The Last Impeachment Panel

A panel on stage, Allan Buchman chatting up its members.

Amy Goodman moderates. She opens by noting that the media is the most powerful tool for awareness, a sort of kitchen table that stretches across the country and globe. And is not covering impeachment.

On the panel, Marjorie Cohn, John Nichols, and Naomi Wolf.

To Nichols, Goodman asks why the Dems want to wait for another pres. election to get rid of Bush. Nichols points out that elections are easy. Impeachment is important on its own. We can't just wait for an election; we have to send a message to all future presidents about what how is not okay to govern.

To Cohn, Goodman asks about the reasons for going to Iraq and potentially Iran. The real reason, Cohn says, Bush went to Iraq became clear just recently when we made agreements with Iraq to have troops there indefinitely - to stay in Iraq and move on to Iran. Notwithstanding the new evidence that Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons, Bush says he has not taken military action against Iran off the table.

Cohn notes that Congress does not have legal authority to start a "war of aggression," one that breaks a treaty, a war whose causes are falsified or blown out of proportion.

Cohn breaks down how impeachment works: The House votes to impeach the president; the Senate acts a court, presiding over the impeachment itself.

Nichols explains that Congress can impeach Cheney and Bush at once (I wrote "Nixon" instead of Cheney first, took a second to see it - Freud at work). But Nichols says to start with Cheney, then move up, exposing the dual criminality of the Dick and the Bush.

Naomi Wolf describes the step by which would-be dictators do their thing: They create vague internal and external threats; they create secret prisons; they create military not answerable to the people; they spy on their own citizens; they harass citizen's groups; they arbitrarily detain and release individuals (TSA for travelers, environmentalists, progressives); they target individuals (Bill Maher, Dixie Chicks, CEOs getting fire); they--oh--here it is--

I think this is so important I'm going to paste in the Wikipedia version, to reiterate:

The Ten Steps to Dictatorship

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy.
2. Create secret prisons where torture takes place.
3. Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not answerable to citizens.
4. Set up an internal surveillance system.
5. Harass citizens' groups.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release.
7. Target key individuals.
8. Control the press.
9. Declare all dissent to be treason.
10. Suspend the rule of law.

Wolf points out that there was still a parliament in Italy when Mussolini took over. He talked to parliament, then he stopped talking. Then at some point later, there was no point even pretending. Bush could declare an emergency tomorrow and boot out Congress. The state is legalizing torture. We could lose democracy, de jure, at any moment. We already have, de facto (the stolen election, torture, crazy war).

Goodman reads from Wolf's The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, which begins with an anecdote of a government worker blogging (!) against torture and being fired for her morals.

Cohn says Mukase won't stop waterboarding because to do so would be to admit that Bush had broken the law. Waterboarding is so obviously torture, there'd be little point admitting it had anything to do with Bush or that torture shouldn't be legal. The only option Mukase et cronies have is to stay the course.

Cohn describes how lawyers are fighting back, protesting, making some headway against the Justice Department by not backing down on Gitmo cases.

Nichols suggests the Democratic candidates should have to debate Naomi Wolf on each point - not Wolf Blitzer and Tim Russert and those who ignore the issue of impeachment.

Wolf points out that Bush terrifies so many - libertarians, anarchists, Green Party people. "On paper," Wolf says, "it's over, it's already over. The coup is over." A bill just passed criminalizing anything against Bush as terrorism. You don't need the Long Knives, says Wolf, just these scary laws. This impeachment theater could be criminal. Her book could be criminal.

Nichols is asking Congresspeople to read his book and Wolf's, to just read the articles of impeachment.

Cohn talks about the new bill again - I'm going to look this one up in a sec - and how it criminalizes thought that "advocates force," not only violence, but, say, a protest.

Wolf compares Bush & co. to the Nazis and Stalin, but conservatively, at evidence, at facts. "No one who's read my book," she says, criticizes her comparisons. She tells Cohn, who brought up the Unamerican Activities Committee in the Fifties, that Bush's plan is much more akin to Stalin's than to McCarthy's.

