Dissident Veteran for Peace

US Wars: Jeers to Cheers in 60 Seconds

2012-01-17T12:01:00.000-08:00

Watch the video below to see how Ron Paul at a Republican Party presidential candidate debate last night takes the audience, in less than a minute, from jeers--when he prescribes Jesus' Golden Rule* for US foreign policy--to cheers--when he declares, "This country doesn't need another war, we need to quit the ones we're in. We need we need to save the money and bring our troops home."

* Matthew 7:12 - "In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets."
Luke 6:31 - "Treat others the same way you want them to treat you."

Some Lessons of "Unintended Consequences"

2012-01-13T23:02:00.000-08:00

John F. Ross' novel Unintended Consequences (St. Louis, MO: Accurate Pr., 1996) is an 861-page monster. It is also a disturbing terrorist revenge fantasy that depicts its protagonists carrying out cold-blooded murders in gruesome detail with little or no remorse or hesitation. It's not a book or a vision I can say I admire or unreservedly recommend. And yet I learned some interesting things from it.

One of the opening vignettes in the novel is the 1932 Battle of Anacostia Flats, i.e. the US Army's assault during the Great Depression on an encampment of impoverished WW I veterans seeking early payment of the bonus promised them for their wartime service. The author returns to this repeatedly in his chronicling of US government assaults on American citizens.

The book left me with a better appreciation of how some conservative, gun-rights advocates view the episode and I also learned that Jim Crow was banned from the encampment though in 1932, Washington, DC was a Jim Crow stronghold. Ross erroneously attributes an article entitled "The Bonuseers [sic] Ban Jim Crow" to the New York Times. It turns out the article was by Roy Wilkins and was published in the NAACP's house magazine The Crisis in October, 1932.

Wilkins' article is quoted in The Bonus Army: An American Epic by Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen (Bloomsbury, 2006) on p. 118:

[At Camp Marks in Anacostia] I found black toes and white toes sticking out side by side from a ramshackle town of pup tents, packing crates and tar-paper shacks. Black men and white men, veterans of the segregated army that had fought in World War I, lined up equally, perspired in sick bays, side by side. For years, the U.S. Army had argued that General Jim Crow was its proper commander, but the Bonus marchers gave lie to the notion that Black and white soldiers--ex-soldiers in their case--couldn't live together.

I had either never known or else forgotten about this aspect of the Bonus Army's occupation. I also learned about the inspiring story of the Battle of Athens from Ross' book. In 1946, WW II vets and other locals successfully took up arms against a corrupt, local Democratic Party regime in Athens, TN, the county seat of McMinn County, TN.

Ross' righteous anger about the ambush at Ruby Ridge and the Waco Massacre is refreshing. I remember many of my Liberal and Lefty friends being non-plussed about these two atrocities at the time. Unintended Consequences reveals that infamous FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi was at the scene of both crimes. Other government atrocities featured in the book include the Ken Ballew raid and the MOVE massacre. No government officials were ever held criminally or civilly responsible for any of these crimes.

From Ross' book, I learned of an interesting 1982 report on "The Right to Keep and Bear Arms" from the US Senate's Subcommittee on the Constitution. Here are two paragraphs from the report's "History: Second amendment right to 'keep and bear arms' ":

That the National Guard is not the "Militia" referred to in the second amendment is even clearer today. Congress has organized the National Guard under its power to "raise and support armies" and not its power to "Provide for the organizing, arming and disciplining the Militia". This Congress chose to do in the interests of organizing reserve military units which were not limited in deployment by the strictures of our power over the constitutional militia, which can be called forth only "to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions." The modern National Guard was specifically intended to avoid status as the constitutional militia, a distinction recognized by 10 U.S.C. Sec. 311(a).

The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner.

You can read more selections from the report here.

Ross makes the point in the book that early gun control laws were enacted to keep guns out of the hands of free Blacks. A surprising fact mentioned in the book is that Vermont has always permitted the open and concealed carrying of handguns without requiring a permit.

I'll close with two thoughts. One of the ironies of the books is that several of its characters train law enforcement officers in firearms usage and marksmanship as a means to get around gun control laws. The book has conflicted views on law enforcement personnel. Another irony is that the book's author and characters have a blind spot a mile wide. While they can see domestic government repression quite clearly, there is no clear acknowledgment that US government violence against foreigners is unjust and dwarfs domestic repression. Likewise, there is no evident appreciation in Unintended Consequences for the dialectical relationship between the killing of foreigners and the killing of Americans.

Poles as Pigs

2012-01-13T22:33:00.000-08:00

In "Some Lessons of Maus" I mentioned Art Spiegelman's typology which cast his characters as animals according to their ethnicity. Below are links to three articles which take up Spiegelman's decision to cast Poles as pigs.

Danusha Goska. "Maus." Bieganski the Blog. September 6, 2010.
Linda Kornasky. "Writer Spiegelman no stranger to controversy." San Angelo Standard Times. February 16, 2011.
Danusha Goska. "You ARE a Pig." Bieganski the Blog. August 14, 2011.

Quotable: What Liberalism Is (or Why I'm Not a Liberal)

2012-01-13T22:04:00.000-08:00

Liberalism is and has always been about intervention. ... Liberals understand that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Left to their own devices, people with weapons and money will always try to exploit and dominate people without weapons and money unless they are stopped from doing so. It is not because we are taught to do so. It's just innate human nature. ...

When the government steps in to stop a corporation from dumping noxious chemicals into a stream, that is intervention at the point of a gun, by a superior force against a lesser force attempting to exploit the weak and powerless. When the government steps in to enforce desegregation in schools, that is intervention at the point of a gun, by a superior force against a lesser force attempting to exploit the weak and powerless.

When Abraham Lincoln and the North decided not to allow the nation of the Confederacy--and make no mistake, it was a separate nation with separate laws and an entirely separate culture--to secede from the Union, in large part because the North had an interest in ending slavery in the South and in striking down a competing agrarian economic system, that too was intervention by a superior force against a lesser force attempting to exploit the weak and powerless. To this day, many Southerners feel that their land is being occupied by an illegitimate and invading power, and theirs a Lost Cause that will rise again.

This is what liberalism is. It is unavoidably, inescapably paternalistic in nature. It is so because it understands the inevitable tendency of human beings to be truly awful to one another unless social and legal rules are put in place--yes, by force--to prevent them from doing otherwise.

Source: David Atkins. "No, Stoller and Sullivan: there is no liberal conflict over Ron Paul." January 03, 2012.

Quotable: Lawyers as Warriors

2012-01-10T23:14:00.000-08:00

So you want to be king? You want to control the greatest nation in the world--perhaps control the world as well? As we’ve seen, you must ﬁrst own the people, own their minds. You must be able to command their prejudices like one can toot a boy's horn. And, if you are to be king, you must also destroy their warriors.

The people are always the enemy of the king, "the stupid mob," as Hitler called them. The people can rise up. They always do in the end. It is only a question of when.

But how can the people ﬁght against the king without their warriors, without champions to ﬁght for their causes? Destroy their warriors and the people can holler and foam but they can do no harm, for even they who are aware enough to shake off the king's propaganda like a dog shakes off ﬂeas, even they are helpless against the king if there are none who can enter the ﬁght for them.

The warriors for the people are trial lawyers--those villains who are not to be trusted, not even when they are shackled and held helpless in those strait jackets of hate. And we have learned to hate them because every day through the King's media we are told outrageous stories of how trial lawyers have aborted the fetus of justice, and we hear malicious jokes so that we have come to believe that the cause of every ill that befalls us lies at their feet.

Source: Gerry Spence. "Kill All the Lawyers" (PDF).

The God of "The Adjustment Bureau"

2012-01-08T20:31:00.000-08:00

The Adjustment Bureau is a 2011 film written, directed, and produced by George Nolfi and starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt. The god of The Adjustment Bureau, aka "The Chairman", is a very strange fellow and clearly not the god of the New Testament. The Chairman kills people without reservation, or rather, he has his angelic henchmen, known as "Associates", kill innocent people in order to fulfill "The Plan".

A monologue (at about 1:04:00) by one of his chief associates, Thompson, indicates that the Chairman and his minions brought humanity "to the height of the Roman Empire". As if that bloody empire, which killed and enslaved multitudes, including the execution of Jesus Christ, was a good thing. At that zenith, humanity was then granted free will and we ruined things. Among the litany of evils blamed on humanity are the so-called "Dark Ages" and then, after another 600 years of intervention to rescue us from our post-Imperial downfall, "World War I, the Depression, Fascism, and ... the Cuban Missile Crisis". Imperialism, WW II and its other, non-Holocaust atrocities, and the millions of people killed in the name of communism merit no mention. The god of The Adjustment Bureau is apparently quite tendentious. It's also revealed that he is neither omniscient nor omnipotent.

The Last Words of Otto Zehm

2012-01-08T20:13:00.000-08:00

"All I wanted was a Snicker's bar." According to one of the seven police officers who helped killed him, those were the last words of Otto Zehm. Zehm was a 36-year-old mentally disabled janitor who died after lingering in a coma for two days after he was beaten with a baton, tasered multiple times, and hogtied on March 20, 2006, by Spokane police for a crime that was not committed. As of this writing, only one cop was charged in the death and although he was convicted by a jury, his sentencing was recently postponed, and the verdict may get tossed out.

Quotable: When Police Are Not Your Friends

2012-01-06T20:24:00.000-08:00

You must realize that when police are ordered to violate your rights, they are not your friends. That brings us to number three: Do not hope police officers will resign instead of carrying out orders they do not like. They will not. The State Police did not resign thirty years ago. Instead, they used tear gas, billy clubs, and German Shepherds on civil rights marchers. Federal police in Waco, Texas last year did not resign. Instead, they used machine guns and tanks on a group of people they suspected had not paid a $200 tax, and they burned all eighty-six of them alive.

Source: John F. Ross. Unintended Consequences. (St. Louis, MO: Accurate Pr., 1996) p. 566.

Imagine a Revolution

2012-01-05T19:17:00.000-08:00

United Bases of America

2012-01-04T19:54:00.000-08:00

From Canada's National Post newspaper (click to enlarge):Thanks to Ken Dalton of Veterans For Peace, Chapter 21 for passing this along.

Quotable: Hume on Government

2011-12-20T20:56:00.000-08:00

On Consent of the Governed

Nothing appears more surprizing ... than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.

Power of a Tyrant

No man would have any reason to fear the fury of a tyrant, if he had no authority over any but from fear; since, as a single man, his bodily force can reach but a small way, and all the farther power he possesses must be founded either on our own opinion, or on the presumed opinion of others.

On Power & Property

... where the original constitution allows any share of power, though small, to an order of men, who possess a large share of the property, it is easy for them gradually to stretch their authority, and bring the balance of power to coincide with that of property.

Source: David Hume's "Of the First Principles of Government" (1742).

Another PKD Post

2011-12-18T20:34:00.000-08:00

This will be a short post. Today, I finished reading The Early Work of Philip K. Dick, Volume Two. I'd like to draw attention to two stories in the collection. "The Last of the Masters" is hailed as Dick's best anarchist story. There's also a thread in the story that ties science and technology to oppression. "Tony and the Beetles" is a brilliant exploration through the character of childrens of what it feels like to be colonized and how people from the colonizing class can easily misinterpret attitudes and circumstances.

Mercerism and Faith

2011-12-06T22:48:00.000-08:00

Philip K. Dick's work is probably the most consistently metaphysically-oriented in the American science fiction canon. In my last post, I mentioned Mercerism, the dominant religion in Dick's novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Mercer is a Christ-like figure in Mercerism and adherents achieve "fusion" with Mercer via an "empathy box", a device that produces the effect of an altered state of shared consciousness. The androids in Androids are lacking in empathy and hence they cannot partake of Mercerism. The nurturing of and sacredness of animal life is an important part of Mercerism, too.

Androids are, thus, double outsiders to Mercerism and they are hostile to it. Three android characters are exultant when the eponymic host of Buster Friendly and His Friendly Friends--whom they know is secretly an android himself--reveals on television that Mercer is a decrepit, washed-up, two-bit, alcoholic actor and "Mercerism is a swindle!". The visual manifestations one experiences when using an empathy box were filmed on "a cheap, Hollywood, commonplace sound stage". But things aren't that simple when it comes to religion, especially not in a Philip K. Dick story.

After the revelatory scene, J. R. Isidore, an adherent of Mercerism and a captive of three taunting androids, has a mystical experience that seems to begin even before he grips the handles of his empathy box. He is transported to the "tomb world". He calls out to Mercer, who comes to him. What follows is one of the most beautiful and beautifully written allegories of faith I've ever read.

"Is the sky painted?" Isidore asked. "Are there really brush strokes that show up under magnification?"

"Yes," Mercer said.

"I can't see them."

"You're too close," Mercer said. "You have to be a long way off, the way the androids are. They have better perspective."

"Is that why they claim you're a fraud?"

"I am a fraud," Mercer said. "They're sincere; their research is genuine. From their standpoint I am an elderly retired bit player named Al Jarry. All of it, their disclosure, is true. They interviewed me at my home, as they claim; I told them whatever they wanted to know, which was everything."

"Including about the whisky?"

Mercer smiled. "It was true. They did a good job and from their standpoint Buster Friendly's disclosure was convincing. They will have trouble understanding why nothing has changed. Because you're still here and I'm still here." Mercer indicated with a sweep of his hand the barren, rising hillside, the familiar place. "I lifted you from the tomb world just now and I will continue to lift you until you lose interest and want to quit. But you will have to stop searching for me because I will never stop searching for you."

"I didn't like that about the whisky," Isidore said. "That's lowering."

"That's because you're a highly moral person. I'm not. I don't judge, not even myself." Mercer held out a closed hand, palm up. "Before I forget it, I have something of yours here." He opened his fingers. On his hand rested the mutilated spider, but with its snipped-off legs restored.

"Thanks." Isidore accepted the spider. He started to say something further --

An alarm bell clanged.

The spider had been dismembered by the androids. The alarm bell is ringing because Deckard, a bounty hunter, has shown up and will soon dispatch the three androids. Shortly after their demise, Deckard--who hasn't seen Buster Friendly's expose--goes to the northern California wastelands. Deckard is portrayed elsewhere in the book as an unenthusiastic adherent of Mercerism but there, in the "uninhabited desolation" and without an empathy box, he has his own mystical encounter with Mercer. Just before he returns home, he speaks on the phone with his secretary: "They're saying now that Mercer is a fake." Deckard replies, "Mercer isn't a fake ... [u]nless reality is a fake."

Androids vs Replicants

2011-12-06T20:42:00.000-08:00

In the 1982 film Blade Runner, the autonomous humanoid machines that the main character Deckard is tasked with hunting and killing are called "replicants". In the 1968 Philip K. Dick novel that inspired the film, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, they are called "androids". But that's a superficial difference compared to the divergent views of humans and technology in the two works.

Blade Runner has a curiously more positive take on replicants and a dimmer view of humans. In Androids, Deckard is introduced to us in bed asleep with his human wife, Iran, and the novel ends with their troubled relationship improved and Deckard going to asleep in the bedroom with Iran leaving the room to make a phone call on his behalf. In Blade Runner, Deckard has no wife or close human relationships and the film ends with Deckard running off with his love interest, a fugitive replicant named Rachael. In the book, Rachael and Deckard have sex but for Rachael's part it's an attempt to manipulate Deckard, not out of anything like love.

Later, when it's clear that Rachael did not succeed with Deckard, she goes to his home and kills his black Nubian goat. In the dystopian future of Androids, domestic and wild animals are exceedingly rare and expensive. Deckard pays a large down payment and signs a three-year loan contract in order to buy the goat.* Animal ownership is also a sacramental part of the dominant religion of Mercerism, being necessary for "true fusion with Mercer" ( p. 441).** Elsewhere in the book, Pris, an android, notes that animals are "sacred" and "protected by law". Another android, Roy, breaks in and adds "Insects ... are especially sacrosanct" (p. 549). Later, Pris and Roy methodically mutilate and torture a spider to the great distress of the human, J. R. Isidore, who found it. None of this is in the film.

Lack of empathy is a distinguishing feature of androids-replicants in the book and film but this comes across much more strongly in the book. In the film, the empathy deficit is at least partly the result of a human design feature--the replicants have an engineered four-year life span. In the book, the androids, including Rachael, are down-right sadistic but while they too have a four-year life span, it is not deliberate but the result of a technological shortcoming. In one of the final scenes of Blade Runner, the last fugitive replicant to die, Roy demonstrates empathy, saving Deckard's life, and then in his final moments Roy gives a beautiful soliloquy about what will be lost when he passes out of existence. No such scene exists in the book.

Notes
*There's an interesting scene in the book when Deckard first comes home with the goat. He asks Iran, "Does this cure your depression? ... It cures mine." (p. 556). Iran replies, "It certainly does cure my depression. Now we can admit to everybody that the sheep's false." Not something Deckard is enthused about: " 'No need to do that,' he said cautiously."

** All page number refer to the version of Androids found in Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s (Library of America, 2007).

See also: "Mercerism and Faith"

Quotable: Cat or Steak

2011-12-06T19:30:00.000-08:00

[Character of Anne speaking]: "... let me tell you my cat joke. It's very short and simple. A hostess is giving a dinner party and she's got a lovely five-pound T-bone steak sitting on the sideboard in the kitchen waiting to be cooked while she chats with the guests in the living room--has a few drinks and whatnot. But then she excuses herself to go into the kitchen to cook the steak--and it's gone. And there's the family cat, in the corner, sedately washing it's face."

"The cat got the steak," Barney said.

"Did it? The guests are called in; they argue about it. The steak is gone, all five pounds of it; there sits the cat, looking well-fed and cheerful. 'Weigh the cat,' someone says. They've had a few drinks; it looks like a good idea. So they go into the bathroom and weigh the cat on the scales. It reads exactly five pounds. They all perceive this reading and a guest says, 'Okay, that's it. There's the steak.' They're satisfied that they know what happened, now; they've got empirical proof. Then a qualm comes to one of them and he says, puzzled, 'But where's the cat?' "

" I heard that joke before," Barney said. "And anyhow I don't see it's application."

Anne said, "That joke poses the finest distillation of the problem of ontology ever invented. If you ponder it long enough--"

Source: Philip K. Dick, "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" in Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s (Library of America, 2007) pp. 418-419.

Some Lessons of Maus

2011-12-01T23:35:00.000-08:00

I just reread the two volumes of Maus, Art Spiegelman's graphic biography of his father, Vladek. In this post I will talk about some of the less obvious items of interest in the books, meaning things less central to the main theme.

It has long been admitted--by folks such as Benjamin Ginsberg and Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin--that Jews have historically been disproportionately involved in communism. For some Jews this is a source of pride. For others, it is cause for shame and denial. Likewise, the fact that Jews are, in general, wealthier than non-Jews. Both things can simultaneously be true but when someone so indicates that I've noticed that defenders of all things Jewish and the 'politically correct' will frequently pounce on this contrived contradiction.

It therefore caught my attention when Art Spiegelman reveals that his father's fiancée (who would become Art's mother), Anja Zylberberg, was the very embodiment of Jewish communist supporter and rich, capitalist Jew. On page 20* we are told: "The Zylberberg family was very well off - millionaires!" The setting is 1936 Poland. According to Patricia Clavin, author of The Great Depression in Europe, 1929-1939, Poland was one of the three European countries "worst affected" by the Great Depression. Most Poles were hit very hard by the crisis but not the Zylberbergs.

Later, in 1937, it turns out that "Anja was involved in conspirations [sic]!" ( p. 29). She was translating "communist messages" into German and "pass[ing] them on". Warned by a friend that the police are coming, instead of destroying the incriminating documents Anja foists them upon a seamstress, a tenant in the Zylberberg's apartment, who ends up taking the fall and spending upwards of three months in prison.

Another interesting thing are the expressions by Jewish characters of disbelief in the holocaust. Here's an example from page 90:

Art: When did you first hear about Auschwitz?
Vladek: Right away we heard ...
Vladek: Even from there - from that other world - people came back and told us. But we didn't believe.

Art doesn't seem to question the idea that people could come and go to "that other world" and Vladek doesn't explain.

On page 109, the following conversation takes place inside (!) a Jewish internment camp in 1943:

Persis: ... You've all heard the stories about Auschwitz. Horrible unbelievable stories.
Matka Zylberberg (Vladeks' mother-in-law): They can't be true!

The Goldhagen thesis suggests that the German people were "Hitler's willing executioners". But even Jews living in Poland, where most of the "death camps" were located, didn't believe the stories, according to Maus. This is consistent with what many Germans have said, too--they didn't know.

