their position on Iran and be prepared to take all necessary steps to safeguard the United States.
He said the United States is paying for former President Clinton's foreign policies, which he said gave Americans ``eight years of appeasing the world and provided an opportunity for Osama bin Laden to bomb two U.S. embassies and the USS Cole.''
``You don't appease your enemies - you defeat them,'' Gingrich said. ``We have to take this seriously because the next time we won't just lose a building or an airplane - we will potentially lose a city.''
How about the recent ``truce with the Taliban'' declared in the Waziristan region of Pakistan? Are the spate of briefings we used to get on Pakistani government ``hot pursuit'' of terrorists in this region over? Now what's happening there is called an ``integrated civilian military-political approach'' in order ``to try to work with them''. I don't know, after Newt's speech, sure does sound like appeasement to me.
While in Maine, Gingrich couldn't resist taking a shot at my state-supported health care plan that I pay a lot of money to purchase. He called it ``a car with three flat tires,'' and ``a failed program''.
Obviously, all the years of federal health care Gingrich received at taxpayer expense did not improve his ability to care or be sympathetic to people under fire from out-of-control private insurance companies.
MSNBC host Keith Olberman yesterday gave Gingrich the perfect award for his muddy manner and inconsistent logic--Worst Person of the World.OLBERMANN:...our winner, Newt Gingrich. The disgraced former speaker of the House, not only lying about finding 700 new weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but telling a TV audience that it's, quote, "not an insult[]" to compare those who criticize the war in Iraq or even the president to the appeasers who enabled Hitler. I don't want to be an alarmist or anything, but I'm beginning to think the radical right has issued a new set of talking points. Newt Gingrich, today's "Worst Person in the World."
School days
Heavenly blue morning glory
School days mean early mornings for me this fall, an 8am class to teach three days per week. Thank goodness our best crop of morning glories ever will be there to greet me as I leave the house. (This is just the first FGB entry on them.)
Seven pints of tomatoes went into jars this week too. School days are harvest days.
Israel accelerated spread of maiming and death far into Lebanon's future just before the ceasefire
Lebanese trying to sort through the ruins of their country after Israel ravaged it will run into hundreds of thousands of deadly US-made surprises:UN: Israel Dropped 90% of Cluster Bombs in War’s Final Hours
And The Independent reports:
The top humanitarian official at the United Nations has lashed out at Israel for unleashing a deluge of cluster bombs in the final hours of its invasion of Lebanon. The official, UN Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland, says the cluster bombs have affected large residential and farming areas and could be on the ground for years.
UN Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland: "Colleagues in the UN Mine Action Co-Ordination Centre have undertaken assessments of nearly 85 per cent of bombed areas in South Lebanon have identified 359 separate cluster bomb strike locations that are contaminated with as many as 100,000 unexploded bomblets. What's shocking and I would say to me completely immoral is that 90 per cent of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict, when we knew there would be a resolution, when we really knew there would be an end of this." [from Democracy Now! for 8/31] Pressure for an international ban on cluster bombs has intensified as Israel stands accused of littering southern Lebanon with thousands of unexploded bombs in the final hours of its war against Hizbollah.
Israel may be right that this is technically legal if its highly implausible argument that civilians were not targeted can be believed (I don't think so.) Whatever, clearly it is immoral. The result of salting Lebanon with these civilian death traps is will be further humiliation and injury to the Lebanese people as they try to pick up the pieces. It makes me so sick I feel like heaving.
Campaigners yesterday accused the Israel Defence Force of leaving a "minefield" of deadly bomblets in villages and fields after firing hundreds of cluster shells, rockets and bombs across its northern border in the three days before hostilities ended earlier this month.
United Nations officials said that 12 people had been killed, and another 49 injured by such bombs since the war ended and that the casualty rate was likely to rise.
The Israeli government insists that it did not target civilians during the conflict and says all weaponry used was in accordance with international law.
Israel insists its use of weaponry is legal. However, anti-landmine campaigners have been pressing for an international ban on their use, arguing that cluster bombs are indiscriminate and their use in populated areas may contravene international law.
Mine-clearance specialists said densely populated southern Lebanon was blighted by thousands of unexploded bomblets, which can kill or maim if they are moved or touched. In one case this week 35 bomblets were cleared from in and around one house, while in another a woman lost her hands when a bomblet apparently became tangled in her tobacco crop.
Yesterday the United Nations official in charge of bomb disposal in southern Lebanon said his staff had identified 390 strikes by cluster munitions, and had disposed of more than 2,000 bomblets since the ceasefire.
Chris Clarke, head of the UN mine action service in southern Lebanon, said: "This is without a doubt the worst post-conflict cluster bomb contamination I have ever seen."
In a presentation at the international conference on conventional weapons in Geneva yesterday, he said that the "vast majority" of cluster bombs had been fired by the Israeli Defence Force in the final three days of the conflict, prompting campaigners to accuse the Israeli government of targeting civilian populations.
America supplied Israel with many of these bombs. President Bush has the audacity to call others terrorists.