Goodman asks, in closing, what we can do now.

Nichols reiterates that Wexler and others have called for impeachment hearings; write and call and go visit your Congresspeople to ask them to impeach Bush and Cheney. And write and call your local media. We have to get the media involved on a much bigger level. Forget the election for one second. Impeachment is dramatically more important. The presidency had become a pack of lies.

Cohn calls for ending the war, in addition to constantly calling on our leaders to impeach Bush and Dick.

Wolf calls for impeaching and prosecuting B&C. "The only way to save this country." Word up.

Goodman talks about the FCC ending regulations that restrain a few big companies from owning all the major media. Upside, DemocracyNow! has grown quite a bit. And the internet. Don't forget the internet. Please post and repost our videos and articles; comment; send us new leads. Contact your Congresspeople. Show them the videos.

Oh, we're not done. Buchman comes on to remind us that we're going to pursue this issue all year. I think Jackon Browne is going to sing...

Fear and Interpretation

Thinking back on the reading tonight, it strikes me how much of the detainees' poetry seems to stem from confusion as often as outrage. Again and again, Allah is invoked not bitterly, but almost wistfully: The poet doesn't need to ask Allah to destroy the unjust; the poet wants God to explain to his family that the disorder created by those who fight "a war for peace" will be made ordered again.

This leads me to an article by Akbar Ganji on women's rights in Iran, published in the most recent Boston Review.

Ganji's argument is against the unequal treatment of women in modern Iran, which is worth several posts of its own. But he touches upon a bigger, more overarching point about Islam and rationality: Various important Muslim thinkers, from the Ayatollah Khomeini way back to al-Ghazali - thinkers both conservative and radical - have pointed out that the most important aspect of Islam isn't the following of any specific rule whatsoever, it's just belief in the merciful God.

Said another way, generalized even further out from Islam, the most important aspect of a religion - of any ideal - is the spirit behind it, not the specific methods by which that spirit is manifested in the world.

Take America's war on terror. Like George Bush and the wardens of Guantánamo, I am against Jihadi suicide bombers, against Osama Bin-Laden, against kidnappers. The spirit - protect life - is the same. But the methods differ. Progressives refer to the law, to rational arguments against torture, while Bush and his cronies maintain a strict, Jihadi-like focus on a ghostly version of efficiency. If they think torture is efficient, torture is in, even if it violates the spirit itself. The methods get ahead of the reason behind them, the reason for using them - the methods eat their own collective tail.

Thinking about the dichotomy between spirit (compassion, mercy, reason) and method (torture, kidnapping, secrecy, willful ignoring of law, lack of respect for others' traditions), the methodological links between the Jihadis and the anti-Jihadis blur the two categories. An Orwellian, frightening state of mind.

Katrina in the News; Iran Sans Bomb; More...

In the news today:

Iran doesn't have the Bomb;

Imus is back;

Katrina victims are in the spotlight again, for their "mood problems;"

and Texas ain't so keen on Darwin.



(From Wikipedia: Iranian newspaper clip from 1968 reads: "A quarter of Iran's Nuclear Energy scientists are women." The photograph shows some female Iranian Ph.D.s posing in front of Tehran's research reactor.)

Well, can't say I'm surprised that Texas might join Kansas and medieval Byzantium, among other wonderful scholastic sovereignties, in their rejection of the principle of evolution.

More surprised that Bush & Co. have announced that Iran, in fact, isn't packing heat, atomically-speaking. I mean, they might enrich a bomb later, but right now, they're doing the whole carrot/stick diplomacy thing. (Could any of our Mid-East regional power experts take notes?)

Persepolis

"Poignant coming-of-age story of a precocious and outspoken young Iranian girl that begins during the Islamic Revolution." Animated and sweet-looking. And about the Iran-Iraq War. Probably won't prevent Bush going to war, but...