There's an exchange on page 171 where Art and his wife, Françoise, talk about how she should be represented. Spiegelman chose to portray Jews as mice, Germans as cats, Poles as pigs, Americans as dogs, Gypsies as moths (and you never see any in the camps), and Swedes are antlered deer. The conversations goes like this:

Art: ... what kind of animal should I make you?
Françoise: Huh? A mouse, of course!
Art: But you're French!
Françoise: Well ... how about the bunny rabbit?
Art: Nah, too sweet and gentle.
Françoise: Hmmph.
Art: I mean the French in general. Let's not forget the centuries of anti-Semitism.
Art: I mean how about the Dreyfus Affair? The Nazi collaborators! The -
Françoise: Okay! But if you're a mouse I ought to be a mouse too. I converted didn't I?
Art: I've got it! Panel one: My father is on his exercycle ...
Art: I tell him I just married a frog ...
Art: Panel two: He falls off his cycle in shock.
Art: So you and I go to a mouse rabbi. He says a few magic words and zap! ...
Art: By the end of the page the frog has turned into a beautiful mouse!
Françoise: Hmph
Françoise: I only converted to make Vladek happy.

There's a lot in this passage. As it turns out, Spiegelman does represent French people as frogs, including the Frenchman who saved his father's life (p. 253). This passage above also tells us that Spiegelman's choice of animals is indicative, in part at least, of what he perceives as a people's national character. It is meaningful, then, that Poles are pigs, etc.

And the "magic words" from the rabbi have real power in Maus, even an insincere conversion transforms Françoise into a mouse, as she is represented throughout the book. Contrast this with the children on page 291--the offspring of a German mother and a Jewish father are hybrid cat-mouse creatures.

Finally, it's interesting how Art's broad-brush charge of French anti-Semitism goes unchallenged by Françoise. Didn't even Jews collaborate with Nazis as even Maus attests? And the Dreyfus Affair split French society and resulted in a complete exoneration and reinstatement of Alfred Dreyfus in the French Army.

In closing, I'll turn to the impact on Vladek of his suffering at the hands of the Nazis. Was it a harsh lesson that instilled in him a sense of compassion and a hatred of injustice and violence against all innocent people? Well, not exactly. On page 290, we are treated to a recounting of Vladek's visit to Würzburg in the immediate aftermath of WW II.

Würzburg was subjected to Dresden-style aerial bombardment. Here's one brief description of the devastation: "About 82% of the living space, almost every public building and most of the cultural monuments and churches are destroyed. A total of about 5,000 people - about 3,000 of whom are women and 700 children and adolescents - perish in the inferno."

Here's the exchange on p. 290:

Vladek: We came to one place, Würzburg - what a mess!
Vladek or his traveling companion Shivek: Where can we find water?
German father: Hah! We haven't had any water in three days!
German mother, holding child: The Americans destroyed - sob - everything!
Vladek: Not one building was still standing.
Vladek: We came away happy.
Vladek: Let the Germans have a little what they did to the Jews.

* All page numbers refer to the 1991 Pantheon Books edition of Maus, in which both volumes are bound together.

See also: Poles as Pigs

Keystone XL: A Horse Already Out of the Barn?

2011-11-06T21:52:00.000-08:00

In light of the news about the major protest today outside the White House over the Keystone XL pipeline I decided to do a little research. I was surprised to learn that there are already at least two major new pipelines carrying Alberta tar sands oil into the US.

First, there is the Enbridge corporation's Alberta Clipper pipeline. This 36-inch pipeline (same diameter as the proposed Keystone XL) links Hardisty, Alberta with Superior, Wisconsin. The American terminus is on the shores of Lake Superior, the most pristine lake of the North American Great Lakes system, a system which has the second-largest volume of freshwater in the world. According to an analysis by the Polaris Institute (pp. 49-50), from 1999 to 2009 Enbridge reported 713 hydrocarbon spills totaling 5.6 million gallons. In 2010, an Enbridge pipeline spilled an estimated at 819,000 gallons of oil into a tributary of the Kalamazoo River, which flows into Lake Michigan. The Alberta Clipper pipeline received final approval from the Obama adminstration in August 2009 and "was ready for service on April 1, 2010". It has already netted Enbridge and its partners tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars for tar sands oil pumped across the border.

A second major pipeline bringing Alberta tar sands oil into the US is the TransCanada corporation's Keystone pipeline which also begins in Hardisty, Alberta but ends in Patoka, Illinois. This 30-inch diameter pipeline "began commercial operation in June 2010". A 36-inch extension of the Keystone pipeline from Steele City, Nebraska, to Cushing, Oklahoma "commenced commercial operation in February 2011". The Keystone XL pipeline is a proposed extension/expansion of the existing Keystone pipeline. It would follow a more direct route to Steele City using 36-inch diameter pipe and include an extension from Cushing to Nederland, Texas.

Given that there are already two operational major, cross-border Alberta tar sands oil pipelines, I wonder how realistic it is to expect Obama to do an about-face on Keystone XL especially when four major US labor unions, representing 2.6 million workers, are aggressively lobbying for the project to be approved. I wonder too about the dynamics that led to a showdown over Keystone XL while the Alberta Clipper and Keystone pipelines both went operational in the last nineteen months seemingly unnoticed.

Last revised: 08 November 2011

Quotable: The Wisdom of Mary Poppins' Cousin

2011-10-30T23:12:00.000-07:00

... it may be that to eat and be eaten are the same thing in the end. My wisdom tells me that this is probably so. We are all made of the same stuff ... The same substance composes us--the tree overhead, the stone beneath us, the bird, the beast, the star--we are all one, all moving to the same end.

Source: Character of the Hamadryad in Mary Poppins by P. L. Travers (Harcourt, 1934) pp. 174-5.

Quotable: Terrorism & State Repression

2011-10-22T22:21:00.000-07:00

Terrorism ... revolutionizes state repression, and, indeed, in some cases was instigated by the secret police for the express purpose of legitimizing a state of emergency. The mass left, indeed the working class as a whole, was repeatedly victimized for the "heroic" deeds of a few. And despite the traditional disclaimers of its theoreticians, terror substitutes the messianic role of the self-sacrificial individual--or the magical totemism of the attentat [i.e. an act of 'propaganda of the deed']--for the conscious movement of the masses.

Source: Mike Davis. In Praise of Barbarians: Essays Against Empire. (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2007) p.273.

"Washington Rules" & Fulbright

2011-10-22T18:56:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War by Col. Andrew J. Bacevich (US Army, ret.). The 2010 book is Bacevich's contribution to Metropolitan Books' American Empire Project.

The "Washington rules," according to Bacevich, consist of a "credo" and a "trinity" and together they form "the basis for an enduring consensus" that underpins bipartisan American militarism in Washington, DC (15). Bacevich writes: "In the simplest terms, the credo summons the United States--and the United States alone--to lead, save, liberate, and ultimately transform the world" (12). The "trinity" represents:

an abiding conviction that the minimum essentials of international peace and order require the United States to maintain a global military presence, to configure its forces for global power projection, and to counter existing or anticipated threats by relying on a policy of global interventionism. [emphasis in original] (14)

The Pentagon's annual budget: "lubricates American politics, filling campaign coffers and providing a source of largesse--jobs and contracts--for distribution to constituents" (228). The Washington rules, Bacevich argues:

deliver profit, power and privilege to a long list of beneficiaries: elected and appointed officials, corporate executives and corporate lobbyists, admirals and generals, functionaries staffing the national security apparatus, media personalities and policy intellectuals from universities and research organizations. (228)

To the monetary and political benefits of adherence to the Washington rules, Bacevich adds the "psychic" appeal:

For many, the payoff includes the added, if largely illusory, attraction of occupying a seat within or near what is imagined to be the very cockpit of contemporary history. Before power corrupts it attracts and then seduces. The claims implicit in the American credo and the opportunities inherent in the sacred trinity combine to make the imperial city on the Potomac one of the most captivating, corrupt, and corrupting places on the face of the earth. (228-9)

There are a lot of good reviews of Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War online and so I won't spend any more time on the book except to share two quotes from Senator J. William Fulbright that Bacevich includes. The first is from Fulbright's 1966 book, The Arrogance of Power:

[Power] tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is peculiarly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor, conferring upon it a special responsibility for other nations--to make them richer and happier and wiser, to make them, that is, in its own shining image. ... Once imbued with the idea of mission, a great nation easily assumes that it has the means as well as the duty to do God's work. The Lord, after all, would surely not choose you as His agent and then deny you the sword with which to work His will. (111)

From the 1966 book also comes this quote:

'Maybe we are not really cut out for the job of spreading the gospel of democracy,' Fulbright suggested. 'Maybe it would profit us to concentrate on our own democracy instead of trying to inflict our own particular version of it' on others. 'If America has a service to perform in the world,' he continued, 'it is in large part the service of her own example. In our excessive involvement in the affairs of other countries we are not only living off our assets ... we are also denying the world the example of a free society enjoying freedom to the fullest.' (113)

Obama & the 'Anti-War' Vote in 2012

2011-10-02T21:57:00.000-07:00

Quotable: War

2011-09-24T20:07:00.000-07:00

War is organised murder and nothing else.

Source: Henry John Patch, formerly Private Patch in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, the last survivor of the Western Front, as quoted by David Randall in "The last of the noblest generation" in The Independent (UK), 26 July 2009.

Quotable: The Law II

2011-09-24T19:55:00.000-07:00

Laws are like cobwebs, for if any trifling or powerless thing fall into them, they hold it fast, but if a thing of any size falls into them it breaks the mesh and escapes. --Anacharsis (ca. 600 BC).

Law and order are always and everywhere the law and order which protect the established hierarchy. --Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979).

Source: Epigraphs to ch. 12. of From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell (Paddington, Queensland, Australia: Eddie Campbell Comics, 1999).

Quotable: That Insidious Beast

2011-09-24T19:20:00.000-07:00

The television is that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little.

Source: Ray Bradbury as quoted in The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom by Evgeny Morozov (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011) p. 281.

Film: The Lives of Others

2011-08-27T21:27:00.000-07:00

I'm a sucker for stories about personal redemption and forgiveness. They provide a much-needed counterpoint to the culturally-dominant "myth of redemptive violence," in my opinion. That's one reason why I liked the 2006 German film, The Lives of Others. The film is set in East Berlin just before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall and it's about a Stasi officer and his subjects.

Films: The Appeared & The Escapist

2011-08-17T17:26:00.000-07:00

Pedro Cabezas' The Appeared (Aparecidos) is a Spanish horror film shot in Argentina and features some beautiful shots of Patagonia. The title is a conscious reference to the "Desaparecidos"--the thousands of "disappeared" victims of the US-backed "Dirty War," a civil war waged by the Argentine military from 1975 until 1983. The film stands on its own as a horror flick but its intelligent and successful incorpation of the real-life horrors of Argentina's recent past enhances the film's appeal. The film is available with English subtitles on DVD from IFC Films.

Rupert Wyatt's The Escapist is a clever British prison break film inspired by American author Ambrose Beirce's Civil War-era short story, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. The film carries a timely message about the nature of freedom and captivity. For good reason, the film won or was nominated for several awards in the UK and Ireland.

Danger: Mercury in Fish

2011-08-10T23:25:00.000-07:00

I've almost finished reading Diagnosis: Mercury by Jane M. Hightower, MD. Diagnosis: Mercury is medical and environmental writing the way it should be done--no sensationalism, just good, solid writing, research, and documentation. Hightower's book is non-fiction but it reads like a gripping mystery novel as she reveals the modern history of industrial mercury poisoning and misregulation. Along the way we gain insight into why, decades after the Minamata disaster (see video below), US food supplies still contain mostly untested but unsafe levels of mercury.

In 2000, Dr. Hightower discovered that some of her affluent patients were ill with symptoms consistent with mercury poisoning--the symptoms improved and her patient's blood mercury levels dropped when they stopped eating swordfish and tuna. This is the point of departure for her book. Leaving her home in San Francisco, Hightower takes us to Japan, Canada, and Iraq, among other places. Along the way we see how greed has corrupted or derailed science, medicine, regulatory agencies, and the judicial system and places people's well-being at-risk.

Note: As it turns out getting a high dose of mercury from a single serving of fish is probably much easier than you think. For example, a 7 oz. serving of halibut for a 150 lb. person would result in a mercury exposure of 105% of the Environmental Protection Agency's "reference dose" i.e., "the amount of mercury a person, including sensitive subpopulations, can be exposed to on a daily basis over a lifetime without appreciable risk of effects." Check out the Mercury Calculator here at gotmercury.org

See also:

Jane Hightower, MD. "The Danger of Mercury Poisoning From Fish." San Francisco Medicine. March 2001.
Mercury Rising: The Poisoning of Grassy Narrows (CBC)
Mercury Still Killing in Grassy Narrows (FreeGrassy.org)

Quotable: "Concerning the Savages of North America"

2011-07-23T17:38:00.000-07:00

SAVAGES we call them, because their Manners differ from ours, which we think the Perfection of Civility; they think the same of theirs.

Perhaps, if we could examine the Manners of different Nations with Impartiality, we should find no People so rude, as to be without any Rules of Politeness; nor any so polite, as not to have some Remains of Rudeness.

The Indian Men, when young, are Hunters and Warriors; when old, Counsellors; for all their Government is by Counsel of the Sages; there is no Force, there are no Prisons, no Officers to compel Obedience, or inflict Punishment. Hence they generally study Oratory, the best Speaker having the most Influence. The Indian Women till the Ground, dress the Food, nurse and bring up the Children, and preserve and hand down to Posterity the Memory of public Transactions. These Employments of Men and Women are accounted natural and honourable. Having few artificial Wants, they have abundance of Leisure for Improvement by Conversation. Our laborious Manner of Life, compared with theirs, they esteem slavish and base; and the Learning, on which we value ourselves, they regard as frivolous and useless. An Instance of this occurred at the Treaty of Lancaster, in Pennsylvania, anno 1744, between the Government of Virginia and the Six Nations. After the principal Business was settled, the Commissioners from Virginia acquainted the Indians by a Speech, that there was at Williamsburg a College, with a Fund for Educating Indian youth; and that, if the Six Nations would send down half a dozen of their young Lads to that College, the Government would take care that they should be well provided for, and instructed in all the Learning of the White People. It is one of the Indian Rules of Politeness not to answer a public Proposition the same day that it is made; they think it would be treating it as a light matter, and that they show it Respect by taking time to consider it, as of a Matter important. They therefore deferr'd their Answer till the Day following; when their Speaker began, by expressing their deep Sense of the kindness of the Virginia Government, in making them that Offer; "for we know," says he, "that you highly esteem the kind of Learning taught in those Colleges, and that the Maintenance of our young Men, while with you, would be very expensive to you. We are convinc'd, therefore, that you mean to do us Good by your Proposal; and we thank you heartily. But you, who are wise, must know that different Nations have different Conceptions of things; and you will therefore not take it amiss, if our Ideas of this kind of Education happen not to be the same with yours. We have had some Experience of it; Several of our young People were formerly brought up at the Colleges of the Northern Provinces; they were instructed in all your Sciences; but, when they came back to us, they were bad Runners, ignorant of every means of living in the Woods, unable to bear either Cold or Hunger, knew neither how to build a Cabin, take a Deer, or kill an Enemy, spoke our Language imperfectly, were therefore neither fit for Hunters, Warriors, nor Counsellors; they were totally good for nothing. We are however not the less oblig'd by your kind Offer, tho' we decline accepting it; and, to show our grateful Sense of it, if the Gentlemen of Virginia will send us a Dozen of their Sons, we will take great Care of their Education, instruct them in all we know, and make Men of them."

Having frequent Occasions to hold public Councils, they have acquired great Order and Decency in conducting them. The old Men sit in the foremost Ranks, the Warriors in the next, and the Women and Children in the hindmost. The Business of the Women is to take exact Notice of what passes, imprint it in their Memories (for they have no Writing), and communicate it to their Children. They are the Records of the Council, and they preserve Traditions of the Stipulations in Treaties 100 Years back; which, when we compare with our Writings, we always find exact. He that would speak, rises. The rest observe a profound Silence. When he has finish'd and sits down, they leave him 5 or 6 Minutes to recollect, that, if he has omitted any thing he intended to say, or has any thing to add, he may rise again and deliver it. To interrupt another, even in common Conversation, is reckon'd highly indecent. How different this is from the conduct of a polite British House of Commons, where scarce a day passes without some Confusion, that makes the Speaker hoarse in calling to Order; and how different from the Mode of Conversation in many polite Companies of Europe, where, if you do not deliver your Sentence with great Rapidity, you are cut off in the middle of it by the Impatient Loquacity of those you converse with, and never suffer'd to finish it!

The Politeness of these Savages in Conversation is indeed carried to Excess, since it does not permit them to contradict or deny the Truth of what is asserted in their Presence. By this means they indeed avoid Disputes; but then it becomes difficult to know their Minds, or what Impression you make upon them. The Missionaries who have attempted to convert them to Christianity, all complain of this as one of the great Difficulties of their Mission. The Indians hear with Patience the Truths of the Gospel explain'd to them, and give their usual Tokens of Assent and Approbation; you would think they were convince'd. No such matter. It is mere Civility.

A Swedish Minister, having assembled the chiefs of the Susquehanah Indians, made a Sermon to them, acquainting them with the principal historical Facts on which our Religion is founded; such as the Fall of our first Parents by eating an Apple, the coming of Christ to repair the Mischief, his Miracles and Suffering, &c. When he had finished, an Indian Orator stood up to thank him. "What you have told us," says he, "is all very good. It is indeed bad to eat Apples. It is better to make them all into Cyder. We are much oblig'd by your kindness in coming so far, to tell us these Things which you have heard from your Mothers. In return, I will tell you some of those we have heard from ours. In the Beginning, our Fathers had only the Flesh of Animals to subsist on; and if their Hunting was unsuccessful, they were starving. Two of our young Hunters, having kill'd a Deer, made a Fire in the Woods to broil some Part of it. When they were about to satisfy their Hunger, they beheld a beautiful young Woman descend from the Clouds, and seat herself on that Hill, which you see yonder among the blue Mountains. They said to each other, it is a Spirit that has smelt our broiling Venison, and wishes to eat of it; let us offer some to her. They presented her with the Tongue; she was pleas'd with the Taste of it, and said, 'Your kindness shall be rewarded; come to this Place after thirteen Moons, and you shall find something that will be of great Benefit in nourishing you and your Children to the latest Generations.' They did so, and, to their Surprise, found Plants they had never seen before; but which, from that ancient time, have been constantly cultivated among us, to our great Advantage. Where her right Hand had touched the Ground, they found Maize; where her left hand had touch'd it, they found Kidney-Beans; and where her Backside had sat on it, they found Tobacco." The good Missionary, disgusted with this idle Tale, said, "What I delivered to you were sacred Truths; but what you tell me is mere Fable, Fiction, and Falshood." The Indian, offended, reply'd, "My brother, it seems your Friends have not done you Justice in your Education; they have not well instructed you in the Rules of common Civility. You saw that we, who understand and practise those Rules, believ'd all your stories; why do you refuse to believe ours?" When any of them come into our Towns, our People are apt to crowd round them, gaze upon them, and incommode them, where they desire to be private; this they esteem great Rudeness, and the Effect of the Want of Instruction in the Rules of Civility and good Manners. "We have," say they, "as much Curiosity as you, and when you come into our Towns, we wish for Opportunities of looking at you; but for this purpose we hide ourselves behind Bushes, where you are to pass, and never intrude ourselves into your Company."

Their Manner of entring one another's village has likewise its Rules. It is reckon'd uncivil in travelling Strangers to enter a Village abruptly, without giving Notice of their Approach. Therefore, as soon as they arrive within hearing, they stop and hollow, remaining there till invited to enter. Two old Men usually come out to them, and lead them in. There is in every Village a vacant Dwelling, called the Strangers' House. Here they are plac'd, while the old Men go round from Hut to Hut, acquainting the Inhabitants, that Strangers are arriv'd, who are probably hungry and weary; and every one sends them what he can spare of Victuals, and Skins to repose on. When the Strangers are refresh'd, Pipes and Tobacco are brought; and then, but not before, Conversation begins, with Enquiries who they are, whither bound, what News, &c.; and it usually ends with offers of Service, if the Strangers have occasion of Guides, or any Necessaries for continuing their Journey; and nothing is exacted for the Entertainment.

