An Unfortunate First

Abdul Razzaq Hekmati, anti-Taliban fighter, dies of cancer at Guantánamo, his case never settled by law, his story either unheard or unbelieved by his captors. Hekmati was the first man to die of natural causes at at Guantánamo.

Journalist Betrayed, Soldiers Betrayed

But first a lighter fare: Schlock-talker Michael Savage lays into Islam, in a seriously scary way, and doesn't get the Imus routine as a result. Why? Because he laid into Islam, and America right now is afraid of Islam, even if most Muslim-Americans are law-abiding moderates (as are most [insert major group]-Americans).

I hope other minorities are helping Muslim-Americans fight back. Michael Savage was already a grade-A jerk, but his bizarrely fever-pitched screed against Muslim-Americans set a new standard for quasi-mainstream Islamophobia.

Just ask yourself, seriously: Would any on-air personality be allowed to say the same things (that we should deport all of them, that they should shove their religion up their behinds) of Jews, Christians, Buddhists, or atheists? He wasn't talking about jihadis - he was talking about all Muslims, a pretty big group.

Anyway, Culture Project's upcoming play Betrayed by New Yorker writer George Packer looks at how the U.S. military and the Bush people essentially betrayed many of the Iraqi interpreters and other aides they hired.

The play's fantastic (we've had a few readings) and Packer's nonfiction accounts of his time in Iraq - ranging from The Assassin's Gate to the article that inspired the play - is definitely worth reading.

But it saddens me to read, in today's New York Times, just how venerable our history of abandoning our allies really is. Short version: To fight communism in Laos and Vietnam, the CIA hired thousands of Hmong warriors (from Laos), then abandoned them when the communists won. The U.S. troops came home, in various states of disrepair. The Hmong were already home, and their socialist government couldn't have been more pissed at them.

Cut to thirty years later. The former fighters are aging; their families now guilty by relation. They move around every few weeks, hiding, and endure irregular skirmishes with the Laotian army. The government of Laos denies that ex-CIA Hmong exist in the jungles, blaming such rumors on "bandits." The Times's pictures prove otherwise.

Also not fun: Iraqi Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein was held by U.S. forces for twenty months without being charged with a crime, then released into the care of an Iraqi magistrate. The magistrate will determine whether or not Hussein is an insurgent. He has still not been charged.

Hussein's lawyers "were not given a copy of the materials that were presented and which they need to prepare a defense." The AP has fought vigorously for Hussein, with little luck. The military says Hussein helped insurgents. But Hussein hasn't been charged with that crime or with any other.

Surveillance Panel

Okay, Denis Moynihan of Democracy Now(!) is filling in for Amy Goodman as moderator; that's fine, we'll roll with it.

Holtzman fields a question about the nature/balance/ease of impeachment. Nixon's was bipartisan, Clinton's partisan.

Kadidal fields a question... (I miss most of it, reading about Moynihan and Goodman and Hustler magazine. Interesting but sort of psycho. Seems like Moynihan and Goodman are against exploitation, so, go them.)

Now we go to Valeriani, who says Nixon, if alive, would ask, regarding Bush's surveillance and its extraordinary success, "Why the hell didn't I do it?"

(Some thoughts on this very humorous older fellow - Valeriani in a Huffington Post blog post: "Bin Laden tape rants against capitalism. Yo, Osama, where did you get your millions? Tape also urges Americans to convert to Islam. No thanks, we prefer the 21st Century."

Huq quite ably defends Muslim-Americans in another H.F. post.

But don't worry, V. skewers everybody: "Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego announces $198 million settlement with plaintiffs who claimed they were sexually abused by priests. Big Bucks for Buggery.")

Valeriani is a journalist. He contacted Russians and worked in Cuba, back in the Cold War days, and had his phones tapped. The FBI called him routinely to ask him to help get Russians to give away sensitive information. When he didn't respond to FBI phone messages for two days, they showed up in front of buildings where he was headed. He had his records with the FBI checked - he was listed as "turned," a friendly informant. Lol.

Holtzman gets a round of vigorous applause for defending the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, no matter how hard such a process would be. (She's responding to V. and his assertion that - because, in the event of a successful B&C impeachment, Nancy Pelosi would become president - some might see an impeachment as an attempt at a "Democrat coup," which does sound silly, typing it.

She points out that a successful impeachment must be bipartisan; if Republicans don't want to impeach Bush, Democrats won't be able to do it alone.

Huq very smartly brings the whole question around to what will happen with the next president, regardless of her party? Will the next president not only abandon but help dismantle and prevent from being reinstated the illegal, warrantless surveillance programs? The extraordinary renditions to secret jails in Syria and Egypt? He defines the "Cheney version of the Constitution," which is that whenever the executive feels it needs to extend its powers in the name of national security, it simply can, no questions.