Persepolis - French Teaser

Posted May 21, 2007

Poignant coming-of-age story of a precocious and outspoken young Iranian girl that begins during the Islamic Revolution.

Panel: Madness & Fear & Strikes & Great, Great Ideas

De la Vega explains that you can't charge a sitting president, but you can impeach the hell outta him.

Great to see all these various luminaries - a retired colonel, a lawyer, writers, David Swanson of AfterDowningStreet.com, who seems to be moderating - sitting side by side.

Theater as a medium for an impeachment hearing - seems to work.

People still mill in the lobby. I like the lobby. I met some college students who complained that they couldn't go to all the shows because each costs twenty bucks per student, and that adds up. I said I'd try to help them out. (We'll see where/how that goes.)

Ann Wright gets applause, raising her voice that the Dems aren't doin' anythang right now anyways, so why don't they hold B/C accountable? So what if it takes a month? We have to.

McGovern says he swore in the Army to defend America from enemies foreign and domestic, and he never heard an expiration date for that. He points out, as was pointed out last night, that the founders intended impeachment to be used in case any president "started acting like a king," that it is an orderly process.

He also interestingly points out that we all have "outrage fatigue - every week there's a new outrage!" that makes it hard for us keep up the heat. But we have to. We have to keep trying to make our own Congress do its job and reign in the executive.

He also points out that the Constitution is imperative: It doesn't ask you to consider impeaching a bad president. It tells you to.

OH SHITE--

"There's gonna be a war against Iran, folks. You don't believe it? Sure its crazy, sure it's crazy... But most of my colleagues [in national intelligence] agree."

He is serious--McGovern is telling us--you, me, everybody--that Bush and Cheney are going to go to war with Iran. Unless we tie him up with impeachment. Unless we literally prevent the Congress from authorizing war funds, prevent Bush from doing anything, he will go to war with Iran.

Swanson asks something... McGovern points out that we would lose the war with Iran.

Hendrik Hertzberg points out that the Constitution's flaws have got us into this mess, and that while impeachment is great for theater, it's not great for "grown-up politics." Zero chance. Of actually happening.

Everest notes that war with Iran will lead to martial law here (of course). "Impeachment is not now on the political landscape," he says. We, the millions and millions, have to act. We all have to write and protest and (I add) break some shit. "The people themselves have to take it upon themselves." What if three million people wore orange? What about a general strike? (I love his ideas.) The stakes aren't stopping the war on Iraq - not any more - but stopping the institution of torture, the police state, escalation of nuclear weapons since we won't get troops on the ground in Iran. The gap between what the people want and what the imperialists want is so huge... We have to organize (each of us in the room). [Well, I'm in the lobby...]

Swanson brings the audience in, reminding us that over a third of Americans want to impeach and remove Bush.

Wait, no audience yet. De la Vega reminds us that impeachment is a process, not necessarily one that will result in removal. She asks, do we think both B & C have committed impeachable offenses? The majority think so. She disagrees with Hertzberg that impeachment is a "political fantasy." We don't know what the outcome is going to be. It doesn't matter. We can't accept defeat. "We are all politicians." (The idea that we are all part of this, not just politicized, party-liner DC types.)

Audience Q1: "I'm a librarian... I'm not an American citizen." (She's Canadian.) She reminds us that impeachment is a national civics lesson, not a trial. She says (as others have said) we have to impeach Bush or throw out the Constitution.

Swanson clarifies points about Dems in Congress wanting to pass resolutions and fearing the process; I don't really get it, but I'll check "Let's Try Democracy" later; he's mainly talking about Pelosi.

McGovern... orates. (He's sort of like Rip Torn meets George Carlin meets Indiana Jones. I imagine he could wield a whip or khukri.) His point: The Dems want to wait just one more year, then get a Dem president, then beat the Republicans, which is the wrong way to think about it.