The same Hospitality, esteem'd among them as a principal Virtue, is practis'd by private Persons; of which Conrad Weiser, our Interpreter, gave me the following Instance. He had been naturaliz'd among the Six Nations, and spoke well the Mohock Language. In going thro' the Indian Country, to carry a Message from our Governor to the Council at Onondaga, he call'd at the Habitation of Canassatego, an old Acquaintance, who embrac'd him, spread Furs for him to sit on, plac'd before him some boil'd Beans and Venison, and mix'd some Rum and Water for his Drink. When he was well refresh'd, and had lit his Pipe, Canassatego began to converse with him; ask'd how he had far'd the many Years since they had seen each other; whence he then came; what occasion'd the Journey, &c. Conrad answered all his Questions; and when the Discourse began to flag, the Indian, to continue it, said, "Conrad, you have lived long among the white People, and know something of their Customs; I have been sometimes at Albany, and have observed, that once in Seven Days they shut up their Shops, and assemble all in the great House; tell me what it is for? What do they do there?" "They meet there," says Conrad, "to hear and learn good Things." "I do not doubt," says the Indian, "that they tell you so; they have told me the same; but I doubt the Truth of what they say, and I will tell you my Reasons. I went lately to Albany to sell my Skins and buy Blankets, Knives, Powder, Rum, &c. You know I us'd generally to deal with Hans Hanson; but I was a little inclin'd this time to try some other Merchant. However, I call'd first upon Hans, and asked him what he would give for Beaver. He said he could not give any more than four Shillings a Pound; 'but,' says he, 'I cannot talk on Business now; this is the Day when we meet together to learn Good Things, and I am going to the Meeting.' So I thought to myself, ' Since we cannot do any Business to-day, I may as well go to the meeting too,' and I went with him. There stood up a Man in Black, and began to talk to the People very angrily. I did not understand what he said; but, perceiving that he look'd much at me and at Hanson, I imagin'd he was angry at seeing me there; so I went out, sat down near the House, struck Fire, and lit my Pipe, waiting till the Meeting should break up. I thought too, that the Man had mention'd something of Beaver, and I suspected it might be the Subject of their Meeting. So, when they came out, I accosted my Merchant. 'Well, Hans,' says I, 'I hope you have agreed to give more than four Shillings a Pound.' 'No,' says he, 'I cannot give so much; I cannot give more than three shillings and sixpence.' I then spoke to several other Dealers, but they all sung the same song, Three and sixpence, Three and sixpence. This made it clear to me, that my Suspicion was right; and, that whatever they pretended of meeting to learn good Things, the real purpose was to consult how to cheat Indians in the Price of Beaver. Consider but a little, Conrad, and you must be of my Opinion. If they met so often to learn good Things, they would certainly have learnt some before this time. But they are still ignorant. You know our Practice. If a white Man, in travelling thro' our Country, enters one of our Cabins, we all treat him as I treat you; we dry him if he is wet, we warm him if he is cold, we give him Meat and Drink, that he may allay his Thirst and Hunger; and we spread soft Furs for him to rest and sleep on; we demand nothing in return. But, if I go into a white Man's House at Albany, and ask for Victuals and Drink, they say, 'Where is your Money ? ' and if I have none, they say, ' Get out, you Indian Dog.' You see they have not yet learned those little Good Things, that we need no Meetings to be instructed in, because our Mothers taught them to us when we were Children; and therefore it is impossible their Meetings should be, as they say, for any such purpose, or have any such Effect; they are only to contrive the Cheating of Indians in the Price of Beaver."

Source: "Concerning the Savages of North America" by Benjamin Franklin in The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. 10., pp. 97-104

"Love to Those Who Hate"

2011-07-19T17:12:00.000-07:00

In concluding "We love death": Projecting the American Culture of Death onto Islam I wrote, "Whatever lip service they may pay to the older, nobler meanings, it is clear that for most Americans (and their victims) the deeper, lived reality is that the cross is a symbol of death and devout American Christians are largely 'guilty bystanders,' if not active participants, in the crimes of empire." In the video below Ricky Skaggs, Kentucky Thunder, and the Boston Pops perform a song that speaks to a slightly different vision--a "soldier of the cross" armed with the "sword of faith" bringing "love to those who hate".

3,000 to Zero: Lack of Resolve or Slippery Slope

2011-07-19T16:13:00.000-07:00

The setup: Henry Dashwood has just died. On his death-bed, he obtained the promise of his son, John Dashwood, to ensure Henry's wife and three daughters--John's step-mother and half-sisters--will be taken care of financially by John.

Mr. John Dashwood had not the strong feelings of the rest of the family; but he was affected by a recommendation of such a nature at such a time, and he promised to do every thing in his power to make them comfortable. His father was rendered easy by such an assurance, and Mr. John Dashwood had then leisure to consider how much there might prudently be in his power to do for them.

He was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold hearted and rather selfish is to be ill-disposed: but he was, in general, well respected; for he conducted himself with propriety in the discharge of his ordinary duties. Had he married a more amiable woman, he might have been made still more respectable than he was:--he might even have been made amiable himself; for he was very young when he married, and very fond of his wife. But Mrs. John Dashwood was a strong caricature of himself;-- more narrow-minded and selfish.

When he gave his promise to his father, he meditated within himself to increase the fortunes of his sisters by the present of a thousand pounds a-piece. He then really thought himself equal to it. The prospect of four thousand a-year, in addition to his present income, besides the remaining half of his own mother's fortune, warmed his heart, and made him feel capable of generosity.-- "Yes, he would give them three thousand pounds: it would be liberal and handsome! It would be enough to make them completely easy. Three thousand pounds! he could spare so considerable a sum with little inconvenience."-- He thought of it all day long, and for many days successively, and he did not repent. ...

Mrs. John Dashwood did not at all approve of what her husband intended to do for his sisters. To take three thousand pounds from the fortune of their dear little boy would be impoverishing him to the most dreadful degree. She begged him to think again on the subject. How could he answer it to himself to rob his child, and his only child too, of so large a sum? And what possible claim could the Miss Dashwoods, who were related to him only by half blood, which she considered as no relationship at all, have on his generosity to so large an amount. It was very well known that no affection was ever supposed to exist between the children of any man by different marriages; and why was he to ruin himself, and their poor little Harry, by giving away all his money to his half sisters?

"It was my father's last request to me," replied her husband, "that I should assist his widow and daughters."

"He did not know what he was talking of, I dare say; ten to one but he was light-headed at the time. Had he been in his right senses, he could not have thought of such a thing as begging you to give away half your fortune from your own child."

"He did not stipulate for any particular sum, my dear Fanny; he only requested me, in general terms, to assist them, and make their situation more comfortable than it was in his power to do. Perhaps it would have been as well if he had left it wholly to myself. He could hardly suppose I should neglect them. But as he required the promise, I could not do less than give it; at least I thought so at the time. The promise, therefore, was given, and must be performed. Something must be done for them whenever they leave Norland and settle in a new home."

"Well, then, LET something be done for them; but THAT something need not be three thousand pounds. Consider," she added, "that when the money is once parted with, it never can return. Your sisters will marry, and it will be gone for ever. If, indeed, it could be restored to our poor little boy--"

"Why, to be sure," said her husband, very gravely, "that would make great difference. The time may come when Harry will regret that so large a sum was parted with. If he should have a numerous family, for instance, it would be a very convenient addition."

"To be sure it would."

"Perhaps, then, it would be better for all parties, if the sum were diminished one half.--Five hundred pounds would be a prodigious increase to their fortunes!"

"Oh! beyond anything great! What brother on earth would do half so much for his sisters, even if REALLY his sisters! And as it is--only half blood!--But you have such a generous spirit!"

"I would not wish to do any thing mean," he replied. "One had rather, on such occasions, do too much than too little. No one, at least, can think I have not done enough for them: even themselves, they can hardly expect more."

"There is no knowing what THEY may expect," said the lady, "but we are not to think of their expectations: the question is, what you can afford to do."

"Certainly--and I think I may afford to give them five hundred pounds a-piece. As it is, without any addition of mine, they will each have about three thousand pounds on their mother's death--a very comfortable fortune for any young woman."

"To be sure it is; and, indeed, it strikes me that they can want no addition at all. They will have ten thousand pounds divided amongst them. If they marry, they will be sure of doing well, and if they do not, they may all live very comfortably together on the interest of ten thousand pounds."

"That is very true, and, therefore, I do not know whether, upon the whole, it would not be more advisable to do something for their mother while she lives, rather than for them--something of the annuity kind I mean.--My sisters would feel the good effects of it as well as herself. A hundred a year would make them all perfectly comfortable."

His wife hesitated a little, however, in giving her consent to this plan.

"To be sure," said she, "it is better than parting with fifteen hundred pounds at once. But, then, if Mrs. Dashwood should live fifteen years we shall be completely taken in."

"Fifteen years! my dear Fanny; her life cannot be worth half that purchase."

"Certainly not; but if you observe, people always live for ever when there is an annuity to be paid them; and she is very stout and healthy, and hardly forty. An annuity is a very serious business; it comes over and over every year, and there is no getting rid of it. You are not aware of what you are doing. I have known a great deal of the trouble of annuities; for my mother was clogged with the payment of three to old superannuated servants by my father's will, and it is amazing how disagreeable she found it. Twice every year these annuities were to be paid; and then there was the trouble of getting it to them; and then one of them was said to have died, and afterwards it turned out to be no such thing. My mother was quite sick of it. Her income was not her own, she said, with such perpetual claims on it; and it was the more unkind in my father, because, otherwise, the money would have been entirely at my mother's disposal, without any restriction whatever. It has given me such an abhorrence of annuities, that I am sure I would not pin myself down to the payment of one for all the world."

"It is certainly an unpleasant thing," replied Mr. Dashwood, "to have those kind of yearly drains on one's income. One's fortune, as your mother justly says, is NOT one's own. To be tied down to the regular payment of such a sum, on every rent day, is by no means desirable: it takes away one's independence."

"Undoubtedly; and after all you have no thanks for it. They think themselves secure, you do no more than what is expected, and it raises no gratitude at all. If I were you, whatever I did should be done at my own discretion entirely. I would not bind myself to allow them any thing yearly. It may be very inconvenient some years to spare a hundred, or even fifty pounds from our own expenses."

"I believe you are right, my love; it will be better that there should by no annuity in the case; whatever I may give them occasionally will be of far greater assistance than a yearly allowance, because they would only enlarge their style of living if they felt sure of a larger income, and would not be sixpence the richer for it at the end of the year. It will certainly be much the best way. A present of fifty pounds, now and then, will prevent their ever being distressed for money, and will, I think, be amply discharging my promise to my father."

"To be sure it will. Indeed, to say the truth, I am convinced within myself that your father had no idea of your giving them any money at all. The assistance he thought of, I dare say, was only such as might be reasonably expected of you; for instance, such as looking out for a comfortable small house for them, helping them to move their things, and sending them presents of fish and game, and so forth, whenever they are in season. I'll lay my life that he meant nothing farther; indeed, it would be very strange and unreasonable if he did. Do but consider, my dear Mr. Dashwood, how excessively comfortable your mother-in-law and her daughters may live on the interest of seven thousand pounds, besides the thousand pounds belonging to each of the girls, which brings them in fifty pounds a year a-piece, and, of course, they will pay their mother for their board out of it. Altogether, they will have five hundred a-year amongst them, and what on earth can four women want for more than that?--They will live so cheap! Their housekeeping will be nothing at all. They will have no carriage, no horses, and hardly any servants; they will keep no company, and can have no expenses of any kind! Only conceive how comfortable they will be! Five hundred a year! I am sure I cannot imagine how they will spend half of it; and as to your giving them more, it is quite absurd to think of it. They will be much more able to give YOU something."

"Upon my word," said Mr. Dashwood, "I believe you are perfectly right. My father certainly could mean nothing more by his request to me than what you say. I clearly understand it now, and I will strictly fulfil my engagement by such acts of assistance and kindness to them as you have described. When my mother removes into another house my services shall be readily given to accommodate her as far as I can. Some little present of furniture too may be acceptable then."

"Certainly," returned Mrs. John Dashwood. "But, however, ONE thing must be considered. When your father and mother moved to Norland, though the furniture of Stanhill was sold, all the china, plate, and linen was saved, and is now left to your mother. Her house will therefore be almost completely fitted up as soon as she takes it."

"That is a material consideration undoubtedly. A valuable legacy indeed! And yet some of the plate would have been a very pleasant addition to our own stock here."

"Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for any place THEY can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your father thought only of THEM. And I must say this: that you owe no particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the world to THEM."

This argument was irresistible. It gave to his intentions whatever of decision was wanting before; and he finally resolved, that it would be absolutely unnecessary, if not highly indecorous, to do more for the widow and children of his father, than such kind of neighbourly acts as his own wife pointed out.

Source: Excerpted from chapters 1 and 2 of Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (1811).

Quotable: Bad Haircuts

2011-07-06T19:15:00.000-07:00

Son, if you're going to marry a white woman, then marry a rich one, because those white-trash women are just Indians with bad haircuts.

Source: "One Good Man" in The Toughest Indian in the World by Sherman Alexie (Grove Press, 2001) p. 226.

Beads & Shells

2011-07-05T23:16:00.000-07:00

In "Quotable: Descendants of Tribes," I cited John Trudell: "So, these White people, they're the descendants of tribes, there was a time in their ancestry when they wore feathers, all right? And they wore beads and shells." Of course, White folks have never stopped wearing beads and, arguably, the archaeological record shows an explosion of bead use by the indigenous people of North America after they got access to cheap European glass trade beads.

In any case, I wanted to provide some examples of just what some early Europeans made and wore long before the Romans expanded their empire and drastically changed life in previously non-Roman areas. First, an etymological note: According to Lois Sherr Dubin, writing in The History of Beads: From 100,000 B.C. to the Present (New York: Abrams, 2009), "The word bead is derived from the Anglo-Saxon bidden ('to pray') and bede ('prayer')" (p. 79).

The first example is a shell necklace from an archaeological site near Dolní Věstonice in the present-day Czech Republic. According to Palmer et al. (Unearthing the Past: The Great Archaeological Discoveries that Have Changed History, 2009), the artifacts at this Gravettian site date from 27,000 to 24, 000 BC.

Next up is a Magdalenian necklace of dentalium shell and bear, lion, fox and deer teeth from Rocher de la Peine, Les Eyzies (Dordogne), France. It dates from about 10,050 BC.

Below is an ibex head necklace with a bison head clasp made around 11,000-10,000 BC from ibex bone (see Dubin p. 27). It was excavated from a Paleolithic site of the Magdalenian culture in the Labastide commune in the French Pyrenees.

The shale beads pictured below are part of a cache of over 700 beads found at Nab's Head, Pembrokeshire, Wales. The beads date from about 10,500 years ago.

The next two images are not of beads, shells, or feathers but they do give a sense of life in pre-Roman Europe. Pictured below is an interior portion of the Gundestrap Cauldron, found in a peat bog in Himmerland, Denmark in 1891. The cauldron is generally believed to have been created in the 2nd or 1st century BC. The central, antlered figure, holding a snake and a torc, is the Celtic god Cernunnos.

The final image is an artist's rendition of the ancient (ca. 200 BC) fort of Castell Henllys in present-day Pembrokeshire, Wales.

See also: "Prehistoric Stonehenge visitors came from the Mediterranean and the Alps" on Heritage-Key.com

I'm part White but ...

2011-06-30T21:52:00.000-07:00

The image below is of a t-shirt design discussed by Paul Chaat Smith in his essay "Homeland Insecurity" in Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong (Minneapolis, Univ of Minnesota Pr., 2009).

See also: "American Indians: Some Stereotypes & Realities"

Quotable: "a riot of vastly different cultures"

2011-06-30T20:26:00.000-07:00

Five hundred years ago we were Seneca and Cree and Hopi and Kiowa, as different from each other as Norwegians are from Italians, or Egyptians from Zulus. ...

America pre-Columbus was a riot of vastly different cultures, which occasionally fought each other, no doubt sometimes viciously and for stupid reasons. If some Indian societies were ecological utopias with that perfect, elusive blend of democracy and individual freedom, some also practiced slavery, both before and after contact. Yet the amazing variety of human civilization that existed five centuries ago has been replaced by one image above all: the Plains Indians of the mid-nineteenth century. Most Indians weren't anything like the Sioux or the Comanche, either the real ones or the Hollywood invention. The true story is simply too messy and complicated. And too threatening. The myth of noble savages, completely unable to cope with modern times, goes down much more easily. No matter that Indian societies consistently valued technology and when useful made it their own. The glory days of the Comanches, for example, were built on European imports of horses and guns. ...

I suggest that a powerful antidote to the manufactured past now being created for us is the secret history of Indians in the twentieth century. Geronimo really did have a Cadillac and used to drive it to church, where he'd sign autographs. Quanah Parker, the legendary leader of the Comanches, became a successful businessman after the war. He was part owner of a railroad, and endorsed farming and Jesus. At the same time he was leader in the Native American Church and advocated the use of peyote. One of the most instructive lives is that of Black Elk, one of our greatest heroes and most revered spiritual leaders. His astonishing life included a stint in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show and surviving the Wounded Knee massacre. An impresario-anthropologist named John Neihardt wrote of his fantastic visions in Black Elk Speaks. ...

I found it fascinating that despite hearing about Black Elk for many years, I had no idea he spent most of his life as a Catholic. I learned that many believe that Black Elk and white assistants sat down and invented practically a new religion, explicitly designed to blend teachings of Christianity and Lakota spiritualism. At the time he was working as a catechist for the Roman Catholic Church of Nebraska. Essentially he was a lay priest. I also learned he had a first name, and that it was Nick. ... Do any of these facts about Nick Black Elk invalidate his contribution to the Lakota people, or his spiritual teachings? I think that to say they do is to say the invented, impossibly wise sages are preferable to the people who actually lived. Nick Black Elk, an extra in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, a paid employee of the Catholic Church, only becomes more interesting, not less, and his accomplishments even more remarkable. Those who would have it otherwise cherish the myth more than the genuine struggles of real human beings.

Source: Paul Chaat Smith in Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong (Minneapolis, Univ of Minnesota Pr., 2009) pp. 19-22.

See also: "A Brief History of Native Stereotyping" on the Blue Corn Comics site.

Quotable: Organized Crime

2011-06-30T20:11:00.000-07:00

"Organized crime!" What's that? Historical curiosity? Couldn't find it, I should think so.

But I did, said Jai. Sure I found it.

Government.

Source: Character of Jai Vedh in And Chaos Died by Joanna Russ (Boston: Gregg Pr., 1978) p. 133.

The Future of Music?

2011-06-30T18:31:00.000-07:00

The video below is of the Japanese virtual pop star, Hatsune Miku. In 2009, she first performed "live" before 5,000 fans in two performances at the Zepp Tokyo music hall and another 4,000 via streaming video. Tickets to her "live" performance this Saturday in the 7,100-seat Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles are already sold out.

Quotable: Descendants of Tribes

2011-06-18T20:47:00.000-07:00

They were, in a way, trying to imitate us [in film representations of Indians] but in another way they were trying to remember who they were. Every human being is a descendant of a tribe. So, these White people, they're the descendants of tribes, there was a time in their ancestry when they wore feathers, all right? And they wore beads and shells. There was a time in their ancestry, all right, before this colonizing mentality came and did to them, to turn them into the White people they are, and then it came and did it to us. The very same thing that happened to us happened to them.

Source: John Trudell, Lakota activist/poet in Reel Injun (Rezolution Pictures & the National Film Board of Canada, 2009)

See also:

Quotable: Law & Speak Up

2011-06-15T15:56:00.000-07:00

The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free. They are the lovers of law and order who observe the law when the government breaks it.

Source: "Slavery in Massachusetts" by Henry David Thoreau, 1854.

The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.

Source: Elizabeth Cady Stanton's address to the National American Woman Suffrage Association Convention of 1890. Quoted in The History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. 4 by Susan B. Anthony & Ida Husted Harper, eds. (Rochester, NY: Susan B. Anthony, 1902) p. 166.

If you do not speak up when it matters, when would it matter that you speak? The opposite of courage is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.

Source: "A celebration of agitation" by Jim Hightower. Arizona Daily Star. July 28, 2002.

Quotable: Values, Leadership, Sovereignty, Law

2011-06-05T14:04:00.000-07:00

Is there a fundamental or inherent difference between indigenous and white society? This is a relevant question, given the tendency of the dominant Western tradition to draw racial distinctions. Indigenous traditions, by contrast, include all human beings as equal members in the regimes of conscience ...

A deep reading of tradition points to a moral universe in which all of humanity is accountable to the same standard ... Though it may be emotionally satisfying for indigenous people to ascribe a greedy, dominating nature to white people, as an intellectual and political position this is self-defeating. It is more hopeful to listen to the way traditional teachings speaks of the various human families: they consider each one gifted and powerful in it own way, each with something different to contribute to the achievement to peace and harmony ...