Don't think, Huq counsels, that a Pres. Obama or a Pres. Hillary won't use the Republican programs of domestic terror that Culture Project, Democracy Now(!), the CCR, the ACLU, and so many others are fighting against.

Valeriani speaks on "scar tissue," how we're no longer shocked by Bush's evils.

Audience Q1: Pressures on the election...

Holtzman says we need the president to be brought to justice, to show that Congress can do its thing(s) - pass laws and remove tyrants from office.

Audience Q2: If Pelosi hadn't taken impeachment off the table...

Kadidal, Holtzman, and Valeriani note that the American people and Dennis Kucinich want to impeach Bush; keep the pressure on, Pelosi will have to. It wasn't a problem (for the Speaker of the House - third in line for pres. after pres. and VP - to bring the pres. to justice) during Watergate.

Audience Q3: Cheney = brains of operation...

Valeriani: He lied about WMDs.

Huq: There's a great deal of public evidence about Cheney's aide's roles in setting aside FISA, torture laws, and the Geneva Conventions. You'd subpoena [Cheney's aides].

Audience Q4: How would ordinary people get Congress to listen, seriously...?

Holtzman: When was the last time you contacted your Congressperson? Get a meeting. Email. Get your block to sign a petition.

Moynihan has a show of hands for who gets the "Saturday Night Massacre" reference. (The audience, educated and in many cases old enough, gets it.)

Holtzman: The tapes were critical. Elliot Richardson appointed a special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, who looked for the tapes. The tapes got Nixon impeached. (People got fired, hence the massacre.) "We would have seen a similar event" - Ashcroft would have resigned. It's not clear what they changed to make their program compliant with FISA.

Audience Q5: 200,000 phone calls, that night, Saturday Night Massacre, to the Congress. We had 200,000 phone calls. You heard from us.

Audience Q6: Should we impeach Cheney first, because people seem to favor that, in polls? Then impeach Bush?

Holtzman (again): It will take a while to do two. It took a while for us to do one. We had to hire lawyers. The Democrats hired a Republican lawyer, and the Republicans hired a Republican lawyer. It hadn't been done in a hundred years - these things had to be studied. It took about nine months. So there's really enough time, to do it still. But there's not enough time to do Cheney and Bush. We have Bush's fingerprints on it. My whole view is to start the proceedings against Bush; we will accumulate evidence against Cheney.

One of the articles against Nixon was that he stonewalled us for information, and that was voted on by a bipartisan base. So there's a precedent. There's a lot of sentiment around the country for impeachment.

(Have any Congresspeople - Dems or Reps, candidates or not - seen our videos, site, blog? Do they know about this event? Shouldn't we, CP, tell them? Shouldn't we all?)

Huq: The Congress can hold court on its own. (Holtzman: We have our own jail!) The Congress can specifically subpoena the president and hold him in contempt if he doesn't show.

Qs-Final, there's a short storm of them.

Kadidal notes that other forms of government have Justice Departments that can go after corrupt executives. We do not have this. Certainly not in Mukasey...

Holtzman: What happened not only to Congress, but to the ACLU? I still believe it can be done, has to be done. With all the defects in the impeachment process, this is what the framers had exactly in mind. They were freaked about the misuse of power. They knew there was gonna be a Richard Nixon, a George Bush. There's too much misunderstanding about it. Even Obama said it's not democratic - it's in our Constitution, it's exactly democratic. What's the shape of our country going to be? No one else can make that decision for us?

***

This has been live blogging on surveillance; I'm back for one more live-blog-impeachy event on Sunday... (And, yes, for those who have read some of my earlier posts, I still like Obama but disagree with Obama on impeachment and wish Kucinich was as popular.)

Joshua Dratel and NSA Kids

After a brief reading of interview material shedding light on the weird episode of John Ashcroft and his revelation that Bush's domestic surveillance program was and is illegal, Mr. Dratel takes the stage.

Attorney-client privilege discussed at length.

So, one big problem with intercepting everybody's conversations, is that you intercept privileged conversations between attorneys and their clients, which is super-duper wrong (that's a legal term).

Dratel says that no Bush people complained about FISA, though they don't follow it. It's very easy to get FISA warrants, it sounds like.

Dratel testifies that Bush should indeed be impeached for wiretapping. Massive applause.

***

Now, before the panel, we go back to the court to hear about whether or not the illegal warrantless Bush NSA program is effective. Bush says it's saved "thousands of lives," but agents report that the vast majority most of their illegally garnered tips led to "dead ends or innocent Americans" (which are dead ends).

The IBM guy who invented modern ultra-precise data-mining says that the processes still aren't precise enough, and they couldn't possibly predicted terrorists (who, I'm guessing, are probably smart enough not to say, over a tapped phone, "Hey, let's BLOW STUFF UP" - meaning agents have to rely on bits and pieces that, according to some, usually lead "to Pizza Hut.").