Q2: Something about Nazis. Okay. A question to Hertzberg. The questioner is LIVID. Sort of voice-cracking woman, comparing Bush and Hitler, asking what the process would have been to remove Hitler? Now McGovern and Hertzberg are arguing about "they" versus "we." "They, they, they."

Swanson fields it: Tell the other Republicans, the ones who don't want to impeach, that it's not a partisan question: What does it matter who the next president is if the next pres. doesn't have to obey laws? (He's with the "it's not political" camp.)

Hertzberg disagrees. Everest points out that Hilter did come in through political power, same as Bush; torture was approved, made part of the institution. "People just have to be refused to be bound by the terms of what the Democrats or Republicans are saying." "What the Democrats are doing is poison because it's paralyzing - just wait till 2008..." I agree. We don't need to stay at home and watch TV.

Q3: Angry about Hillary. Okay... These microphone-users are newish, I'm guessing. lot of loud cracking.

Q4: Clinton was impeached for a blowjob! Anger. Now yelling about 9/11 inside job Afghanistan domino theory - so what I want to know is, what are people going to do, to get the American people out of...?

Swanson politely cuts him off, pointing out that if we agree that B/C have committed 2999 impeachable offenses -- the man cuts him off -- Swanson regains, moves on.

De la Vega reminds us that the approval rating of Congress is less than that of the pres. (This is lively theater.) We need to send the message that --> Congress does more = Congress gets more support.

Q5: Nixon. Why is it different?

McGovern fields; Everest points out that the social upheaval across the board (anti-war, women's movement, etc.) helped oust Nixon.

Swanson brings it back to the calculus of wait-and-see versus act-now-in-accordance-with-the-people's-wishes. Historical precedents. People liked Clinton, so he didn't get impeached.

Q6: Can't hear it. It's long, rambling, and about lowering the bar for something. No mic. "Raise the standards for the people, we're intelligent," doubt that voting alone will effect chain.

Q7: Leapfrog past Tim Russert. What new ways will help us reach Facebook kids (uh, they're better organized that you, largely).

Q8: The marketplace of ideas is closed. There is no free press. Church and state. Police state. Again, not a question, rambling. But great in that, for the third time, the emphasis is against Pelosi-world D.C. General strike challenged, generally.

Swanson holds up fliers that list specific things we can do. CALL THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE. Yo, I'm going to do that, get my coworkers to do that, and do it a lot.

Angry surprise Q9, something hard to hear about war. McGovern takes his closing remarks to address. The supreme international crime, the war of aggression. McGovern gives an awesome quote, I'll try to find it. He points out that all five major articles of impeachment, all the crimes, are part of a general war of aggression. Jail, as Thoreau said, the only decent place to be in such times.

Ann Wright thanks Culture Project.

Allan Buchman starts to speak, as the host: Mentions our play Guantanamo, back in 2004. The Constitution was out of print. The White House didn't know when they'd start printing it again...

He fields the question of Facebook very well: The whole point is to do art, theater, and to blog about it, get the video up immediately on blip.tv and on our site and on our blogs, etc. Figure out what works. Just figure it out. That's the whole point of the show. I agree.

Ann Wright: "Let's close that mother down" (D.C.) Defends theater as an attempt, a good attempt, one of many. (It seems audience is angry panel isn't mentioning Blackwater. I mean, fuck those guys, but we have a lot of stuff to go through, over five weeks, including Blackwater. We'll get there.)

Everest: Change the discourse - Bush's actions not mistakes, but crimes. Insist on morality - refusing to resist war crimes is a crime. Refuse to wait on Dems or Reps or anyone. Don't think a Dem in 08 will save everything. It won't, because that Dem will have infinite power. (And Bush won't go, anyway.)