The value of the indigenous critique of the Western world-view lies not in the creation of false dichotomies but in the insight that the colonial attitudes and structures imposed on the world by Europeans are not manifestations of an inherent evil: they are merely reflections of white society's understanding of its own power and relationship with nature. [pp. 20-21]

In his classic study Leadership (1978), James MacGregor Burns developed the concept of 'moral leadership'. Identifying a fundamental difference between what he called 'power -wielder' and true leaders, he argued that the manipulation of resources to effect the personal will or interest on the manipulator is not leadership at all; leadership must be rooted in a set of personal values consistent with and supportive of the collective's values. Burns's concept of moral leadership complements indigenous ideas. In particular, his critique of 'leaders' who are actually nothing more than politicians resembles the criticism expressed by many indigenous people with respect to their new leaders.

For Burns, the average politician in an electoral system is simply playing a power game in which he structures incentives to induce people to do what he wants--to vote for a certain party, support a particular policy, carry out a given order. [p. 45]

... sovereignty is an exclusionary concept rooted in an adversarial and coercive Western notion of power. Indigenous peoples can never match the awesome coercive force of the state; so long as sovereignty remains the goal of indigenous politics, therefore Native communities will occupy a dependent and reactionary position relative to the state. Acceptance of 'Aboriginal rights' in the context of state sovereignty represents the culmination of white society's efforts to assimilate indigenous people. [p. 59]

'in periods of calm the law may shape reality, in periods of change the law will follow reality and find ways to accommodate and justify it' [p. 83, quoting DJ Elazar, From Statism to Federalism--A Paradigm Shift," International Political Science Review 17(4), p. 428]

There is no inherent conflict between basic indigenous and non-indigenous values. Rather, it is the historical practice of politics (and the institutionalization of these patterns of governance) that contravenes the basic values of liberal-democratic and traditional indigenous philosophies alike. Manipulative mechanisms of control work against the best instincts of both Western and aboriginal value systems. [p. 132]

Source: Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto by Taiaiake Alfred (New York: Oxford UP, 1999)

Victory for Liberty in Snyder v. Phelps

2011-03-02T16:14:00.000-08:00

More than three years ago, in "God Bless Fred Phelps," I wrote: "When the government permits a private action and ~~enforces~~ a judgment against Phelps for invasion of privacy and emotional distress as they did this year in Snyder v. Phelps then everyone who is not a sheep needs to look out." It was heartening therefore to read the following in the 8-1 Supreme Court slip opinion (PDF):

Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, movethem to tears of both joy and sorrow, and—as it did here—inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stiflepublic debate. That choice requires that we shield Westboro [Baptist Church] from tort liability for its picketing in this case.

See also: "High court hands 1st Amendment win to funeral picketers"--analysis at firstamendmentcenter.org

Religion casts us into the deepest of all prisons

2011-02-24T18:14:00.000-08:00

No religion is capable of altering the fact that the behaviour of men is a behaviour apart from God. All that religion can do is to expose the complete godlessness of human behaviour ... Woe be to us, if from the summits of religion there pours forth nothing but religion! Religion casts us into the deepest of all prisons: it cannot liberate us. Flesh is flesh; and all that takes place within its sphere, every step we undertake towards God, is as such weak. Because of the qualitative distinction between God and man the history of religion, Church History, is weak, utterly weak. Since religion is human, utterly human history, it is flesh, even though it be draped in the flowing garments of the 'History of Salvation'.

Source: Commentary on Romans 8:3,4 in Karl Barth's The Epistle to the Romans. Edwyn C. Hoskyns, trans. (New York: Oxford UP, 1933, 1968).

Human Meat

2011-01-17T22:05:00.000-08:00

THEY'RE MADE OUT OF MEAT by Terry Bisson

"They're made out of meat."

"Meat?"

"Meat. They're made out of meat."

"Meat?"

"There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."

"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?"

"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."

"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."

"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."

"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."

"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they're made out of meat."

"Maybe they're like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage."

"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take long. Do you have any idea what's the life span of meat?"

"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."

"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."

"No brain?"

"Oh, there's a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat! That's what I've been trying to tell you."

"So ... what does the thinking?"

"You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat."

"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"

"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?"

"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."

"Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."

"Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?"

"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual."

"We're supposed to talk to meat."

"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there. Anybody home.' That sort of thing."

"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"

"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."

"I thought you just told me they used radio."

"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."

"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"

"Officially or unofficially?"

"Both."

"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."

"I was hoping you would say that."

"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?"

"I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say? 'Hello, meat. How's it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?"

"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can't live on them. And being meat, they can only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."

"So we just pretend there's no one home in the Universe."

"That's it."

"Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You're sure they won't remember?"

"They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."

"A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's dream."

"And we marked the entire sector unoccupied."

"Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?"

"Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again."

"They always come around."

"And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone ..."

Quotable: A Truly Free God

2011-01-17T19:12:00.000-08:00

As George Mendenhall has urged, the social purpose of a really transcendent God is to have a court of appeal against the highest courts and orders of society around us. Thus a truly free God is essential to marginal people if they are to have a legitimate standing ground against oppressive orders of the day. But then it follows that for those who regulate and benefit from the order of the day a truly free God is not necessary, desirable, or perhaps even possible.

Source: The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann (Minneapolis: Fortress Pr., 2001)
pp. 22-23.

Quotable: Ignorance, Civilization, & Patriotism

2011-01-10T21:26:00.000-08:00

Ignorance is the ground of thought. Unproof is the ground of action. If it was proven there is no God there would be no religion ... But also if it were proven there is a God there would be no religion. --Character of Faxe, p. 70.

If civilization has an opposite, it is war. Of those two things, you have either one, or the other. Not both. --Character of Genly Ai, p. 101.

How does one hate a country, or love one? ... I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one mustn't make virtue of it, or a profession. ... Insofar as I love life, I love the hills of the Domain of Estre, but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope. ...

A man who doesn't detest a bad government is a fool. And if there were such a thing as a good government on earth, it would be a great joy to serve it. --Character of Estraven, pp. 212-3.

Source: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (New York: Ace, 2000).

Newport Ymerodraeth State of Mind

2010-11-28T19:31:00.000-08:00

This is the original, real deal by Alex W (featuring Terema Wainwright) that Jay Z and Alicia Keys ripped off for "Empire State of Mind" but the bastards from EMI have been going after the Welsh artists claiming copyright infringement. So, if they succeed in getting Youtube to pull the video again then go here.

Okay, before anyone complains, yes, I know Jay Z and Alicia's song was the original. Check the Danish version "Staden (på en go dag)" by Jake Juke & Ruby Manslaughter.

Latuff on Israel, Obama, & the "Iranian Nuclear Threat"

2010-10-30T21:44:00.000-07:00

"Terrorist?" by Lowkey

2010-10-26T21:05:00.000-07:00

"Diversity" Means No Protestant Christians on US Supreme Court

2010-08-06T10:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, the US Senate confirmed Barack Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan to the US Supreme Court. The Voice of America's story on the confirmation includes this paragraph:

Democratic Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland said, "And when Elena Kagan is confirmed, she will, for the first time in America's history, be the third woman out of nine on the Supreme Court of the United States. I think that is going to give us more common sense justice in this nation, and certainly one that reflects the diversity of our country."

What Cardin neglected to mention is that there are now no Protestant Christian Justices on the Court and when Kagan is sworn-in tomorrow there will be six Roman Catholics and three Jews on the Court. How is that for "diversity"? As ABC News reported last May, "At least one Protestant justice has served at all times since the Supreme Court was established in 1789." But not any more.

Although about 50% of Americans identify as Protestant Christians, they will not be represented on the US Supreme Court. Roman Catholics, who comprise about 25% of the US population, will be over-represented by a factor of 2.7, while Jews, who comprise about 1.2% of the US population, will be overrepresented by a factor of 27.8. (All percentages in this paragraph are from the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey, which is a data source for the Census Bureau's Statistical Abstract of the United States).

In light of the apparent historical over-representation of Protestants on the Court, perhaps, a fair case could be made that they should be now under-represented for a while. However, there's a big difference between having half of the country's population under-represented and not having it represented at all. If one upholds the principle of representative government then you can't be indifferent to a complete lack of representation for the largest population segment.

The fields of critical race, class, and gender theory all tell us that personal identity and cultural background matter in influencing how we view the world and function in institutional settings. Diversity was supposed to help address and counteract biases created by minority exclusion and under-representation but somewhere along the way it seems that it was decided that representing majorities or pluralities didn't matter so much.

In April, before Kagan was nominated retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, an Episcopalian, said "I think that religion should not be the basis for an appointment, but if that were the case, one would expect somewhere in the nine to see a Protestant or two." But that expectation has been dashed. Why is that? Could it have something to do with the fact that Barack Obama was hailed in some quarters as the "first Jewish president"? What about the fact that Jews, such as Ben Cardin quoted above, are over-represented in the US Senate by a factor of at least 11?

See also:

"Elena Kagan and the Supreme Court: A Barnyard Smell in Chicago, Harvard and Washington" by James Petras
"Elena Kagan: Jewish Ethnic Networking Eases the Path of a Liberal/Leftist to the Supreme Court" by Kevin MacDonald
"Ambition and orthodoxy (Kagan's hero is also Dershowitz's)" by Philip Weiss

On This Day: Israel attacks USS Liberty

2010-06-08T00:01:00.000-07:00

From the web site of Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the US House of Representatives (click on the image to enlarge):

Page last accessed on 22 May 2010.

Sinéad O'Connor's "Famine"

2010-06-03T20:26:00.000-07:00

Lyrics:
OK, I want to talk about Ireland
Specifically I want to talk about the "famine"
About the fact that there never really was one
There was no "famine"
See Irish people were only allowed to eat potatoes
All of the other food
Meat fish vegetables
Were shipped out of the country under armed guard
To England while the Irish people starved
And then on the middle of all this
They gave us money not to teach our children Irish
And so we lost our history
And this is what I think is still hurting me
See we're like a child that's been battered
Has to drive itself out of it's head because it's frightened
Still feels all the painful feelings
But they lose contact with the memory
And this leads to massive self-destruction
alcoholism, drug adiction
All desperate attempts at running
And in it's worst form
Becomes actual killing
And if there ever is gonna be healing
There has to be remembering
And then grieving
So that there then can be forgiving
There has to be knowledge and understanding
All the lonely people
where do they all come from
An American army regulation Says you mustn't kill more than 10% of a nation
'Cos to do so causes permanent "psychological damage"
It's not permanent but they didn't know that
Anyway during the supposed "famine"
We lost a lot more than 10% of our nation
Through deaths on land or on ships of emigration
But what finally broke us was not starvation
but it's use in the controlling of our education
Schools go on about "Black 47"
On and on about "The terrible famine"
But what they don't say is in truth
There really never was one
(Excuse me)
All the lonely people
(I'm sorry, excuse me)
Where do they all come from
(that I can tell you in one word)
All the lonely people
where do they all belong
So let's take a look shall we
The highest statistics of child abuse in the EEC
And we say we're a Christian country
But we've lost contact with our history
See we used to worship God as a mother
We're sufferin from post traumatic stress disorder
Look at all our old men in the pubs
Look at all our young people on drugs
We used to worship God as a mother
Now look at what we're doing to each other
We've even made killers of ourselves
The most child-like trusting people in the Universe
And this is what's wrong with us
Our history books the parent figures lied to us
I see the Irish
As a race like a child
That got itself bashed in the face
And if there ever is gonna be healing
There has to be remembering
And then grieving
So that there then can be forgiving
There has to be knowledge and understanding
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from

Removing Anti-Zionist Barbs from Monty Python's "Life of Brian"

2010-05-18T17:40:00.000-07:00

Recently, I read somewhere that some rabbis were very unhappy with Monty Python's film, The Life of Brian, when it first came out. Indeed, according to the New York Times (Aug. 28, 1979; p. C8) several American rabbinical organizations, including the Rabbinical Allianceof American and the Union of Orthodox Rabbis, "condemned" the film as "blasphemous," a "crime against religion," and "a vicious attack upon Judaism and the Bible ..."

Naturally, I wanted to watch the film again now that I have those special sunglasses that help me see things more clearly. Well, I can see what upset the rabbis but according to a post by Eric Verlo at Not My Tribe there's even more to the story.

I can't vouch for the accuracy of most of Verlo's post but I can say that it is true that "The Criterion edition of Monty Python's Life of Brian has some" deleted scenes and that those scenes do indeed appear to have their own deletions.

There is the scene that includes the first appearance of "Otto, the Nazirene" (pictured above). Verlo says that the first Otto scene appeared in the film's original theatrical release. I don't know if it appeared in the UK release but that doesn't seem to be the case for the US version. The Times published several articles on the controversy over the film but none of them mention Otto. In Blasphemy in the Christian world: a History, author David Nash says, "A sequence which involved a character representative of extreme forms of Zionism [that would be Otto] eventually was consigned to the cutting-room floor, in the interests of smoothing the way for the film's distribution in America." As for whether that deleted scene has been edited on the DVD release you can read Verlo's post and then watch the video below. There is definitely a jump after Otto introduces himself and that is on the DVD version, too.

KPLU Reports on Israeli Vets in Seattle

2010-05-11T19:21:00.000-07:00

A local Puget Sound NPR affiliate, KPLU, has aired a fluff piece on the "Hope for Heroism" program. Check it out at " 'Hope for Heroism' Project - Israeli Soldiers Help US Vets."

Update on Snyder v. Phelps

2010-05-10T14:15:00.000-07:00

Right: Protesters from Illinois and Topeka line a portion of the S.W. 12th and Gage Boulevard intersection on Sunday. They were protesting the Westboro Baptist Church's picketing of soldier funerals. ANN MARIE BUSH/THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

Early last month I wrote that Harriet Robbins Ost's article is the most thorough treatment I've seen so far of the important constitutional issues in the Snyder v. Phelps Supreme Court case. Shortly after that the Marine Corps Times published "Snyder-Phelps fight has many twists, turns" by Dan Lamothe. Here's a summation of the constitutional issues from that article:

• Speech and privacy. Snyder asked the Supreme Court to review whether the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., was correct in protecting the church’s speech if it attacked a “private” figure, Snyder, concerning a private matter, the funeral. The Phelpses argued to the court that there is a “viable basis” to saying Snyder is not a private figure with regard to his son’s death because he had already granted media interviews. The church also said its protests are focused on public issues, making them protected speech.

• Speech and religion. Snyder asked the court to review whether the First Amendment, used to overturn Snyder’s initial settlement, allows the Phelpses’ freedom of speech to trump Snyder’s right to mourn his son in a private religious ceremony. The church has countered by saying its members picketed on a public street, on issues that were of public interest.

• Funeral attendees’ rights. Snyder’s lawyers say that even if the appellate court’s decision to uphold the Phelpses’ free speech was appropriate, it failed to consider that Snyder was a “captive audience” at his son’s funeral. A federal appeals court already has ruled in another case involving the church that the government is allowed to protect private citizens from unwanted communication when they cannot avoid it, Snyder points out. The Phelpses say the argument is not relevant, since the previous case focused on whether a state law banning picketing within 300 feet of a funeral was constitutional — a separate issue.

Today, the Marine Corps Times published "Former Marine protests funeral picketers" which discusses a protest against the Westboro Baptist Church on their home turf, it started last month. That's a better way to deal with Fred Phelps and his church instead of trying to set dangerous legal precedents that erode everyone's First Amendment rights. Oh, wait a minute, I forgot about the slavish fools who don't understand or don't care that freedom of expression means nothing if it is only accorded to those who don't rock the boat or offend the delicate sensibilities of the 'patriotically correct,' etc. masses.

See also: "Attorneys: First Amendment doesn't fully protect funeral protesters" by The Associated Press (26 May 2010) on the First Amendment Center web site.

Great Elton John BDS Parody: "B ... B … Bibi and his tanks"

2010-05-09T19:12:00.000-07:00

HEY ELTON from John Greyson on Vimeo.

Palestinian civil society has called on Elton John to respect its boycott call and cancel his June 17th concert in Tel Aviv. If he does so, he'll be joining Santana and Gil-Scott Heron, who recently cancelled their spring concerts in Israel. This video suggests six reasons why Elton should join the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement.

WA VA Director Collaborates with "Jewish Extremists" in Pairing US & Israeli Vets

2010-05-09T12:18:00.000-07:00

In his latest update, John Lee, Director of the Washington State Department of Veterans Affairs, reports: "Several months ago I was contacted by Rabbi Chaim Levine, President of an organization known as Hope for Heroism." He continues: "This year Hope for Heroism will bring a group of injured Israeli Soldiers to the Seattle area to participate in a series of events with disabled U.S. Soldiers from the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. A picnic is being held on May 11 where the two groups will participate in several activities ..."

Late last month, Seattle journalist Larry Johnson and the Seattle PostGlobe both published an open letter from Veterans for Peace, Greater Seattle, Chapter 92 to wounded Israeli veterans participating in Hope for Heroism's planned visit to Seattle this month. Seattle Veterans for Peace were alerted to the program by a January 20, 2010, blog post on the Seattle PI web site. The post is entitled "Wounded Soldiers Helping Wounded Soldiers" and starts out: "Peace. Bravery. Hope."

It reports Hope for Heroism is "a non-profit organization created and run by wounded soldiers from Israel's elite Duvdevan Unit (Special Forces) to help other wounded soldiers." The post touts the success of Hope for Heroism's peer mentoring program: "When each soldier is assigned a mentor to guide them through their recovery, the recently wounded see that their steps through recovery can lead to a positive future - as many of the mentors have and will continue to go on to be diplomats and entrepreneurs that Israel needs." The obvious goal of "Hope for Heroism" is to make sure these wounded soldiers don't ever seriously question what they have done and the price they have paid. The goal is that they keep the faith with the violent ideology of Zionism, i.e. Jewish supremacism in Palestine.

Just how peaceful and brave can these wounded Israeli soldiers be? Are they heroes? Do heroes kill Lebanese, Palestinian, and other civilians in droves "for the safety of the Jewish people." What hope is there for wounded veterans in a program that justifies crimes done in the name of a racist, apartheid state? According to, "Targeting to Kill: Israel's Undercover Units," a 1992 report by the Palestine Human Rights information Center, Duvdevan was one of two undercover units formed in 1988 by then-Prime Minister and current Labor Party chief and Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Barak "to infiltrate and disable or eliminate Palestinian activists in the West Bank and Gaza" during the First Intifada. Some of these killings were also documented in Al-Haq's 2001 briefing "Wilful Killing: The Assassination of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories by the Israeli Security Forces." And, indeed, evidence suggests that Duvdevan troops are, among other things, assassins, volunteers in Israeli "death squads". They also participated in the 2002 arrest of Palestinian parliamentarian Marwan Barghouti in Ramallah.

The video below shows just one example of some of these "brave" soldiers in action. Released by the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, it details the 2006 killing of 'Itaf Zalat by Duvdevan soldiers in her West Bank home.

The above mentioned Chaim Levine is the Executive Director of Living Judaism, a local branch of Aish haTorah. He grew up in the US but exercised his 'birth right' to move to occupied Palestine (Israel). Levine's wife, Techiya Levine is the Co-Executive Director. She also grew up in the US but moved to occupied Palestine. They're both also personally affiliated with Aish haTorah, which is a militantly Zionist religious organization that, among other things, co-sponsors Hasbara fellowships with the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Aish haTorah is also linked with the infamous "Obsession" video and possibly indirectly with the torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison. In "The Jewish Extremists Behind 'Obsession' " the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, no raging anti-Zionist, described Aish haTorah as "just about the most fundamentalist movement in Judaism today."

So, one wonders why the director of the Washington State VA is working with "Jewish extremists" to "help" rehabilitate wounded Israeli troops and link them up with wounded American vets. Isn't already bad enough that the American vets were wounded in US wars fought in no small part for Israel?

See also:

"IRAQ: A WAR FOR ISRAEL?" by the Somerville Divestment Project
"Charles Freeman & Israel" on the Dissident Veteran for Peace blog

Quotable: "Protest that endures ..."

2010-05-08T23:19:00.000-07:00

Much protest is naive; it expects quick, visible improvement and despairs and gives up when such improvement does not come. Protesters who hold out for longer have perhaps understood that success is not the proper goal. If protest depended on success, there would be little protest of any durability or significance. History simply affords too little evidence that anyone's individual protest is of any use. Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one's own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.

Source: Attributed to "A Poem of Difficult Hope" in What Are People For? by Wendell Berry.

Quotable: Property & People

2010-05-08T23:09:00.000-07:00

There is no better place to see the priority that this system establishes of property over people than in court.