***

CHECK OUT THIS NSA "KID'S PAGE." Wow. I mean, wow. As our tech points out, it's like Joe Camel. Neo-con militarism - now in eight MAD COOL fun cartoon morphing anime animal flavorz!

Maybe Amy Goodman, Mos Def, and I can bust out the ProgressivPoppers, a team of super-heroic delicious cheese-animated jalapeno- and nacho-based foods engineered by Dutch and South Korean scientists to help teach kids around the world about humanism, respect for life, science, democracy, the value of the arts, classlessness, etc.

Maybe not...

KIDZ, here's one "kewl" NSA-Lite character from whom you can learn how to install micro-cameras in your friends' Yu-Gi-Oh! lunchboxes:

Aziz Huq

...takes the stage. Discusses FISA, the big act that Holtzman, Kadidal, and the dapper Mr. Huq are speaking again and again about. Basically, FISA lets the executive ask a judge for permission to use electronic surveillance on a foreign power. President Carter signed it into law. It for the first time required a warrant for this surveillance. Huq points out the requirements are easy to meet, to get permission under FISA to use electronic surveillance.

Huq notes that FISA is a law; not even the president can get out of it. This sounds obvious, but it's worth thinking about: Most defenses of Bush, by Bush, by those of his supporters whom I've met, revolve around his just plain being the president.

Huq notes exceptions to FISA: If Congress declares war, the president gets fifteen days free of FISA; then he has to come back and ask for judicial permission for an extension. He can also, in an emergency (a "real" emergency, not just "the War on Terror," fought ad nauseam), the president can go ahead and spy, then come back and talk to the judiciary about it.

Discussion of the NSA - the president ordered the NSA to start surveillance without warrants. Pretty clear here. That's a big no-no, laws-wise. Bien fait!, if only we could get this dude into courts... I mean, into courts he hasn't already packed with his judges... So, I guess, into courts in another country. Darn.

Huq calls Alberto Gonzales an obfuscator (we concur, insofar as our non-attorney minds can understand the former Attorney General's mis-speeches).

Gray area of data-mining: Is it legal to use phone-company data to find "suspicious patterns of activity," paths, webs of calls linking terrorists, suspects, funders, etc.? Well, the next step after identifying paths is to trace those paths to individuals and spy on them. For which you need warrants.

Also, you can be "affiliated to Al-Qaeda" even if you're a cabbie and you pick up a suspect as a fare, or if you give money to any major Muslim charity. Then Bush can spy on you - you might be a suspect.

Also, also, the Pres. went against Congress and used the NSA to spy on U.S. citizens even after having been told not to. Huq says Bush has clearly committed high crimes. Nuff said (for our purposes).

Shayana Kadidal and Elizabeth Holtzman

...introduces the evening: We'll hear a history of surveillance law. He will act as prosecutor.

The court calls E. Holtzman (served in Congress 1972 - 1981) to the stand. She helped git Nixon ("git" in the "git-R-dun" sense as well as the typical one). She is now a private lawyer and writer. She also wrote The Impeachment of George W. Bush. (All of our friendly impeachment books have "impeachment" in their titles, no?)

The court (the performers) read the First and Fourth Amendments.

Kadidal and Holtzman discuss the legalities between wiretapping; the short version is, a court must, must approve wiretapping - all wiretapping. Not only the D.A.'s office, but an independent arbiter must approve wiretapping. "The mere fact of having a judicial review of wiretapping applications, is a restraint on wiretapping."

Kadidal asks why our Constitution's framers made a point to have the executive ask the judiciary for permission to search the citizens; Holtzman answers that the framers had experienced first-hand how illegal searches by the British had plagued the American people. Holtzman notes that no D.A. has complained about the theory behind the process by which wiretapping applications are approved (though they may gripe, one supposes, about individual processes).

The court quotes from the impeachment articles against Nixon, about wiretapping. You might mistake the words for ones about Bush, except that so far only a tiny minority of Democrats and we at Culture Project have taken the steps to try to impeach Bush.

The court notes that the government is now really good at "collecting information," meaning Google-good (in part, thanks to Google). What do "they" (who are they?) know about "us" (which grouping probably includes some of "they"/them)? They can know practically whatever they want. Doesn't mean the CIA will share the info with the FBI, or that the information will lead to any useful military info about, say, one homeless Arab guy on dialysis. But "they" can know a ton.

(Is/are Google/the government's linked servers artificially intelligent? That's my question. I mean, are we being used not only by a self-serving neo-con leadership, but also by an omni-computer addicted to knowin' stuff? It sounds silly to ask, I realize, but given the amount of sheer data in the world today, we're not necessarily far off from an era of a data-organism...)