Hertzberg: Don't just vote (he stresses voting and was yelled at by audience for it). Remember that Bush did not win the presidency but was put in place by a judicial coup de tat. Get out and get interested in the idea of getting rid of the electoral college. IT DON'T WORK. (That much seems self explanatory, but I'll add links to explain.) We should have a general election. Political activity is pointless if your vote doesn't count. General strike = fantasy; impeachment = fantasy. (He says. He is not a revolutionary. We could do both. He don't have to get out there and strike - I can not-work enough for two.)

Swanson claps. Everyone claps. Lights up in lobby as De la Vega adds very last word (maybe). Lights down in lobby. She thinks the only way we can not impeach Bush is to continue as if we're in a fantasy. To see reality is to impeach.

Swanson adds last-last word: Fourteen more months for Bush is faaar too long. He will go to war, or whatever. We will all die horribly (my maudlin phrasing).

Exeunt.

What Cheney Was Saying Decades Ago - A MUST-SEE

Wow...

Two Headlines Today: Libby Libby Libby! (and in small print, war with iran...)

I open my emailed version of the NYTimes and see this:

Bush Spares Libby 30-Month Jail Term
By SCOTT SHANE and NEIL A. LEWIS
President Bush commuted the sentence of I. Lewis Libby Jr., who was convicted of perjury in the C.I.A. leak case.

U.S. Says Iran Helped Iraqis Kill Five G.I.’s
By JOHN F. BURNS and MICHAEL R. GORDON
A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said that Iranian agents and veterans of Hezbollah helped plan a raid in Iraq in which five American soldiers were killed.

Meaning everybody's so pissed off at Bush about Libby, they're liable to let him go to war with Iran... (If some are to be believed - and I think there's reason to hear them out: The anti-Iranian press will ramp up; the "incidents" with "Iranian nationals" will increase in frequency and intensity; it's the Spanish-American War/I mean 'Nam/I mean 'Raq all over again...)

But the Libby thing is really a kick in the nards, ain't it?

This from Kenneth L. Adelman, former Defense (originally War) Department official and Libby-liker:

“This is not a man who deserves to go to jail in any sense of the word... Whatever he did wrong, he certainly paid... This is a good person who served his country very well and is a decent person.”

Yes, if a cop caught me smoking rocks on the corner and I was humiliated and talked about in the media (perhaps because I was an important public official), I would not have to go to jail; I'd have served my time via the public spotlight, as it were.

Yes, if I revealed the identity of an American spy... Fuck it, you get the point.

But enough Americans don't seem to get the point about these cheeseball Neocon warmongers. We just love thugs too much. We can't see their bad sides. We don't like em to perjure, to get caught, or say names - but Cheney et Co. can do damn well what he pleases. Who do you think is writing the official version of every incident with Iran?

Here's a little something from the NYTimes' review of T.I.'s new album:

Listeners transfixed by his entertaining interjections (“O.K.?!”) and exaggerated pronunciation might easily have overlooked the rigorous poetic construction. But that’s a neat little quatrain: four lines, six syllables apiece, each building to an trisyllabic oblique rhyme. Somehow, T. I. delivers supertechnical raps without ever sounding as boring as that last sentence.

Supertechnical my ass. He rhymes "attitude" with "dude" (more than once) and talks about beatin folks up. And not ala the Iliad or Biggie's best verses on life as a poor black American, but just in plain, pro-wrestler, prosaically-themed, overly-metered platitudes. He'll beat you up - not make you cry talking about having to beat some guy up to help his mom.

Now, all you really need to know about T.I. for the purposes of this essay is that the man is a low-down, woman-beatin, gay-bashin, drug-smugglin thug. He revels in thuggery. As Mos Def said, "Thug is the drug," and T.I. is one the best-selling rappers in mainstream hip hop, having two albums ago joined the elite pantheon of other woman-beatin, gay-bashin, crack-smokin thug-gods, recently Fifty "Silent 2nd F" Cent and The Game.

Even the Times loves T.I. and can't bring itself to bash him back for all his crack-handin-out evil.