Source: Martín Espada as quoted in "Songs for América" by Adam Hyla in Real Change, May 5, 2010.

Quotable: Natural

2010-04-04T22:03:00.000-07:00

Student: Professor Wittgenstein, (slaps self hard on face) you can't know this pain. Only I can.

Ludwig Wittgenstein: Are you sure you know it? You don't doubt you had a pain just then?

Student: How could I?

Ludwig Wittgenstein: If we can't speak of doubt ... we can't speak of knowledge, either ... It makes no sense to speak of knowing something in a context where we could not possibly doubt it therefore to say I know I am in pain is entirely senseless ...

Student: I just can't see it, professor. It somehow just seems natural to me to say I know I'm in pain.

Wittgenstein: Oh, natural. Tell me, why does it seem more natural for people to believe that the sun goes around the earth rather than the other way around?

Student: Well, obviously, because it looks that way.

Wittgenstein: I see, and how would it look if the earth went around the sun?

Student: Um, well I suppose ... yes, I see what you mean.

Source: Derek Jarman's film Wittgenstein, beginning at 34:12, 45:35.

Snyder v. Phelps Goes to the Supreme Court

2010-04-04T21:34:00.000-07:00

I've been following the lawsuit of Albert Snyder against Fred Phelps et al. since 2007. Most of the online coverage following the US Supreme Court's decision to grant certiorari to hear Snyder's appeal has been crap but I have found one thoughtful article. Although tainted by her tedious pro forma denunciations of the Westboro Baptist Church as "obnoxious," Harriet Robbins Ost's article, "U.S. Supreme Court: Will distress trump the First Amendment right to free speech?" is the most thorough treatment I've seen so far of the important constitutional issues in the case.

Quotable: Aristocrats & the Common Folk

2010-04-04T20:52:00.000-07:00

All aristocrats idealize the common folk, as long as they keep stoking the boilers.

Source: Character of Bertrand Russell in Derek Jarman's film Wittgenstein at 52:30.

Quotable: Ideas, the State, & Revolution in The Dispossessed

2010-03-29T14:20:00.000-07:00

... ideas never were controlled by laws and governments ... You can't crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush ideas by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change… ... the innate cowardice of the average human mind. Public opinion! That's the power structure ... The unadmitted, inadmissible government that rules the ... society by stifling the individual mind. --Character of Bedap, p. 165.

To say that a good end will follow from a bad means is just like saying that if I pull a rope on this pulley it will lift the weight on that one. --Character of Shevek, p. 225.

The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself. --Character of Shevek, p. 272.

We are not seeking power. We are seeking the end of power! ... The means are the end. ... Only peace brings peace, only just acts bring justice! --Character of Maedda, p. 296.

You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit or, it is nowhere. --Character of Shevek, p. 301.

... revolution begins in the thinking mind. --Character of Shevek, p. 333.

Revolution is our obligation: our hope of evolution. 'The Revolution is in the individual spirit, or it is nowhere. It is for all, or it is nothing. If it is seen as having any end, it will never truly begin.' --Character of Shevek quoting character of Odo, p. 359.

Source: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin (New York: Eos, 2001).

American Indians: Some Stereotypes & Realities

2010-03-28T22:13:00.000-07:00

STEREOTYPE
"My grandmother was an Indian".

REALITY
Thousands of Americans "wannabe" Indians, but they are not.

STEREOTYPE
Indians are all full bloods.

REALITY
The majority of Indians are of mixed heritage.

STEREOTYPE
All Indians have an "Indian name".

REALITY
Most Indians have only a Euro-American name.
A minority of Indians also have "Indian names."

STEREOTYPE
Most Indians know the histories, languages and cultural aspects of
their own tribe and of other tribes.

REALITY
Few Indians know all cultural aspects of their own tribes, much
less those of other tribes.

Source: Devon A. Mihesuah, American Indians: Stereotypes & Realities, (Atlanta: Clarity Pr., 1996).

US' Worst Military Defeat & Geo. Washington Covers It Up

2010-03-28T21:13:00.000-07:00

On the morning of November 4, 1791, St. Clair’s Defeat aka the Battle of the Wabash took place on the banks of a tributary of the Wabash River near present-day Ft. Recovery, Ohio. The US troops had moved north from Ft. Washington en route to the Miami town of Kekionga. They were intercepted before they reached their destination and in the course of a three-hour battle, Miami, Delaware, Shawnee, Potawatomi, Ottawa, Chippewa and Wyandot warriors under the leadership of Little Turtle (Miami), Blue Jacket (Shawnee), and Buckongahelas (Delaware/Lenape) killed 632 and wounded 264 US enlisted troops (a casualty rate of 97.4%).

When it was over "Nearly 1/4 of America’s standing army had been killed." The US death toll "was more than three times the number" killed "85 years later at Custer's last stand at Little Big Horn - and, by far, the worst defeat of an American force by Indians in the nation's history." Some say it was "the single worst defeat suffered by the U.S. Army in its history."

Well, members of Congress decided to investigate with the House of Representatives issuing subpoenas for War Department (the military was a little more honest about what they did back then) documents. This prompted George Washington to call the first ever Cabinet meeting, where it was decided that "the President could keep matters secret from anybody whenever it was required for the greater good." Thus, was "executive privilege" born.

Sources:

"Early America's Bloodiest Battle" on Archiving Early America
"St. Clair's Defeat" on Suite101.com
"St. Clair’s Defeat and the Birth of Executive Privilege" on Babeled.com

America's Wealthiest Religions

2010-03-19T18:26:00.000-07:00

The image below (click to enlarge) is from "Transparency: America's Wealthiest Religions. An earlier "tranparency" gives the following proportions of the US population in 2008:

Baptist 15.8%
Jewish 1.2%
Catholic 25.1%
Generic Christian 14.2%
Muslim 0.6%
Mainline Christian 12.9%

"The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas"

2010-02-22T17:30:00.000-08:00

A short story by Ursula K Le Guin

With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The ringing of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processions moved. Some were decorous: old people in long stiff robes of mauve and gray, grave master workmen, quiet, merry women carrying their babies and chatting as they walked. In other streets the music beat faster, a shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance. Children dodged in and out, their high calls rising like the swallows' crossing flights over the music and the singing. All the processions wound towards the north side of the city, where on the great water-meadow called the Green Fields boys and girls, naked in the bright air, with mud-stained feet and ankles and long, lithe arms,exercised their restive horses before the race. The horses wore no gear at all but a halter without bit. Their manes were braided with streamers of silver, gold, and green. They flared their nostrils and pranced and boasted to one another; they were vastly excited, the horse being the only animal who has adopted our ceremonies as his own. Far off to the north and west the mountains stood up half encircling Omelas on her bay. The air of morning was so clear that the snow still crowning the Eighteen Peaks burned withwhite-gold fire across the miles of sunlit air, under the dark blue of the sky. There was just enough wind to make the banners that marked the racecourse snap and flutter now and then. In the silence of the broad green meadows one could hear the music winding throughout the city streets, farther and nearer and ever approaching, a cheerful faint sweetness of the air from time to time trembled and gathered together and broke out into the great joyous clanging of the bells.

Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How describe the citizens of Omelas?

They were not simple folk, you see, though they were happy. But we do not say the words of cheer much any more. All smiles have become archaic. Given a description such as this one tends to make certain assumptions. Given a description such as this one tends to look next for the King, mounted on a splendid stallion and surrounded by his noble knights, or perhaps in a golden litter borne by great-muscled slaves. But there was no king. They did not use swords, or keep slaves. They were not barbarians, I do not know the rules and laws of their society, but I suspect that they were singularly few. As they did without monarchy and slavery, so they also got on without the stock exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb. Yet I repeat that these were not simple folk, not dulcet shepherds, noble savages, bland utopians. There were not less complex than us. The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy. How can I tell you about the people of Omelas? They were not naive and happy children--though their children were, in fact, happy. They were mature, intelligent, passionate adults whose lives were not wretched. O miracle! But I wish I could describe it better. I wish I could convince you. Omelas sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time. Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion, for certainly I cannot suit you all. For instance, how about technology? I think that there would be no cars or helicopters in and above the streets; this follows from the fact that the people of Omelas are happy people. Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive. In the middle category, however--that of the unnecessary but undestructive, that of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc.--they could perfectly well have central heating, subway trains, washing machines, and all kinds of marvelous devices not yet invented here, floating light-sources, fuelless power, a cure for the common cold. Or they could have none of that: it doesn't matter. As you like it. I incline to think that people from towns up and down the coast have been coming to to Omelas during the last days before the Festival on very fast little trains and double-decked trams, and that the train station of Omelas is actually the handsomest building in town, though plainer than the magnificent Farmers' Market. But even granted trains, I fear that Omelas so far strikes some of you as goody-goody. Smiles, bells, parades, horses, bleh. If so, please add an orgy. If an orgy would help, don't hesitate. Let us not, however, have temples from which issue beautiful nude priests and priestesses already half in ecstasy and ready to copulate with any man or woman, lover or stranger, who desires union with the deep godhead of the blood, although that was my first idea. But really it would be better not to have any temples in Omelas--at least, not manned temples. Religion yes, clergy no. Surely the beautiful nudes can just wander about, offering themselves like divine souffles to the hunger of the needy and the rapture of the flesh. Let them join the processions. Let tambourines be struck above the copulations, and the gory of desire be proclaimed upon the gongs, and (a not unimportant point) let the offspring of these delightful rituals be beloved and looked after by all. One thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt. But what else should there be? I thought at first there were no drugs, but that is puritanical. For those who like it, the faint insistent sweetness of drooz may perfume the ways of the city, drooz which first brings a great lightness and brilliance to the mind and limbs, and then after some hours a dreamy languor, and wonderful visions at last of the very arcane and inmost secrets of the Universe, as well as exciting the pleasure of sex beyond all belief; and it is not habit-forming. For more modest tastes I think there ought to be beer. What else, what else belongs in the joyous city? The sense of victory, surely, the celebration of courage. But as we did without clergy, let us do without soldiers. The joy built upon successful slaughter is not the right kind of joy; it will not do; it is fearful and it is trivial. A boundless and generous contentment, a magnanimous triumph felt not against some outer enemy but in communion with the finest and fairest in the souls of all men everywhere and the splendor of the world's summer: This is what swells the hearts of the people of Omelas, and the victory they celebrate is that of life. I don't think many of them need to take drooz.

Most of the processions have reached the Green Fields by now. A marvelous smell of cooking goes forth from the red and blue tents of the provisioners. The faces of small children are amiably sticky; in the benign gray beard of a man a couple of crumbs of rich pastry are entangled. The youths and girls have mounted their horses and are beginning to group around the starting line of the course. An old woman, small, fat, and laughing, is passing out flowers from a basket, and tall young men wear her flowers in their shining hair. A child of nine or ten sits at the edge of the crowd alone, playing on a wooden flute. People pause to listen, and they smile, but they do not speak to him, for he never ceases playing and never sees them, his dark eyes wholly rapt in the sweet, thing magic of the tune.

He finishes, and slowly lowers his hands holding the wooden flute.

As if that little private silence were the signal, all at once a trumpet sounds from the pavilion near the starting line: imperious, melancholy, piercing. The horses rear on their slender legs, and some of them neigh in answer. Sober-faced, the young riders stroke the horses' necks and soothe them, whispering. "Quiet, quiet, there my beauty, my hope...." They begin to form in rank along the starting line. The crowds along the racecourse are like a field of grass and flowers in the wind. The Festival of Summer has begun.

Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing.

In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room. It has one locked door, and no window. A little light seeps in dustily between cracks in the boards, secondhand from a cobwebbed window somewhere across the cellar. In one corner of the little room a couple of mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads, stand near a rusty bucket. The floor is dirt, a little damp to the touch, as cellar dirt usually is. The room is about three paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused tool room. In the room, a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its nose and occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits hunched in the corner farthest from the bucket and the two mops. It is afraid of the mops. It finds them horrible. It shuts its eyes, but it knows the mops are still standing there; and the door is locked; and nobody will come. The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes, except that sometimes--the child has no understanding of time or interval--sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and a person, or several people, are there. One of them may come in and kick the child to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes. The food bowl and the water jug are hastily filled, the door is locked; the eyes disappear. The people at the door never say anything, but the child, who has not always lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother's voice, sometimes speaks. "I will be good, " it says. "Please let me out. I will be good!" They never answer. The child used to scream for help at night, and cry a good deal, but now it only makes a kind of whining, "Eh-haa, eh-haa," and it speaks less and less often. It is so thin there are no calves to its legs; its belly protrudes; it lives on a half-bowl of corn meal and grease a day. It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered sores, as it sits in its own excrement continually.

They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery.

This is usually explained to children when they are between eight and twelve, whenever they seem capable of understanding; and most of those who come to see the child are young people, though often enough an adult comes, or comes back, to see the child. No matter how well the matter has been explained to them, these young spectators are always shocked and sickened at the sight. They feel disgust, which they had thought themselves superior to. They feel anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations. They would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they can do. If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed.

The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child.

Often the young people go home in tears, or in a tearless rage, when they have seen the child and faced this terrible paradox. They may brood over it for weeks or years. But as time goes on they begin to realize that even if the child could be released, it would not get much good of its freedom: a little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no real doubt, but little more. It is too degraded and imbecile to know any real joy. It has been afraid too long ever to be free of fear. Its habits are too uncouth for it to respond to humane treatment. Indeed, after so long it would probably be wretched without walls about it to protect it, and darkness for its eyes, and its own excrement to sit in. Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept it. Yet it is their tears and anger, the trying of their generosity and the acceptance of their helplessness, which are perhaps the true source of the splendor of their lives. Theirs is no vapid, irresponsible happiness. They know that they, like the child, are not free. They know compassion. It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science. It is because of the child that they are so gentle with children. They know that if the wretched one were not there sniveling in the dark, the other one, the flute-player, could make no joyful music as the young riders line up in their beauty for the race in the sunlight of the first morning of summer.

Now do you believe them? Are they not more credible? But there is one more thing to tell, and this is quite incredible.

At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go see the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at all. Sometimes also a man or a woman much older falls silent for a day or two, then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl, man or woman. Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Quotable: "facts of science are not enough"

2010-02-18T13:05:00.000-08:00

... when Logic congeals into all-encompassing and perfect-seeming theories, then it can actually become a very evil con trick. Wittgenstein has a point, you see: "All the facts of science are not enough to understand the world's meaning."

Source: Character of Bertrand Russell in Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos H. Papadimitriou, Alecos Papadatos, and Annie Di Donna (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009) p. 296.

Quotable: A Commitment to a Way of Life

2010-02-16T12:31:00.000-08:00

I suggest that the concept of God is not a hypothesis formulated to explain the relation between particular events in the world in competition with scientific hypotheses. Belief in God is primarily a commitment to a way of life in response to distinctive kinds of religious experience in communities formed by historic traditions; it is not a substitute for scientific research. Religious belief offers a wider framework of meaning in which particular events can be contextualized.

Source: Ian G. Barbour. Nature, Human Nature, and God. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Pr., 2002) pp. 5-6.

Charles Freeman & Israel

2010-02-02T17:51:00.000-08:00

When U.S. interrogators asked Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the confessed mastermind of the 9/11 atrocities, why al Qa'ida had done the terrible things it did that day, he gave a straightforward answer. He said that the purpose was to focus "the American people . . . on the atrocities that America is committing by supporting Israel against the Palestinian people and America's self-serving foreign policy that corrupts Arab governments and leads to further exploitation of the Arab Muslim people." In Osama Bin Laden's annual "address to the American people" this September 11, he reiterated: "We have demonstrated and stated many times, for more than two-and-a-half-decades, that the cause of our disagreement with you is your support to your Israeli allies who occupy our land of Palestine ...." [emphasis in original]

Source: Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. "U.S.-Arab Relations: Forks in the Way Forward." Remarks to the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations Arab-U.S. Policymakers Conference. October 16, 2009, Washington, D.C.

On February 26, 2009, Charles Freeman was invited to be the chair of the National Intelligence Council. Although Freeman is pro-Israel, he is insufficiently pro-Israel for the hardline Zionists who dictate US Middle East policy. As a result, his appointment kicked off a furious campaign against him and when America's "first Jewish president" abandoned him, Freeman resigned. Here is James Petras' description of the Zionist Freeman feeding frenzy:

Seeking total control over all possible or potential appointees who can enhance Israel's positions, the Zionist Power Configuration successfully launched a massive, slanderous national campaign to block the appointment of veteran US diplomatic and intelligence official, Charles Freeman, one of the few non-Zionist (or Gentile, for that matter) to the position of head of the National Intelligence Council.

From the first moment that Zionist 'insiders' leaked the proposed appointment of Freeman, the ZPC launched a frontal attack: scurrilous articles were written attacking Freeman, a veteran officer who served successive US Administrations dating back to Richard Nixon, which were published in the major newspapers and magazines and broadcast by the main TV and radio programs. AIPAC approached its stable of Zionist Congress-people led by Congressman Eric Cantor to round up the usual herd of elected shills beholden to Zionist campaign financing. Ten US Representatives demanded that the Director of National Intelligence Inspector General, "Fully investigate Mr. Freeman's past relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and look into the contributors to the Middle East Policy Council ( a Washington think-tank headed by Freeman)" (Financial Times (London), March 7, 2009 p. 3). The entire Republican leadership led by the House ‘whip’ Cantor carried the ball for the ZPC in trashing Freeman and his supporters, who they also demanded be punished for their endorsement.

Obama, faced with the Zionist onslaught, crumbled without even a whimper. "The White House made no comment." (ibid) Zionist Power worked through both political parties. "Steve Israel (appropriately named!) , a Democrat on the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, wrote to Mr. Maguire (the Inspector General) about the seemingly prejudicial public statements made by the proposed NIC Chairman (Charles Freeman)" (Financial Times, ibid). The 'prejudicial public statement' in question was Freeman's criticism of Israel’s savage bombing of Lebanon during the summer of 2007 and their unending repression of Palestinians under their occupation.

Not a single area of government, not a single appointment, escapes the censorious eye of the Jewish pro-Israeli power structure in the US and its stable of compliant non-Jewish members of Congress. The Zionist success in purging Freeman from the appointment to head the National Intelligence Council is an effort to avoid a repeat of the major intelligence setback their anti-Iran propaganda in 2007. Back then sixteen US intelligence agencies published their National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear weapons program, completely undermining Israeli and US-ZPC claims that Iran was producing weapon-grade nuclear material and was ‘months’ away from producing a nuclear weapon. The NIE forced the ZPC to launch a furious assault on the findings and the professional intelligence agencies in order to sustain Israel's campaign to push the US into a war with Iran. The central purpose of the Zionist-led Congressional campaign against Freeman was to use the ‘investigation’ to harass and undermine his independent, professional expertise and advocacy of an 'even-handed' approach to the Middle East. By labeling him as pro-Arab, pro-Hamas (with the implication of links to terrorism) they forced the withdrawal of his appointment in favor of an official willing to manipulate intelligence to fit Israeli objectives.

Here's an excerpt from Freeman's resignation statement:

I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office. The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country. ...

The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East. The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.

There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government – in this case, the government of Israel. I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel. It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so. This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States.

Latuff on Obama, Iraq, Afghanistan, & Pakistan

2010-02-01T08:10:00.000-08:00

It's been almost three years since I posted a new cartoon by Carlos Latuff to this blog. So, to make up for lost time below are five cartoons that he's produced since then.

Quotable: "I wish for freedom."

2010-01-27T15:19:00.000-08:00

It seems to me that only someone who wishes for freedom can be free. I wish for freedom.

Source: Character of Andrew in "The Bicentennial Man" in Isaac Asimov's Robot Visions (New York: Roc, 1990) p. 256.

US Army Supports Afghan Drug-War Lord

2010-01-26T16:41:00.000-08:00

Right: A farmer argues that some of his sheep were killed by an American artillery strike. Listening is Gen. Abdul Razik, the commander of the Afghan Border Patrol, Lt. Col. William Clark and an interpreter. Photo by J.M. Simpson

The Lakewood, WA-based Fort Lewis Ranger has an article by J. M. Simpson in its January 27, 2010, print edition that discusses cooperation between the US Army in Afghanistan and Abdul Razik. An apparent online version of the article is much sanitized concerning Razik while in the print edition Simpson describes Razik as "the leader of a tribal militia and Afghan Border Police (ABP) force that extends across Kandahar and Helmand provinces." Simpson says Razik "is the most powerful Afghan official in the southern part of the country." Simpson continues with a physical description of the man but eventually tells readers bluntly, "Razik is a drug lord." Simpson continues:

By controlling both Kandahar and Helmand--which produce 80 percent of Afghanistan's opium, which consequently accounts for 90 percent of the world's supply--Razik has become very wealthy.

Estimates are that he makes between $5 and $6 million per month by running drugs ...

According to UNICEF the annual gross national income per capita of Afghanistan was $250 in 2007.

In America, we purport to be staunchly opposed to drugs and drug dealers. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are in prison for drug crimes and "According to FBI reports, 83 percent of drug arrests are for possession of illegal drugs alone." US troops are routinely and randomly tested for illicit drug use. So, why are US forces working with a violent drug kingpins like Razik?

Well, according to Simpson, Razik's drug "wealth has allowed him to create a 3500-man border patrol force ... which is fiercely loyal to him" and Razik aligned himself and his "force" with the US. Lt. Col. William Clark, commander of the Ft. Lewis-based 5th Stryker Brigade's 8th Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment, knows all about Razik "and as such he has carefully cultivated a relationship with Razik in order for both men to get what they want." Simpson writes: " 'We understand each other; we get along,' said Clark before a recent meeting. They meet several times a week." The rest of the article goes on to describe how Clark and Razik reach an unspoken accomodation that will allow Razik's drugs to continue to flow freely as the Americans set up new "highway checkpoints on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border."

Ironically, in the same issue of the Fort Lewis Ranger featuring Simpson's article "8-1 'talks' with one of Taliban's most wanted" you will find a short AP article about a now-concluded court-martial against a young soldier who is blamed for the drug overdose death of his girlfriend in his Ft. Lewis barracks. She died after taking a mixture including oxycodone and oxymorphone--both are made from opium. Reportedly, at his court-martial, Private Timothy E. Bennitt "spoke authoritatively about how he began using painkillers when he returned to Fort Lewis after spending more than six months in Afghanistan ... Bennitt told Army Lt. Col. Kwasi Hawks, who is presiding over the court-martial, that he had surgery for an eye injury ..." Bennitt was found guilty of manslaughter last Friday. Meanwhile, Abdul Razik thrives and is one of America's good buddies.

Razik was also profiled last month in Harper's in "The master of Spin Boldak: Undercover with Afghanistan's drug-trafficking border police" (read a long excerpt here) and was featured in a 2006 article "Inspiring Tale of Triumph over Taliban Not All it Seems" by Graeme Smith in the Canadian Globe and Mail.

Haiti, Empire, & Aristide

2010-01-21T13:23:00.000-08:00

The image at right is from 1994; it is still apt today.

Last Friday, Warren Olney spoke with guests about Haiti on his show, To the Point. If you listen to the program you can hear David Rothkopf essentially erasing the effects of foreign exploitation from Haiti's history and, typically, you can hear Robert Perito and Amy Wilentz bashing former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. If US leaders and the "experts-in-legitimation" such as Rothkopf, Perito, and Wilentz had supported Aristide instead of undermining him at virtually every step then it is quite conceivable that Haiti would have been in a much better position to deal with the recent earthquake.

Below are some excerpts from Paul Farmer's informative albeit compromised, partisan article in the April 15, 2004 edition of the London Review of Books, "Who removed Aristide?" Farmer was appointed as the United Nations Deputy Special Envoy to Haiti last fall by Bill Clinton.

In 1825, under threat of another French invasion and the restoration of slavery, Haitian officials signed the document which was to prove the beginning of the end for any hope of autonomy. The French king agreed to recognise Haiti’s independence only if the new republic paid France an indemnity of 150 million francs and reduced its import and export taxes by half. The ‘debt’ that Haiti recognised was incurred by the slaves when they deprived the French owners not only of land and equipment but of their human ‘property’.

... ‘Imposing an indemnity on the victorious slaves was equivalent to making them pay with money that which they had already paid with their blood,’ the abolitionist Victor Schoelcher argued.

By the late 19th century, the United States had eclipsed France as a force in Haitian affairs. A US military occupation (1915-34) brought back corvée labour and introduced bombing from the air, while officials in Washington created the institutions that Haitians would have to live with: the army, above all, which now claims to have the country ‘in its hands’, was created by an act of the US Congress. Demobilised by Aristide in 1995, it never knew a non-Haitian enemy. It had plenty of internal enemies, however. Military-backed governments, dictatorships, chronic instability, repression, the heavy hand of Washington over all: this state of affairs continued throughout the 20th century.

I learned about Haiti’s history while working on medical projects on the country’s central plateau. When I first travelled there in 1983, the Duvalier family dictatorship had been in place for a quarter of a century. There was no dissent. The Duvaliers and their military dealt ruthlessly with any opposition, while the judiciary and the rest of the world looked the other way. Haiti was already known as the poorest country in the Western world, and those who ran it argued that force was required to police deep poverty.

By the mid-1980s, the hunger, despair and disease were beyond management. Baby Doc Duvalier, named ‘president for life’ at 19, fled in 1986. A first attempt at democratic elections, in 1987, led to massacres at polling stations. An army general declared himself in charge. In September 1988, the mayor of Port-au-Prince – a former military officer – paid a gang to set fire to a Catholic church as mass was being said. It was packed with people, 12 of whom died. At the altar was Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the nemesis of the dictatorship and the army. Aristide was a proponent of liberation theology, with its injunction that the Church proclaim ‘a preferential option for the poor’, but liberation theology had its adversaries: members of Reagan’s brains trust, meeting in 1980, declared it less Christian than Communist. ‘US policy,’ they said, ‘must begin to counter (not react against) . . . the "liberation theology” clergy.’

Aristide’s elevation from slum priest to presidential candidate took place against a background of right-wing death squads and threatened military coups. He rose quickly in the eyes of Haitians, but his stock plummeted in the United States. The New York Times, which relies heavily on informants who can speak English or French, had few kind words for him. ‘He’s a cross between the Ayatollah and Fidel,’ one Haitian businessman was quoted as saying. ‘If it comes to a choice between the ultra-left and the ultra-right, I’m ready to form an alliance with the ultra-right.’ Haitians knew, however, that Aristide would win any democratic election, and on 16 December 1990, he got 67 per cent of the vote in a field of 12 candidates. No run-off was required.

The United States might not have been able to prevent Aristide’s landslide victory, but there was plenty they could do to undermine him. The most effective method, adopted by the first Bush administration, was to fund both the opposition – their poor showing at the polls was no reason, it appears, to cut off aid to them – and the military. Declassified records now make it clear that the CIA and other US groups helped to create and fund a paramilitary group called FRAPH, which rose to prominence after a military coup that ousted Aristide in September 1991. Thousands of civilians were killed and hundreds of thousands fled overseas or across the border into the Dominican Republic. For the next three years Haiti was run by military-civilian juntas as ruthless as the Duvaliers.

In October 1994, under Clinton, the US military intervened and restored Aristide to power, with a little over a year of his term left to run. Although authorised by the UN, the restoration was basically a US operation. Then, seven weeks after Aristide’s return, Republicans took control of the Congress, and influential Republicans have worked ever since to block aid to Haiti or burden it with preconditions.

The aid coming through official channels was never very substantial: the US gave Haiti, per capita, one tenth of what it distributed in Kosovo. It is true that, as former US ambassadors and the Bush administration have recently claimed, hundreds of millions of dollars flowed into Haiti – but not to the elected government. A great deal of it went to the anti-Aristide opposition. A lot also went to pay for the UN occupation, and Halliburton support services. There was little effort to rebuild schools, the healthcare infrastructure, roads, ports, telecommunications or airports ...

That the US and France undermined Aristide is not a fringe opinion. The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the African Union have called for a formal investigation into his removal. ‘Most people around the world believe that Aristide’s departure was at best facilitated, at worst coerced by the US and France,’ Gayle Smith, a member of the National Security Council staff under Clinton, recently said.

Why such animus towards Haiti’s leader? Taking up the question of the historic French debt, Aristide declared that France ‘extorted this money from Haiti by force and . . . should give it back to us so that we can build primary schools, primary healthcare, water systems and roads.’ He did the maths, adding in interest and adjusting for inflation, to calculate that France owes Haiti $21,685,135,571.48 and counting. This figure was scoffed at by some of the French, who saw the whole affair as a farce mounted by their disgruntled former subjects; others, it’s increasingly clear, were insulted or angered when the point was pressed in diplomatic and legal circles.

Still, Aristide kept up the pressure. The figure of $21 billion was repeated again and again. The number 21 appeared all over the place in Haiti, along with the word ‘restitution’. On 1 January this year, during the bicentennial celebrations, Aristide announced he would replace a 21-gun salute with a list of the 21 things that had been done in spite of the embargo and that would be done when restitution was made. The crowd went wild. The French press by and large dismissed his comments as silly, despite the legal merits of his case. Many Haitians saw Aristide as a modern Toussaint l’Ouverture, a comparison that Aristide did not discourage. ‘Toussaint was undone by foreign powers,’ Madison Smartt Bell wrote in Harper’s in January, ‘and Aristide also had suffered plenty of vexation from outside interference.’

It’s usually easy to tell, in even the briefest conversation about Aristide, how your interlocutor feels about him. Opinion in Haiti is almost always referred to as ‘polarised’ in the US press, but this isn’t true in every sense. Elections and polls, even recent ones, show that the poor majority still support Aristide. It’s the middle classes and the traditional political elites who disagree about him, as well as people like me: non-Haitians who, for whatever reasons, concern themselves with that country’s affairs ...

It would be convenient for the traditional Haitian elites and their allies abroad if Aristide, who has been forced to preside over unimaginable penury, had been abandoned by his own people. But Gallup polls in 2002, the results of which were never disseminated, showed that, despite his faults, he is far and away Haiti’s most popular and trusted politician. ...

Patriotism & Patriot Day

2010-01-16T19:18:00.000-08:00

I was having a conversation with a man today who marveled at how often the most exploited people are the quickest to put hand on heart and wave the flag. I agreed and noted that the mistake many people make is to conflate the country with the government. Rulers like us thinking that way but the country is simply not the government nor is the flag the government has chosen to represent the country necessarily worthy of allegiance, especially in a country like the United States of America where there is not a democracy but rather a representative plutocracy--where 'our' elected officials, in actuality, represent the rich. Below are some further musings, if you will, on patriotism, by Leo Tolstoy and the US Congress.

Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most unquestionable significance is for the rulers nothing but a tool for attaining their ambitious and selfish ends, and for the ruled a renunciation of human dignity, reason, and conscience, and a slavish submission to those who are in power. Thus is patriotism actually preached, wherever it is preached. ... Patriotism is slavery. --Leo Tolstoy, "Christianity and Patriotism," The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy, Vol. 20, (D. Estes & Co, 1905).

(a) Designation.— September 11 is Patriot Day.
(b) Proclamation.— The President is requested to issue each year a proclamation calling on—
(1) State and local governments and the people of the United States to observe Patriot Day with appropriate programs and activities;
(2) all departments, agencies, and instrumentalities of the United States and interested organizations and individuals to display the flag of the United States at halfstaff on Patriot Day in honor of the individuals who lost their lives as a result of the terrorist attacks against the United States that occurred on September 11, 2001; and
(3) the people of the United States to observe a moment of silence on Patriot Day in honor of the individuals who lost their lives as a result of the terrorist attacks against the United States that occurred on September 11, 2001. --36 US Code § 144

Quotable: Empty

2010-01-07T22:45:00.000-08:00

In New York there's Rikers Island, a whole island devoted to pre-trial detainment, and on visiting day on the men's side there's a three-hour wait, the visiting room is packed with all these women going to visit their men folk, whether it's mothers visiting sons or wives visiting husbands or girlfriends visiting boyfriends. And then you go to the women's side and it's empty.

Source: Victoria Law as quoted in "Women in prison: an unquiet minority" by Adam Hyla in Real Change, May 6, 2009.

Advent Litany & Beasts

2009-12-25T00:01:00.000-08:00

Advent Litany

Leader: It is not true that creation and the human family are doomed to destruction and loss—

People: This is true: For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life;

Leader: It is not true that we must accept inhumanity and discrimination, hunger and poverty, death and destruction—

People: This is true: I have come that they may have life, and that abundantly.

Leader: It is not true that violence and hatred should have the last word, and that war and destruction rule forever—

People: This is true: Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, his name shall be called wonderful councilor, mighty God, the Everlasting, the Prince of peace.

Leader: It is not true that we are simply victims of the powers of evil who seek to rule the world—

People: This is true: To me is given authority in heaven and on earth, and lo I am with you, even until the end of the world.

Leader: It is not true that we have to wait for those who are specially gifted, who are the prophets of the Church before we can be peacemakers—

People: This is true: I will pour out my spirit on all flesh and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions and your old men shall have dreams.

Leader: It is not true that our hopes for liberation of humankind, of justice, of human dignity of peace are not meant for this earth and for this history—

People: This is true: The hour comes, and it is now, that the true worshipers shall worship God in spirit and in truth.

All Together: So let us enter Advent in hope, even hope against hope. Let us see visions of love and peace and justice. Let us affirm with humility, with joy, with faith, with courage: Jesus Christ—the life of the world.

Adapted from Testimony: The Word Made Flesh by Daniel Berrigan, S.J. (Orbis Books, 2004).

1st Amendment Vindicated in Phelps Case

2009-12-05T22:30:00.000-08:00

Almost two years ago I wrote:

When the government permits a private action and enforces a judgment against Phelps for invasion of privacy and emotional distress as they did this year in Snyder v. Phelps then everyone who is not a sheep needs to look out. Testimony at trial revealed that Phelps and his crew were on public property 1000 feet from the funeral service and plaintiff Albert Snyder, father of a dead Marine, never saw or heard the protest. Yet, the jury ruled in his favor and assessed $11 million in fines against Phelps, his family, and his church. It's time for everyone who values freedom to step up and support Fred Phelps in his appeal.

I'm happy to report that the judgement against Phelps was overturned by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late last September. Reportedly, Albert Snyder plans to appeal. The Supreme Court should not grant certiorari and I predict they will not grant it.

See also: God Bless Fred Phelps

Update: "Snyder v. Phelps Goes to the Supreme Court"

Wounded Knee and Indian and "Buffalo" Soldiers

2009-11-25T17:21:00.000-08:00

The excerpts below are from James Mooney's The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991) 881-883. Mooney's text was originally published in 1896 as the second part of the fourteenth annual report of the US Bureau of Ethnology, 1892-93. The first excerpt refers to the massacre by troops of the 7th Cavalry--the late George A. Custer's old command--at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota on December 29, 1890. The second excerpt concerns a ballad written by one of the "Buffalo Soldiers" I mentioned in "Skins & Fighting for Uncle Scum" and also makes mention of the role of Indian soldiers in the final verse of the ballad.

The Indian scouts at Wounded Knee, like the Indian police at Grand river and Pine Ridge, were brave and loyal, as has been the almost universal rule with Indians when enlisted in the government service, even when called on, as were these, to serve against their own tribe and relatives. The prairie Indian is a born soldier, with all the soldier's pride of loyalty to duty, and may be trusted implicitly after he has once consented to enter the service. The scouts at Wounded Knee were Sioux, with Philip Wells as interpreter. Other Sioux scouts were ranging the country between the agency and the hostile camp in the Bad Lands, and acted as mediators in the peace negotiations which led to the final surrender. Fifty Cheyenne and about as many Crow scouts were also employed in the same section of country. Throughout the entire campaign the Indian scouts and police were faithful and received the warmest commendation of their officers. ...

On January 5 there was another encounter on Wounded Knee creek. A small detachment which had been sent out to meet a supply train coming into the agency found the wagons drawn up in a square to resist an attack made by a band of about 50 Indians. The soldiers joined forces with the teamsters, and by firing from behind the protection of the wagons succeeded in driving off the Indians and killing a number of their horses. The hostiles were reinforced, however, and a hard skirmish was kept up for several hours until more troops arrived from the agency about dark, having been sent in answer to a courier who managed to elude the attacking party. The troops charged on a gallop and the Indians retreated, having lost several killed and wounded, besides a number of their horses. (Colby, 7.)

Amid all these warlike alarms the gentle muse Calliope hovered over the field and inspired W. H. Prather, a colored private of troop I of the Ninth cavalry, to the production of the ballad given below, one of the few good specimens of American ballad poetry, and worthy of equal place with "Captain Lovewell's Fight," "Old Quebec," or anything that originated in the late rebellion. It became a favorite among the troops in camp and with the scattered frontiersmen of Dakota and Nebraska, being sung to a simple air with vigor and expression and a particularly rousing chorus, and is probably by this time a classic of the barracks. It is here reproduced verbatim from the printed slip published for distribution among the soldiers during the campaign.

A GHOST-DANCE BALLAD

THE INDIAN GHOST DANCE AND WAr

The Red Skins left their Agency, the Soldiers left their Post,
All on the strength of an Indian tale about Messiah's ghost
Got up by savage chieftains to lead their tribes astray;
But Uncle Sam wouldn't have it so, for he ain't built that way.
They swore that this Messiah came to them in visions sleep,
And promised to restore their game and Buffalos a heap,
So they must start a big ghost dance, then all would join their band,
And may be so we lead the way into the great Bad Land.

Chorus:

They claimed the shirt Messiah gave, no bullet could go through,
But when the Soldiers fired at them they saw this was not true.
The Medicine man supplied them with their great Messiah's grace,
And he, too, pulled his freight and swore the 7th hard to fnce.

About their tents the Soldiers stood, awaiting one and all,
That they might hear the trumpet clear when sounding General call
Or Boots and Saddles in a rush, that each and every man
Might mount in haste, ride soon and fast to stop this devilish band
But Generals great like Miles and Brooke don't do things up that way,
For they know an Indian like a book, and let him have his sway
Until they think him far enough and then to John they'll say,
"You had better stop your fooling or we'll bring our guns to play."

Chorus: They claimed the shirt, etc.

The 9th marched out with splendid cheer the Bad Lands to explo'e--
With Col. Henry at their head they never fear the foe;
So on they rode from Xmas eve 'till dawn of Xmas day ;
The Red Skins heard the 9th was near and fled in great dismay;
The 7th is of courage bold both officers and men,
But bad luck seems to follow them and twice has took them in;
They came in contact with Big Foot's warriors in their fierce might
This chief made sure he had a chance of vantage in the fight.

Chorus: They claimed the shirt, etc.

A fight took place, 'twas hand to hand, unwarned by trumpet
While the Sioux were dropping man by man--the 7th killed them all,
And to that regiment be said "Ye noble braves, well done,
Although you lost some gallant men a glorious fight you've won."
The 8th was there, the sixth rode miles to swell that great command
And waited orders night and day to round up Short Bull's band.
The Infantry marched up in mass the Cavalry's support,
And while the latter rounded up, the former held the fort.

Chorus: They claimed the shirt, etc.

E battery of the 1st stood by and did their duty well,
For every time the Hotchkiss barked they say a hostile fell.
Some Indian soldiers chipped in too and helped to quell the fray,
And now the campaign's ended and the soldiers marched away.
So all have done their share, you see, whether it was thick or thin,
And all helped break the ghost dance up and drive the hostiles in.
The settlers in that region now can breathe with better grace;
They only ask and pray to God to make John hold his base.

Chorus: They claimed the shirt, etc.

(W. H. Prather, I, 9th Cavalry).

Quotable: "The wise men tell us"

2009-11-25T17:10:00.000-08:00

The wise men tell us that the world is growing happier--that we live longer than did our fathers, have more of comfort and less of toil, fewer wars and discords, and higher hopes and aspirations. So say the wise men; but deep in our hearts we know they are wrong.

Source: James Mooney. The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991) p. 657. Originally published in 1896.

The "lower class" as Indians (and vice versa)

2009-11-17T17:00:00.000-08:00

In "Indians at home – Indians in Cornwall, Indians in Wales, Indians in Ireland," I wrote about how one member of the Anglo-America elite equated the indigenous people of North America and the indigenous Celtic peoples of Great Britain and how tools of Anglo-American colonialism were first tested in Europe.

In an 1897 article Myron Eels compared Indians to the "lower class of whites." He wrote:

I should say of the greatest part of those under forty-five years of age, that if they had white skins, talked the English language,--and if a part of them had abandoned their belief in their medicine men,--as some have not done,--if they travelled in boats instead of canoes, if their women wore hats or bonnets on their heads, if they were neater, they would be called civilized, at least as much so as the lower class of whites.

I got this quote from Indians in the Making: Ethnic Relations and Indian Identities around Puget Sound by Alexandra Harmon (Univ. of California Press, 1998) pp. 122-3. For Harmon, this illustrates how much "Indians remained aliens" and, certainly, that is so but I can't help but notice, too, just how little, to Eels' mind, separates Indians from the "the lower class of whites." One wonders about the gulf that separates them from upper class Whites like Eels.