But, worse, we Americans let thugs get into not only our music (instead of reppin real MCs like MF DOOM, LyricsBorn, most of Little Brother, Mos, &c.) but into our government. As much as we balk at Bush's commutation of Scoot's sentence, we should also balk at the Bush plan to invade frickin Persia...

Aiyaiyai, I gotta drink some ice tea and think about something calming, like how much money I owe the government... or how my cat just tried to eat the last of my toilet paper... again...

Interesting Story Concerning Theater and Conflict

May 7, 2007, NYTimes, "In Iraq, the Play Was the Thing," by HUSSAIN ABDUL-HUSSAIN:

IN 1982, our second-grade teacher at Baghdad’s Mansour school made the following announcement: “The year-end play is about our war with the Persian enemy. The top 20 students in class will play Iraqis; the bottom 20 will play Persians.”

This was at the height of the Iran-Iraq war, and during our first rehearsal the students assigned to play Persians — that is, Iranians — broke out in tears. Although many of the children were, like me, from Shiite families, they insisted that they were Iraqis first, that they loved their Sunni-led country and did not want to play the role of the enemy.

After some negotiations, the girls were spared and only the boys from the lower half were selected to play the roles of the “soldiers of Khomeini the hypocrite.” Their script was scrapped, and instead they were told simply to run across stage as the rest of us, playing the role of the Iraqi Army, mowed them down in battle.

But the play did not end when the curtain fell. Those of us from the Iraqi cast took to bragging and, in the tradition of schoolchildren everywhere, bullying the “Persians.” With tears in their eyes, they repeatedly had to beg the teacher to make us stop.

Now, a quarter of a century later, I called one of my classmates, Ayad, a Shiite who still lives in Iraq. I reminded him of the play, and of how he and I, the top two students in the class, got to play the roles of the Iraqi generals who would win the war against the Iranians. “It was the good old days,” he told me.

Ayad owns a hotel in the southern city of Karbala, home to two of Shiism’s most important shrines. His wife and two daughters wear veils. He believes that the violence in Iraq is a Sunni and American conspiracy against Shiites, and he argues that Iran is the best ally of Iraqi Shiites.

Ayad has two elder brothers. One was conscripted during the Iran-Iraq war and received medals for his courageous performance in battle. The other ran away when he was drafted and ended up living as a refugee in Iran. However, he was treated poorly there, living in poverty and under permanent suspicion, so after some years he fled to Beirut. After the Americans ousted Saddam Hussein, he returned to Iraq, and now works at Ayad’s hotel.

“We think America did a great thing by toppling Saddam,” Ayad told me, speaking for himself and his family. “But now they should hand us the country and leave.”

I asked him whether he fears that an American withdrawal might allow the Sunni insurgents to strike harder in Shiite areas. “We outnumber them,” he said. “And with the support of our Iranian brothers, we can take the Sunnis.”

“And then what?” I replied.

“Then the Shiites will rule Iraq.”

Ayad believes that there is no problem in establishing an Islamic government in Baghdad styled after that of the Iranian Republic. The Sunnis, he said, have “oppressed us since the days of the Prophet, and now it is our chance to hit back and rule.”

According to Ayad, a Shiite takeover in Iraq would set a good model for the Shiites of Lebanon, where they number about a third of the population, and Bahrain, where they are a majority.

“Perhaps the Shiite minority in Saudi Arabia will act too, rid themselves of the Sunni oppression against them, and rule or at least separate themselves from Riyadh and create their own state,” my friend argued.

It is exactly this possibility that has made the Sunni Arab regimes fear a Shiite regional revolt and moved some to support the Sunni insurgency in Iraq or at least to voice their resentment of the Iraqi Shiite government, which is seen as being biased against Iraqi Sunnis. “But we are Iraqis,” I told Ayad. “We are Arabs. We have our cultural differences with the Persians. We don’t even speak the same language.”

Ayad insisted otherwise: “When we fought the Persians during the 1980s, we were wrong. We’re Shiites before being Iraqis. Sunnis invented national identity to rule us.”