Israel's Apartheid Wall Will Fall

2009-11-06T21:19:00.000-08:00

Reposted from the ISM.

Ni’lin demonstrators topple 8 meter tall concrete wall

Posted on: November 6, 2009 |

6 November 2009

20 years to the fall of the Berlin wall: Demonstrators toppled 8 meters tall concrete wall in Ni’ilin

Three protest marches were held today in the West Bank to mark the 20th anniversary to the fall of the Berlin wall, which has been declared an international day of action against Israel’s barrier. In Ni’lin, the 300 demonstrators managed to topple a part of the eight meters tall concrete wall that cuts through the village’s land. Following the direct action, the army fired scores of live rounds at the demonstrators.

: Demonstrators topple concrete wall

: Using small tools, Ni’lin residents push concrete wall

: No matter how tall, all walls fall

The concrete wall in Ni’lin – five to eight meters (15 to 25 feet) in height – has only recently been laid on the path of the wall cutting through Ni’lin’s lands, in addition to the already existing electronic barrier and razor-wire.

Since the Wall was built to allow more land to annexed to the nearby settlements rather than in a militarily strategic manner, demonstrators have been able to repeatedly dismantle parts of the electronic fence and razor-wire surrounding it. The section of the Wall in Ni’lin is the only place along the route of the barrier where a concrete wall has been erected in an attempt to deal with the civic, unarmed campaign waged by the village in protest of the massive land theft that will enable the expansion of the illegal settlements of Modi’in Il’it and Hashmonaim.

Since Israel began its construction in the year 2002, This is the first time demonstrators succeed in toppling a part of Israel’s barrier which is a concrete wall. One of the demonstrators, Moheeb Khawaja, said during the protest: “Twenty years ago no one had thought the monster that divided Berlin into two could be brought down, but in only two days in November, it did. Today we have proven that this can also be done here and now. It is our land beyond this wall, and we will not give up on it. We will win for a simple reason – justice is on our side.”

Background

Israel began construction of the Wall on Ni’lin’s land in 2004, but stopped after an injunction order issued by the Israeli Supreme Court (ISC). Despite the previous order and a 2004 ruling from the International Court of Justice declaring the Wall illegal, construction of the Wall began again in May 2008. Following the return of Israeli bulldozers to their lands, residents of Ni’lin have launched a grassroots campaign to protest the massive land theft, including demonstrations and direct actions.

The original route of the Wall, which Israel began constructing in 2004, was ruled illegal by the ISC, as was a second, marginally less obtrusive proposed route. The most recent path, now completed, still cuts deep into Ni’lin’s land. The Wall has been built to include plans, not yet approved by the Army’s planning authority, for a cemetery and an industrial zone for the illegal settlement Modi’in Ilit.

Since the Wall was built to annex more land to the nearby settlements rather than in a militarily strategic manner, demonstrators have been able to repeatedly dismantle parts of the electronic fence and razor-wire surrounding it. Consequently, the army has erected a 15-25 feet tall concrete wall, in addition to the electronic fence. The section of the Wall in Ni’lin is the only part of the route where a concrete wall has been erected in response to civilian, unarmed protest.

As a result of the Wall construction, Ni’lin has lost 3,920 dunams, roughly 30% of its remaining lands. Originally, Ni’lin consisted of 15,898 dunams (3928 acres). Post 1948, Ni’lin was left with 14,794 dunams (3656 acres). After the occupation of the West Bank in 1967, the illegal settlements and infrastructure of Modi’in Ilit, Mattityahu and Hashmonaim were built on village lands, and Ni’lin lost another 1,973 dunams. With the completion of the Wall, Ni’lin has a remaining 8911 dunams (2201 acres), 56% of it’s original size.

Ni’lin is effectively split into 2 parts (upper and lower) by Road 446, which was built directly through the village. According to the publicized plan of the Israeli government, a tunnel will be built under road 446 to connect the upper and lower parts of Ni’lin, allowing Israel to turn Road 446 into a segregated-setter only road. Subsequently, access for Palestinian vehicles to this road and to the main entrances of upper and lower Ni’lin will be closed. Additionally, since the tunnel will be the only entryway to Ni’lin, Israel will have control over the movement of Palestinian residents.

Israel commonly uses tear-gas projectiles, rubber coated steel bullets and live ammunition against demonstrators.

Since May, 2008, five of Ni’lin’s residents were killed and one American solidarity activist was critically injured from Israeli fire during grassroots demonstrations in Ni’lin.

5 June 2009: Yousef Akil Srour (36) was shot in the chest with 0.22 caliber live ammunition and pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital.

13 March 2009: Tristan Anderson (37), an American citizen, was shot in the head with a high velocity tear gas projectile. He is currently at Tel Hashomer hospital near Tel Aviv with uncertain prospects for his recovery.

28 December 2008: Mohammed Khawaje (20) was shot in the head with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition. He died in a Ramallah hospital 3 days later on 31 December 2008.

28 December 2008: Arafat Rateb Khawaje (22) was shot in the back with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition and pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital.

30 July 2008: Yousef Amira (17) was shot in the head with two rubber coated steel bullets. He died in a Ramallah hospital 5 days later on 4 August 2008.

29 July 2008: Ahmed Mousa (10) was shot in the forehead with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition and pronounced dead upon arrival at a Ramallah hospital.

In total, 19 people have been killed during demonstrations against the Wall.

Israeli armed forces have shot 40 demonstrators with live ammunition in Ni’lin. Of them, 11 were shot with 5.56mm caliber live ammunition and 24 were shot with 0.22 caliber live ammunition.

Since May 2008, 87 arrests of Ni’lin residents have been made in relation to anti-Wall demonstrations in the village. The protesters seized by the army constitute around 7% of the village’s males aged between 12 and 55. The arrests are part of a broad Israeli intimidation campaign to suppress all demonstrations against the apartheid infrastructure in the West Bank.

Updated on November 6, 2009
Posted under: Features, Press Releases
Tags: Apartheid Wall, demonstrations, Ni'lin, Video

Professor Hakimi's Solution to Gitmo

2009-10-09T20:09:00.000-07:00

It is part of the wisdom, I think, of the religious tradition always to be skeptical of what governments are doing. ... One has to keep reminding oneself and other people that an exalted contempt for human life lies at the basis of diplomacy; and that one had better think of the unprotected and innocent, and be prepared for the bad news when the leaders meet.

-Daniel Berrigan and Thich Nhat Hanh. The Raft is Not the Shore: Conversations Toward a Buddhist/Christian Awareness. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975) p. 69.

I want to return for a moment to the NPR segment, "Capture Or Kill? Lawyers Eye Options For Terrorists" I mentioned in my last post. On the subject of "detaining terrorists" the piece also contains the following:

University of Michigan law professor Monica Hakimi worked at the State Department in the last administration. She does not like the idea of long-term detention. But, she says, none of the alternatives seem much better.

"The benefit of capturing them is that we might be able to get from them certain intelligence that we can use to hunt down future terrorists," says Hakimi. "The cost is that once we capture them it's not really clear what we're supposed to do with them."

Hakimi is a 2001 Yale Law grad--one of America's 'best and brightest' young scholars. In "International standards for detaining terrorism suspects: moving beyond the armed conflict-criminal divide" (Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 40.3 (Fall 2009)), the solution she articulates to the problem of "what we're supposed to do with them" is, in the main, the legalization of existing illegal practices of "administrative detention."

The current dilemma facing governments, according to Hakimi, is two-fold. First, many prisoners from the "fight against transnational al jihadi groups" are seized "away from any recognizable battlefield ... in houses, on street corners, and at border crossings around the globe." Thus, the "law of armed conflict" is inapplicable for justifying their imprisonment.

Second, criminal procedure is no good because "its focus is retrospective, rather than prospective; it is maladroit for transnational operation; and it often fails to accommodate the tools used and evidence available in terrorism cases." Another way of putting this is that a criminal justice approach won't work because you are not normally allowed to prosecute "precrime;" other countries might not want to or be able to cooperate in your non-battlefield raids on their populace; most courts won't accept evidence obtained by torture or otherwise in violation of due process principles. In short, you just can't easily lock up as many people as you might want to lock up.

What's a poor government to do? According to Hakimi, "pure security-based detention" are permitted under "An alternative legal framework [that] already exists under human rights law in the form of administrative detention." She notes approvingly that "India and Israel--two states with long histories of trying to combat transnational terrorism--consistently have used such detention for that purpose." Her argument here rests in large part on her contention that "pure security-based detention is permitted under the ICCPR," i.e. the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (she also cites the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in support of her argument but I do not mention it here because the US is not a state party to that treaty).

In effect, what she has done is to take the ICCPR--a treaty putatively designed to impose obligations on each state party to respect the rights of "all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction" (Article 2)--and turn it into an instrument justifying repression of individuals by state parties under the rubric of human rights.

I would like to be able to say that Hakimi's is a completely incredible reading of the ICCPR but that wouldn't be true. For while there is no affirmative provision in the treaty for "administrative" or "security-based detention" and the only articles explicitly mentioning detention restrict it, the state parties generously gave themselves the right to ignore most of the individual rights (incl., most crucially, Article 9) during "time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation ..."(Article 4). (I should note that Hakimi does not rely on Article 4 for her argument but interprets Article 9 as making implicit provision for administrative detention).

In concluding, Hakimi says:

International practice demonstrates that, although most states have declined to detain non-battlefield terrorism suspects based on the law of armed conflict, many are looking for options for incapacitating these suspects outside the criminal process. The bipolar paradigm for thinking about non-battlefield detentions--as armed-conflict or criminal--is out of step with that practice and is mistaken as a matter of law. Human rights law permits administrative detention for reasons of national security, subject to important constraints. Those constraints are not now sufficient in the counterterrorism context. But if the law in this area is developed, administrative detention may strike the most appropriate balance between liberty and security for certain categories of terrorism detainees.

Get it? The law needs to catch up--to be "developed"--to what governments are already doing. Hakimi is a fine example of what Gramsci called "experts in legitimation" and one wonders how human societies made it this far without the benefit of her helpful take on human rights law. I couldn't help being reminded by Hakimi's arguments of her colleague Alan Dershowitz's call to legalize torture.

Obama's Delusional Nobel

2009-10-09T16:43:00.000-07:00

My first response this morning to the news of Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize was disbelief. My next response was to recall part of a story on I heard on NPR yesterday, entitled "Capture Or Kill? Lawyers Eye Options For Terrorists." Below is a relevant excerpt:

Given the difficulty of detaining high-value terrorists in the United States, Cuba, Afghanistan, black sites or foreign countries, another possibility exists.

"To be perfectly blunt, I don't think that they'll pick them up at all," says Ken Anderson of the Hoover Institution and American University's Washington College of Law, who has written about these issues. "I think that we've actually allowed the courts to arrange the incentives to kill rather than capture."

Many national security experts interviewed for this story agree that it has become so hard for the U.S. to detain people that in many instances, the U.S. government is killing them instead.

Last month, American forces staged a raid on a car in Somalia. The man inside the car was a suspected terrorist on the FBI's most wanted list. American troops did not seize him. Instead, helicopters fired on the car, and commandos retrieved his body.

The decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama has been widely described as "aspirational." It may be, however, that delusional is a more apt description in light of Obama's campaign promises and track record as president. Consider the following partial list:

Candidate Obama pledged to expand the combat forces of the Marines and Army
Candidate Obama pledged to escalate the war in Afghanistan
President Obama authorized killer drone attacks in Pakistan in his very first week in office
President Obama has not ended the US occupation of Iraq
President Obama has not closed the Guantanamo prison
President Obama has not ended the little discussed but deadly American military intervention in Somalia
President Obama has been utterly unable to go beyond tepid, hollow rhetoric concerning murderous US-backed Israel
President Obama has left "all options on the table" when it comes to US arm-twisting vis-a-vis Iran

With Nobel Peace Prize laureates like Obama who needs war mongers?

See also: "Professor Hakimi's Solution to Gitmo"

Turning Muslim Kids into Zionists

2009-10-04T13:59:00.000-07:00

How do you turn Muslim children into Zionists? One recipe can be derived from pages 32-33 of a 2007 UK report entitled, Teaching Emotive and Controversial History 3-19:

As with other key stages, emotional engagement is necessary to challenge mindsets. The rigour of historical methods of enquiry is essential, but not powerful enough in themselves to necessarily overcome prejudice and stereotyping. Emotional engagement forms a significant partner in the structuring of activities. The use of local history, reconstructions, a focus on child labour and making deliberate links to the present is how one history department seeks to hook pupils' personal engagement.

As part of the teaching of Arab-Israeli coursework at Abraham Moss School in Manchester, students take on the role of UN commissioners given the task of dividing Palestine in the late 1940s. They are reminded of the horrors of the Holocaust and the likely impact on world opinion. The students also consider how the survivors of the Holocaust would respond to the question Why did I survive? and how that might have impacted on the desire for a Jewish state. A timeline of events and information about who lived in the area and attitudes of different organisations, states and peoples are provided to help pupils consider the division of land. Given the predominance of Muslim pupils in the School and the existence of potential anti-Jewish sentiment or ignorance of Jewish culture, this task presents a complex challenge. The results are very interesting. The vast majority of students partition the land evenly between Arabs and Jews, even though the Jewish population was far smaller, and they establish Jerusalem as a neutral zone. The reasons pupils give for their decisions vary, but they are predominantly associated with the following: issues of fairness, acknowledgement of the suffering of the Jews in the Holocaust, a recognition that Jews had lived in the region for centuries before the Arabs, and a desire to find a solution where both sides could live in peace.

Boiling it down, after establishing your authority as a 'teacher,' the first task is to set the agenda: Don't raise the question of whether it is/was right for UN commissioners divide another people's land, just simply give your ~~subjects~~ students the "task of dividing Palestine." Then to make sure they divide it and divide it properly, drill them in the catechism of "the Holocaust" while studiously ignoring Zionist collaboration with the Nazis (beginning in 1933). Encourage them to emotionally identify with victims of "the Holocaust" (Zionist Jewish victims only, please; I mean, does anyone else really matter?). Don't encourage them to identify with or consider partition from the perspective of "Arabs" (not Palestinians). Don't encourage them to consider the inherent injustice of forcibly taking away one people's land to give it to another group of people allegedly on account of the crimes of a third party. Don't encourage them to consider more just alternatives. Don't let them know that Jewish designs on Palestine long predate "the Holocaust." Do teach them the Jewish narrative/Orientalist perspective as if it were uncontested historical fact, e. g. "Jews had lived in the region for centuries before the Arabs." Follow these simple do's and dont's and you, too, can brainwash the "vast majority of students" (Christian children, too, undoubtedly) into becoming Zionists.

See also: The "General Eisenhower Warned Us" Hoax

Quotable: "We believe in America"

2009-10-02T14:10:00.000-07:00

We're not the enemy. We're not. We're on your side. We believe in America. That's why Indians have the highest percentage of [military] service of any ethnic group in America.

Source: Swil Kanim (Lummi) in A-Y-P: Indigenous Voices Reply, a film by Anna Laura Hoover (Aleut) and part of a larger exhibit by the same name.

A few days before viewing the film I asked a friend, who is also an enrolled member of the Flathead tribe, why he thought so many Indians served in the US military his response was "Survival."

In discussing the matter with another friend, I observed that high rates of military service in the conquering armies are an apparent characteristic of many conquered peoples such as White Southerners and Filipinos in the US military and the Gurkha and Scottish regiments in the British Army. The French Foreign Legion has also attracted large numbers of soldiers from French colonies. Going back further, many Roman Legions were also populated by non-Romans. Serving in a conquering army is a way of demonstrating (and being rewarded for) military prowess, valor, and loyalty to the dominant society and, yes, it can also be a survival tactic.

See also: "Skins & Fighting for Uncle Scum"

Quotable: Heads and Tails

2009-09-28T12:17:00.000-07:00

We don't have leaders. The Arab governments are like the tail of a snake, and the head of the snake is Britain or America.

Source: Palestinian man in Jenin in Palestine (The Special Edition) by Joe Sacco (Fantagraphic Books 1993, 2007) p. 276.

It's hopeless

2009-09-09T13:25:00.002-07:00

Our dear Arab/Muslim-American community plans to meet with the CIA on the 27th of Ramadan, known as the Night of Power, one of the holiest nights in the Islamic calendar. Per the Quran, praying on the 27th is worth more than praying a thousand nights. The main agenda of the meeting is to discuss the establishment of courts in Baghdad and Gaza to try American and Zionist war criminals who've killed Iraqis and Palestinians.

OK, that last sentence was a joke. But the first one is disgustingly true. Think again if you thought the Night of Power will stop anyone from showing up to the meeting. The community wouldn't miss a meeting with the CIA even if it were to coincide with the return of the Messiah himself.

http://www.detnews.com/article/20090909/METRO01/909090349/1409/METRO

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

CIA reaches out to Muslims

Dinner in Dearborn will come on 'wrong night' amid Ramadan

Paul Egan / The Detroit News

Dearborn -- CIA Director Leon Panetta plans to visit Dearborn on Sept. 16 for an invitation-only dinner and speech with 150 leaders of the Arab and Muslim communities, officials confirmed Tuesday.

The visit comes amid an unprecedented outreach effort by the Central Intelligence Agency and as Panetta seeks to double the number of CIA analysts who are proficient in Arabic and other Mideast languages.

But the date chosen for the meeting -- the 27th night of Ramadan or "night of power," when many devout Muslims and imams spend the entire night worshiping in the mosque -- is drawing criticism.

"They picked the entirely wrong night on this," said Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "This is our leading intelligence agency who doesn't know this."

Imad Hamad, regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Dearborn, acknowledged the sensitivity of the night but said he and other community leaders, not the CIA, should take any blame because the agency consulted with the community before choosing the date. [the community does deserve blame because it should have scheduled the CIA visit a week later, on Eid, a joyous celebration during which sacrifices are made to whomever you worship.]

"It's a simple miscall," said Hamad, who added that most Muslims would break their fast before going to the mosque on the night of power. [If the CIA wants us to skip prayer on the night of power, surely God will understand]

Once among the most secret of agencies, the CIA has been setting up booths at events in Dearborn and Detroit and spending tens of thousands of dollars annually sponsoring galas and other events and scholarships. CIA spokesman George Little said Tuesday the agency's outreach to "first- and second-generation Americans" in Dearborn and elsewhere began about five years ago.

"These individuals have the kinds of skills, knowledge and experiences that can strongly advance our vital intelligence mission and protect the nation's security," Little said. "The number of job applications from the Detroit area has risen steadily over that time period."

The CIA was a platinum sponsor -- representing a contribution of at least $10,000 -- to the ADC's 29th annual fundraising gala in December, according to the committee's Web site. The CIA also contributes about $10,000 to the annual gala of the Arab American and Chaldean Council, said Executive Director Radwan Khoury. The agency also is a sponsor of the Arab International Festival and the Arab American Scholarship Foundation, according to the Web site of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce and Hamad.

In March, the CIA hosted an appreciation dinner for leaders of the Arab American and Chaldean communities at the Westin Hotel in Southfield. Top CIA officials, but not the director, attended.

Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News, said the CIA also spends money on image and recruitment advertisements in his newspaper. [and boasting about it]

"I don't know that they're recruiting people, but I know that they're making a great effort," Siblani said.

Walid said his organization has never sought sponsorship money from the CIA and would not accept it. "We would lose our credibility as an advocacy agency," he said. "We've criticized openly some of the tactics of the CIA, particularly under the previous administration."

Hamad said the CIA's outreach shows his community is as valued and as American as apple pie. ["and as Israeli as falafel"]

"We'd rather have the CIA, like the FBI or other government agencies, do their work in the open," he said. "The CIA did its job years and years ago, and we didn't meet any of them one to one." [did you get that, Lynndie? Torture Iraqis on an outdoor plaza in downtown Dearborn, not behind the walls of Abu Ghraib]

He flies private planes for several wealthy families ...

2009-08-26T17:10:00.005-07:00

In all wars of liberation, some portion of the local population casts it lot with the foreign forces. Civil Air Patrol commander Long Nguyen's (pictured right) father was one of those people.

The Seattle Times reports: "Because his father had worked for U.S. forces, helping to find soldiers and airmen missing in action, his whole family was evacuated. They were among the first wave of Vietnamese refugees to come to Washington that summer [of 1975]."

I see a bitter irony in how Long Nguyen now makes his living: "His day job is a freelance mix: He flies private planes for several wealthy families who need [sic] a pilot to ferry them to the San Juans or up and down the coast ..."

Here's some background on the American war in Vietnam. Just months before the end of World War II, Japanese troops took control of an area that the French imperialists who had previously occupied it called Indochine française.

With the Japanese surrender in August 1945, the nationalist Viet Minh forces took control of parts of their homeland, which they called Việt Nam. Since 1941, the Viet Minh had enjoyed official support from the US government in fighting their common enemy, Japan, but that changed with the end of the war. The French wanted their colony back and, disregarding the Atlantic Charter, the US government supported the French. Before 1945 was over, the US was facilitating a French reconquest by transporting French soldiers to Vietnam on US troop transport ships.

In the "The Anti-War Movement We are Supposed to Forget," professor H. Bruce Franklin describes the period:

Those Americans who knew anything about Vietnam during World War II knew that the United States had been allied with the Viet Minh, the Vietnamese liberation movement led by Ho Chi Minh, and had actually provided some arms to their guerrilla forces, commanded by Vo Nguyen Giap. American fliers rescued by Giap's guerrillas testified to the rural population's enthusiasm for both the Viet Minh and the United States, which they saw as the champion of democracy, antifascism, and anti-imperialism. American officials and officers who had contact with Ho and the Viet Minh were virtually unanimous in their support and admiration. The admiration was mutual. In September 1945 the Viet Minh issued the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence, which began with a long quotation from the U.S. Declaration of Independence, proclaiming the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The regional leaders of the O.S.S. (predecessor of the C.I.A.) and U.S. military forces joined in the celebration, with General Philip Gallagher, chief of the U.S. Military Advisory and Assistance Group, singing the Viet Minh's national anthem on Hanoi radio.

But in the following two months, the United States committed its first act of warfare against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. At least 8 and possibly 12 U.S. troopships were diverted from their task of bringing American troops home from World War II and instead began transporting U.S.-armed French troops and Foreign Legionnaires from France to recolonize Vietnam. The enlisted crewmen of these ships, all members of the U.S. Merchant Marine, immediately began organized protests. On arriving in Vietnam, for example, the entire crews of four troopships met together in Saigon and drew up a resolution condemning the U.S. government for using American ships to transport troops "to subjugate the native population" of Vietnam.

The full-scale invasion of Vietnam by French forces, once again equipped and ferried by the United States, began in 1946. An American movement against the war started to coalesce as soon as significant numbers of Americans realized that Washington was supporting France's war against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.*

France's war ended with the ignominious defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954; the US war continued to escalate until it, too, was defeated in 1973.

* A more complete description appears in Franklin's book, Vietnam and Other American Fantasies (UMass Pr. 2001) pp. 49-50.

My (Real) Resume

2009-08-26T15:11:00.006-07:00

That is not my real name
My name is
Branches-strung-with-raindrops
My name is
Trees-lined-with-snow

I would not be an asset to your company
Nor to anything or anybody else
I am a dreamer
A waster of time
A thinker of long thoughts
A player of solitaire

I only want you to hire me
Because I need the money
And I only need the money
Because as Grace Paley says
Everyone has to make some kind of deal to survive

I started out the same as you
A baby--fat and confident
My mother was a receding marble statue
My grandmother warm but too soon gone

I have a terrible stutter
And I can't hear very well
I don't like the telephone
I never learned to type without looking
So I can't type very fast

I think we are on a continuum
Even you with your manager's lenses

I want to know why
The corporate mentality sucks so bad
Why it expects people
To do without windows
Or decent lunches
Or talking to one another

I want to know why
When there are 713 references in the Bible
To feeding the poor, being kind to strangers
And protecting orphans
You only focus on one in Leviticus
Which is an instruction to the priest class anyway

These are the things I'm interested in
And which I will secretly research
On the company computers

I'm smart and I'll do your work
But don't expect me to care about it.

Source: Elizabeth Romero. "My (Real) Resume." Real Change (Vol. 16, No. 34), July 29, 2009. p. 10.

Quotable: Madness

2009-08-26T14:50:00.003-07:00

MAD, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence; not conforming to standards of thought, speech and action derived by the conformants from study of themselves; at odds with the majority; in short, unusual. It is noteworthy that persons are pronounced mad by officials destitute of evidence that they themselves are sane.

Source: Ambrose Bierce. The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

The Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson: I am afraid, sir, you have a rather weak grasp of reality.

Baron Munchausen (defiantly): Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever.

Source: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Columbia Pictures, 1988.

When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it might be.

Source: The character of Miguel de Cervantes in Man of La Mancha. From "Don Quixote as Theater" by Dale Wasserman in Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 19.1 (1999): 125-30.

Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.

Source: Character of Brother William of Baskerville (Seventh Day, Night) in The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.

Quotable: Books

2009-08-14T13:14:00.003-07:00

Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we musn't ask ourselves what it says, but what it means.

Source: Character of Brother William of Baskerville (Fourth Day, After Compline) in The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

Source: Of Studies by Francis Bacon. Quoted in The Key to The Name of the Rose Adele J. Haft et al (Univ. of Michigan Pr., 1999) p. 177.

Who's "Manly" Now? (Sung to the Tune of Connie Francis' Rendition of "Who's Sorry Now")

2009-07-05T12:15:00.007-07:00

My "Green Berets: Who's the Coward?" post of last year has attracted a steady trickle of comments from anonymous militaristic my-government-right-or-wrong types. A macho bent to the comments--from "You could not and will not every [sic] hold these mens jock straps" (true enough, I hope and pray) to "you're unmanly" (flattery will get you nowhere)--brought to mind an Arizona Daily Star article from last February. That article suggested that the ranks of the US military may be disproportionately filled with people whose military service/masculinity is an act to cover or compensate for decidedly un-masculine feelings. A "classic" study cited in the article calls such military service a "flight into hypermasculinity." In this light, I see the remarks of the anonymous commenters as somewhat ironic and their own macho militaristic posing strikes me as a kind of imposture or performance to cover up something else.

In any case, I provide forthwith some anecdotal evidence that the special operations forces may have an even higher proportion of closeted transwomen in their ranks than the rest of the military. First up: The obituary of Rebecca Lynn Cross, "A former Special Forces medic and combat veteran, Cross underwent sexual reassignment surgery in Thailand last year." Next is the video clip below about a former US Army Special Forces Colonel who also transitioned to living as a woman. I can't end without saying that the ALCU's exploitation of Diane Schroer's case strikes me as a sort of imposture, too. They are cloaking the struggle for transgender rights in the garb of patriotism and the dishonorable, mythical 'war on terrorism.' It's really kind of disgusting.

Soldier , We Love You

2009-06-07T18:52:00.000-07:00

The Killer Robots of Barracuda Gobombthem

2009-06-07T17:59:00.003-07:00

In "Robot Wars," Eric Stoner writes:

Predator drones armed with laser-guided Hellfire missiles have regularly bombed Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years, and their use is skyrocketing. In 2008, 71 Predators flew 138,404 combat hours — a 94 percent increase over the year before, according to a recent presentation by U.S. Air Force Col. Eric Mathewson. And over the last year, drones flown largely by the CIA have launched missile attacks inside Pakistan more than 40 times. Rather than reconsider this deadly policy, President Obama has become an enthusiastic backer. Since his inauguration, he has authorized 11 such attacks that have collectively killed over 145 people, many of them civilians, and sparked large protests within Pakistan.

I would add that Obama--the "peace candidate"--authorized UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles) attacks on Pakistan in his very first week in office.

See also: "The Great Robot Race"

Peace Tax Fund Bill Update

2009-06-07T17:43:00.002-07:00

I haven't written about the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund in more than two-and-a-half years now. The proposal is an extremely flawed effort that should be opposed by all people of conscience. As I summed up in August 2006, "... if you want to send more money to the war machine, split the war tax resistance movement, and help set up a feel good shell game then the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund bill (HR 2631) is for you." So, I was happy to read in the June 2009 issue of More Than a Paycheck that the Coordinating Committee of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee did not renew its previous endorsement of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund.

Blank Spots

2009-06-07T15:20:00.003-07:00

"The history of secret geographies shows that when they do come into contact with the legal system, the legal system tends to change in order to accommodate them." Thus writes Trevor Paglen, author of Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World (p. 140). One of the legal cases discussed by Paglen is 1953 United States v. Reynolds decision, which cemented the "state secrets privilege" in American law. But the privilege did not protect national security but rather a lie that implicated the US Air Force in the death of Bob Reynolds in a swampy field near Waycross, Georgia. This is just one of the places Paglen ties to "blank spots" in the law or on a map, including Area 51.

Paglen also discusses the blank spots in the federal budget, writing (pp. 183-4):

The Founding Fathers understood the golden rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules." They understood that, in the halls of government as it is in so many other affairs, money is both information and power. As such, [Article I, Section 9, Clause 7] is a rebuke to the old monarchism the Founding Fathers wanted to free themselves from. "The people," argued George Mason, "had a right to know the expenditures of their money." Open books, argued James Madison, imparted both knowledge and responsibility upon a democratic citizenry: "A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both," he wrote. "Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."

Yet, as Paglen notes, even the amount, let alone what it pays for, of the "black budget" is secret . Nevertheless Paglen offers an estimate from R. J. Hillhouse of $60 billion--"roughly comparable to to what the Chinese military--the second-largest military in the world--spends each year." Two-thirds of that figure goes to even less accountable private contractors (p. 205).

In the book's epilogue (p. 275), Paglen says:

The black world has sculpted the United States in numerous ways. Creating secret geographies has meant erasing parts of the Constitution, creating blank spots in the law, institutionalizing dishonesty in the halls of government, handing sovereign powers--what used to be the unlimited power of monarchs over their subjects and territories--to the executive branch, making the nation's economy dependent upon military spending, and turning our own history into a state secret.

All in all Blank Spots on the Map was a quick and fascinating read. It is highly recommended.

Where's Larry? & WIN Loses

2009-06-01T12:31:00.004-07:00

In the July 2009 issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Senator James Abourezk writes (p. 24) about the decision of the Obama administration to drop espionage charges against AIPAC staffers Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman. Abourezk says: "Strange, they [prosecutors] sent the government official, Larry Franklin, to prison for over 12 years, but didn't feel they could win the case against the two AIPAC honchos." Former Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin (he worked for Neocons Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz) pled guilty in the case and was, indeed, sentenced to 12 years in prison in April, 2006. However, Franklin apparently got lost on his way. I checked the Federal Bureau of Prisons web site today and Larry Anthony Franklin is "NOT in BOP CUSTODY."

The spring 2009 edition of the War Resisters League's (WRL) WIN: Through Revolutionary Nonviolence magazine suggests that the editors are committed to losing the struggle for peace. This issue and the Winter 2009 issue have almost nothing to say about Israel's Hanukkah Massacre last winter or the ongoing US support of Israel's decades long war of attrition against the Palestinian people. So, why have they left out one of the linchpin conflicts of our lifetime? Perhaps a clue emerges in the presence of two pieces linked to the Democratic Party-front and Zionist-dominated United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ).

On page 21 of the current issue, UFPJ conditions the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan on transforming "America's failed approach" with "bold, peace solutions." UFPJ style of "peace and justice" is decidedly of the "White Man's Burden" school. They want the US to "pressure President Hamid Karzai" and to "Push for an independent international commission to investigate and press grievances" and they have plenty of other suggestions to use American power to 'improve' Afghan society for the benighted Afghans. By contrast, consider the remarks of one Marine on Vietnam:

I believe that if we had and would keep our bloody, dollar-crooked fingers out of the business of these nations so full of depressed, exploited people they will arrive at a solution of their own. . . . And if unfortunately their revolution must be of a violent type because the 'haves' refuse to share with the 'have nots' by any peaceful method, at least what they get will be their own and not the American style, which they don’t want and above all don’t want crammed down their throats by Americans.

Source: David M. Shoup, General, USMC (ret.), Medal of Honor winner, as quoted in "Former Marine Commandant Questions Vietnam." Congressional Record. Feb. 20, 1967; 113:3976.

In the Winter issue UFPJ organizing coordinator Judith LeBlanc says: "Now the peace movement must retool ..." I agree and we can start by dumping pro-Empire, anti-democratic, Obama-supporting Zionists like LeBlanc. Don't hold your breath for that, though.

In closing, it's worth noting that the WRL can't even get the history of Afghanistan right. In a WRL statement on "Beyond Afghanistan" printed on page 3 of the current issue they claim: "The Taliban rose to power with the support of the U.S. and Pakistani intelligence services, intervening against the USSR's invasion." The Taliban did not emerge as a force until 1994--more than five years after the Soviet withdrawal. The Taliban did not take power in Kabul until 1996. More importantly, the WRL statement fails to note that the Carter administration sponsored weapons transfers to Islamic militants before the Soviet invasion precisely in order to provoke an invasion.

Quotable: Solzhenitsyn on the "Letter of the Law"

2009-05-30T11:27:00.008-07:00

Not long ago I read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's June 1978 commencement address to Harvard University entitled A World Split Apart. Solzhenitsyn's obvious strength was his writing on life in Russia. And while he was also a keen observer of the West, he did not always see it so clearly. His understandable anti-Communism sometimes blinded him to the reality of American imperialism.

For instance, he chastised the "American intelligentsia" for the US defeat in Vietnam never understanding that the US role was indefensible by his own standards. Sounding the alarm, he claimed, "a hundredfold Vietnam now looms over [America]." He decried the materialism, irresponsible freedom, and humanism of the West and the US, in particular, never understanding that these were, in large part, symptoms not causes.

At least in 1978, he failed understand that Americans are not free but the unwitting slaves of a sophisticated and pervasive propaganda system. Which is, in turn, part of a larger system or constellation of systems which are life-destroying on scales large and small and manifest in America's culture of death and the "The Combine" of Ken Kesey's novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or the "Domination System" described by Walter Wink.

In any case, the passage below from A World Split Apart has much to commend itself in terms of understanding the law in America. It is noteworthy that his examples of the failure to exercise "Voluntary self-restraint" are not individuals as one would expect to hear from many American commentators but they are corporations.

Western society has chosen for itself the organization best suited to its purposes and one I might call legalistic. The limits of human rights and rightness are determined by a system of laws; such limits are very broad. People in the West have acquired considerable skill in using, interpreting, and manipulating law (though laws tend to be too complicated for an average person to understand without the help of an expert). Every conflict is solved according to the letter of the law and this is considered to be the ultimate solution. If one is right from a legal point of view, nothing more is required, nobody may mention that one could still not be right, and urge self-restraint or a renunciation of these rights, call for sacrifice and selfless risk: this would simply sound absurd. Voluntary self-restraint is almost unheard of: everybody strives toward further expansion to the extreme limit of the legal frames. (An oil company is legally blameless when it buys up an invention of a new type of energy in order to prevent its use. A food product manufacturer is legally blameless when he poisons his produce to make it last longer: after all, people are free not to purchase it.)

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is also less than worthy of man. A society based on the letter of the law and never reaching any higher fails to take full advantage of the full range of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes man’s noblest impulses.

And it will be simply impossible to bear up to the trials of this threatening century with nothing but the supports of a legalistic structure.

Source: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. A World Split Apart. (New York: Harper & Row, 1978) pp. 15-19.

Quotable: The Law

2009-05-25T19:30:00.009-07:00

Once in Conference the vote was close on a case and [Justice Stanley F.] Reed could not make up his mind. "I am inclined to reverse Chief Justice," Reed said deferentially. [Charles Evans] Hughes replied with his customary twinkle, "Brother Reed, I will enter you in the docket as voting to reverse. For my experience is that if a Justice inclines a certain way, he has the facility and resourcefulness to marshal the reason to back his inclination."

It was shortly after that episode that Hughes made a statement to me which at the time was shattering but which over the years turned out to be true: "Justice Douglas, you must remember one thing. At the constitutional level where we work, ninety percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reason for supporting our predilections."

I had thought of the law in the terms of Moses-principles chiseled in granite. I knew judges had predilections. I knew that their moods as well as their minds were ingredients of their decisions. But I had never been willing to admit to myself that the "gut" reaction of a judge at the level of constitutional adjudications, dealing with the vagaries of due process, freedom of speech, and the like, was the main ingredient of his decision. The admission of it destroyed in my mind some of the reverence for the immutable principles. But they were supplied by Constitutions written by people in conventions, not by judges. Judges are, after all, not creative figures; they represent ideological schools of thought that are highly competitive. No judge at the level I speak of was neutral. The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people, and no wiser man than Hughes ever sat on our Court. I say that although his predilections, drawn from a different age, were not always mine.

Source: William O. Douglas. The Court Years, 1939-1975. (New York: Random House, 1980) p. 8. Charles Evans Hughes was appointed as an Associate Justice to the US Supreme Court by Republican President William Howard Taft; he served in that post from 1910 until he resigned from the Court to become the 1916 Republican Party presidential nominee. Hughes was appointed as the Court's Chief Justice by Republican President Herbert Hoover; he served in that post from 1930 until 1941. William O. Douglas was appointed as an Associate Justice to the Court by Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt; he served in that post from 1939 until 1975.

Persecution for the expression of opinions seems to me perfectly logical. If you have no doubt of your premises or your power, and want a certain result with all your heart, you naturally express your wishes in law, and sweep away all opposition. To allow opposition by speech seems to indicate that you think the speech impotent, as when a man says that he has squared the circle, or that you do not care wholeheartedly for the result, or that you doubt either your power or your premises. But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas -- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment. Every year, if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge. While that experiment is part of our system, I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country. I wholly disagree with the argument of the Government that the First Amendment left the common law as to seditious libel in force. History seems to me against the notion. I had conceived that the United States, through many years, had shown its repentance for the Sedition Act of 1798, by repaying fines that it imposed. Only the emergency that makes it immediately dangerous to leave the correction of evil counsels to time warrants making any exception to the sweeping command, "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech." Of course, I am speaking only of expressions of opinion and exhortations, which were all that were uttered here, but I regret that I cannot put into more impressive words my belief that, in their conviction upon this indictment, the defendants were deprived of their rights under the Constitution of the United States.

Source: Dissent of Oliver Wendell Holmes in Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616, 630-631 (1919). Part of this passage is also quoted in Louis Menand. The Metaphysical Club: The Story of Ideas in America. (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001) p. 430.

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets or steal bread.

Source: Anatole France (1844–1924), French author. The Red Lily, ch. 7 (1894)

Every time I repeat, as though by rote, my maxim, 'But justice will ultimately win', I cannot help twitching. Because I know it's a lie and I twitch when I lie.

Justice, alas, is not a benevolent God who will descend when all human efforts fail to salvage his name. The cases in history of grave injustices are well known. The Turks murdered a million and a half Armenians; have they been made to pay? The American Indians were crushed and dispossessed: do they stand a chance of justice? Of course, some may answer that this was before 1948 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Right. All men are equal but only as long as those who have do not have to sacrifice anything to those who have not.

Source: Raja Shehadeh. The Sealed Room: Selections from the Diary of a Palestinian Living Under Israeli Occupation, September 1990-August 1991. (London: Quartet Books, 1992) p. 161. Shehadeh is a Palestinian lawyer and a founder of the human rights organization al-Haq. Sotomayor

Weep for Arabhood

2009-05-19T17:28:00.002-07:00

Congressman John Dingell has stated: “I believe the United States has no truer friend in the Middle East than Israel. I have been in Congress for 50 years, and during my tenure I have proudly helped to move more than $300 billion worth of American aid to Israel. I believe our continued commitment to Israeli security and democracy is not only smart policy, but also a moral imperative.” http://www.house.gov/dingell/documents/press_releases/109th_Session2/08-02-06.htm

He also said: “I yield to no man in my support for Israel. I have voted for hundreds of billions of dollars for it over the years I have served [in Congress].” http://www.aaiusa.org/issues/484/palestinian-anti-terrorism-act-of-2006-house-statements

How do Arabs react to such flagrant support for Zionist colonizers? While some throw shoes, others make us wonder what more Dingell needs to do for "Israel" before Arabs finally feel offended: Congressman John Dingell (D-MI) to Receive Lifetime Legislative Achievement Award at the ADC National Convention

http://www.arabdetroit.com/news.php?id=566

Quotable: Proof & Adjudication

2009-05-17T14:28:00.002-07:00

Thou canst not prove thou art immortal, no
Nor yet that thou art mortal—nay my son,
Thou canst not prove that I, who speak with thee,
Am not thyself in converse with thyself,
For nothing worthy proving can be proven,
Nor yet disproven: wherefore thou be wise,
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt,

Source: Excerpt from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "The Ancient Sage." Quoted in The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World by Alister McGrath (Doubleday 2004) p. 93.

... science simply cannot (by its legitimate methods) adjudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply can't comment on it as scientists.

Source: Excerpt from "Impeaching a Self-Appointed Judge" by Stephen Jay Gould. Quoted in McGrath, ibid., p. 109.