At this point, I understood that it was pointless to argue further. When the Baathist regime collapsed, I initially felt that there was a good chance for national unity, that Sunnis and Shiites would band together in the absence of the dictator who had played them against each other. Talking to Ayad, I realized how wrong I had been.

To change the subject, I asked Ayad about his business. He told me he had just erected flags on top of the entrance to his hotel. He chose the flags of Iraq, Iran, Lebanon and Bahrain. When I asked why he chose the flags of these four nations, he said: “These are the countries where Shiites come from to do their pilgrimage in Karbala,” he said. “It is good for business.”

Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a media analyst, is a former reporter for The Daily Star of Lebanon.

LAWRENCE WRIGHT WINS PULITZER

Our primary homeslice Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower just won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.

We congratulate him with all our hearts.

The man is a double paragon of journalistic thoroughness and good prose style. He is also one of the easiest-to-work-with people you could ever meet. And a snappy dresser.

(For those of you who missed Wright's My Trip To Al-Qaeda, stay tuned for a very short remounting of the show some time in June.)

Our Only Real Diplomat?

Nagging questions of political decorum aside (and since when did decorum, I dunno, prevent a chlorine bombing?)..., who the fuck gives somebody flak for trying to reconcile hostile powers in the Middle East?

The fact that Pelosi is not a member of the Executive branch merely underscores that branch's failures.

If Bush cannot reach out to "Axis Of Evil" leaders, he cannot hope to entice them to change their policies towards Israel, sectarian rivalry, or falafels, which, as stated earlier, must be safe to eat if the Middle East is ever to recover from its long slide back into Medieval violence and state-choking autocracy.

Anyway, here's a little blurb about our Madam Speaker's controversial trip:

From the NYTimes, April 6, 2007, "Pelosi Nudges Saudi Arabia to Give Women a Role in Politics," ASSOCIATED PRESS:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, April 5 (AP) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday visited Saudi Arabia’s unelected advisory council, the closest thing in the kingdom to a legislature, where she tried out her counterpart’s chair — a privilege not available to Saudi women because they cannot become legislators.

...

Ms. Pelosi and King Abdullah discussed at length the Arab peace initiative, which offers Israel peace with Arab states if it withdraws from lands seized in 1967 and allows the creation of a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem. Israel has said it will accept the proposal only if some changes are made.

“I explained to him that this can be a very important and historic proposal if he is prepared for a discussion and a dialogue and not a presentation on a take-it-or-leave-it basis,” said Representative Tom Lantos, a California Democrat and the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who is also part of the American delegation. “His reaction was very positive.”

Of course Bush should value diplomacy, too.

But if he doesn't, I vote we send in Pelosi, Jimmy Carter, the A Team, and Sam Jackson, who, as we all know from Snakes On A Plane, is a master of both conflict resolution and off-the-cuff toxicology.

Also, this is something that should get more attention/political pressure: Many Iraqi refugees in Syria (and probably in Jordan, Iran, Saudia Arabia, Yemen, etc.) are being forced in quasi-slave positions as "cabaret dancers" or domestic servants... So besides the number of deaths/serious injuries in Iraq, one must, when one appraises America's intervention there, consider the number of less enumerable vilenesses that have come to pass since April, 2003.

From the (rather dark, X-Files-chic) CIA website:

current situation: Syria is a destination country for women from South and Southeast Asia and Africa for domestic servitude and from Eastern Europe and Iraq for sexual exploitation; women are recruited for work in Syria as domestic servants, but some face conditions of exploitation and involuntary servitude including long hours, non-payment of wages, withholding of passports and other restrictions on movement, and physical and sexual abuse; Eastern European women recruited for work in Syria as cabaret dancers are not permitted to leave their work premises without permission and have their passports withheld; some displaced Iraqi women and children are reportedly forced into sexual exploitation
tier rating: Tier 3 - Syria does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so

We should engage Syria diplomatically if for no other reason than to pressure them to reform/transform/abolish their domestic servant/sex trade.

Tom Paine/Obama In 08

Snippets:

1. Iran sends home their 15 pet sailing-Brits, one plus a hijab. Here's a great fish-eyed picture of the vicious Anglo-trespassers in their second-hand Persian suits. (I want one!)



From today's NYTimes:

“Throughout, we have taken a measured approach, firm but calm, not negotiating but not confronting either,” Mr. Blair said. Britain bore no ill will toward the Iranian people, he told reporters, and respected Iran’s “proud and dignified history.”

So... Britain wouldn't negotiate or confront? Meaning the only option left to explore was... to ignore the situation and hope cooler heads prevailed in Tehran. Gotcha. Isn't that basically "chance-based engagement" (a term I just made up that I will continue to apply to this hope-it-goes-away brand of diplomacy, such as Bush's/America's re: Hamas, DPRNK, Castro, &c.).

I don't know which was lamer, the Brit's faith/head-in-sand-based conflict resolution or the Iranian's lame video/pictorial propaganda about how "sorry" the sailors were (really, for real, guys), which featured a much be-Sharpied map of the Iran/Iraq aqua-divide and a dour-looking Revolutionary Guardsman pointing to the obviously offensive Brit-boat coordinate.

(In other news, Russia plans to build a GPS system to rival our own... Competition is a good thing.)

2. Again we favour Israel bearing arms rather than brown people bearing them. Also from today's Times:

WASHINGTON, April 4 — A major arms-sale package that the Bush administration is planning to offer Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies to deter Iran has been delayed because of objections from Israel, which says that the advanced weaponry would erode its military advantage over its regional rivals, according to senior United States officials.

This is the other backbone of American policy: Fucking things up. To prevent dictatorships, Communism, religious radicalism, and anti-selling-us-oil governments in general, we prop up crazy dictators. To prevent war, we sell arms to side X, which makes side Y want to go to war, meaning we have to give more arms to side Z to create an "equilibrium," though it's easy to misinterpret how to do that, and with whom...

3. John Edwards is "roaring" with Christ's power.

Actually, I'm not going to make fun of him, even though I'm all about some Age Of Reason non-theistic (i.e., non-carrot-&-stick-based) morality. Check out this:

I think he would be happy with the fact that I have focused on people who live in poverty here and people without healthcare. And the suffering of others in other parts of the world, like some of the work that I've done on humanitarian issues in Africa, for example, and going to the slums outside of Delhi and India.

Focusing on problems in a very personal way that exist, and without regard to my own selfish ambitions, talking about things that may not seem so politically powerful, but are important to me, and I think important to God.

That sounds about right. Except that talking about morality should be a part of politics, as it once was (see below; buy the book).

Possibly even better is:

Do you think that America is a Christian nation?

...I never thought of it quite that way. There's a lot of America that's Christian. I would not describe us, though, on the whole, as a Christian nation. I guess the word "Christian" is what bothers me, even though I'm a Christian.

Correct/bravo. Can you imagine Pres. John Edwards (and I am an electorally-monogamous Obama man mydamnself) talking to Middle Eastern leaders? I can--more than I can imagine Bush, another serious Christian, doing so. Because, unlike Bush, Edwards seems to have a grasp on the idea of many faiths/one nation, or of the continually self-revising nature of history... Which leads me to:

4. Paul Collins is THE MAN, as is Tom Paine. Best recognize.

You should buy this book by the former/about the latter. Right now.

Monty Python rates the Iranians "uncivilised"

If you didn't see Terry Jones' piece in today's Guardian, you missed a truly brave editorial on the UK sailors being held in Iran. Inserting tongue firmly in cheek, Jones took the hypocrisy of the Bush-Blair torture principle to task. You just gotta read this.

Urgent Reading For Those Of You Who Enjoy Not Being At War

Check out this amazing article in the New Yorker.