We hear about the FBI taking on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., via surveillance. Holtzman points out that the FBI and the government in general worked very hard to collect info on, blackmail, discredit, and track the movements of various anti-Vietnam leaders.

what to do about katrina?

Thanks to all of you who have been checking out our new series A Question of Impeachment, either in the theater or online.

On Monday we had a powerful evening focused on the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast. Many folks had questions about where to find more information and what to do, so here -- courtesy of panelist Tiffany Gardner of NESRI -- is some further information:

With respect to current organizing efforts, two websites are really useful:

www.peopleshurricane.org and www.justiceforneworleans.org

There are protests planned in New Orleans on December 10th (International Human Rights Day) and December 15th (the date of the first demolitions). Specifics of the protests will be provided on the websites above.

BRIEF EXPLANATION:
In a November 16, 2007 letter to Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, HUD provided its timeline for the demolition of over 4,000 units of public housing in New Orleans. Demolitions are scheduled as follows:

St. Bernard - December 15, 2007
BW Cooper I - December 15, 2007
Lafitte - December 17, 2007
CJ Peete III - December 15, 2007
Fisher - December 15, 2007

Just before the Christmas holiday ....

These demolitions are set to occur despite the fact that the Gulf Coast Recovery Act (S. 1668), which guarantees survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Rita the right to return, is still working its way through the Senate. Additionally, Senator Landrieu, as well as members of New Orleans City Council has expressed grave concern over the pending demolitions.

The demolition plans do not provide for replacement housing for former residents of the units. Prior to the storms there were approximately 5,200 families living in public housing. Now, there are just over 1,000 families. HUD has stated that the units to be demolished are inhabitable as the result of the storm. Yet, independent experts attest that the units were minimally damaged. Should these demolitions take place, thousands of New Orleans
families will be permanently displaced.

Republican Senator David Vitter has been a staunch opponent of S. 1668, although he won't publicly articulate his reasons for opposition. Join us in 1. putting pressure of HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson by attending the December 15th day of presence in New Orleans and by 2. pressuring Senator Vitter and the senators on the Senate Banking Committee to respect the human rights of hurricane survivors and bring S. 1668 to a full Senate vote.

Please visit the websites above and let the people of New Orleans, and the governments at the federal, state, and local levels, know that you stand with the people of New Orleans.

Well, this says quite a lot

From today's White House press briefing (with Scott Stanzel in for a vacationing Tony Snow):

Question: Scott, is Scooter Libby getting more than equal justice under the law? Is he getting special treatment?

Scott Stanzel: Well, I guess I don't know what you mean by equal justice under the law.

Catch A Liar; Let Him Go?

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Boo! Hiss! to the stinky Supreme Court

I know I'm always permalinking articles from the New York Times, and I'm not even a huge Times fan, compared to The Nation or blogs, but the Times has the advantage of a huge staff and a fuckton of money. For coverage of something as depressing as the Supreme Court's actions yesterday, one can't beat their slew of journalistic attempts to put the SC's back-assward-ness in context.

Here's what I want you to read (or at least skim for juicy/juicily depressing nuggets):

The hard news - the Supreme Court in no uncertain terms gives America five pasty-white middle fingers.

The related study - where are we, decades after Brown? (The answer: not anywhere we'd wanted to be.)

The other side speaks out - what the Brown lawyers think about this mess.

The Times editorial.

The Dark Side speaks out - because, you know, Brown was so long ago, and so much has changed, it's really not fair to say that it has any relevance to today's America.

Juan Williams makes a good point that desegregating kids doesn't help much if their parents are still holed up in class- and race-centric enclaves. If there are white neighborhoods, black neighborhoods, good neighborhoods, bad neighborhoods, won't the kids grow up racist or classist anyway? I for one believe that desegregating kids is a great and necessary first step towards reaching parents. Of course desegregation isn't the only answer, but it is such an obvious attempt at being one answer.

Until we understand each other, we will not respect each other. At least let us help our kids understand one another... Or come up with better legislation, better programs, some positive idea or attempted answer; don't tear down the icon of progress, inter-racial love and understanding, and hope that has propelled us from the pre-Civil Rights movement Dark Ages into at least a partially enlightened future.

In less bad news (actually, in good news, couched in badness by the news surrounding it), the SC did rule that people with severe mental problems who commit crimes should probably not be executed. Seems like common sense, but it took until 2007 to make it the law.

As I have said before, anyone interested in mental health and the vast, bizarre system of vocations, rules, and prisons surrounding it should read R. D. Laing's brilliant The Politics of Experience.

A sad day in America

Today the Supreme Court, in a 5 - 4 vote (of course) voted to end desegration in our schools. Justice Breyer, exasperated and emotional, made an historic appearance on CNN after the vote (and his anguished dissent) to claim (about Roberts and Alito), "never before have so few undone so much in so little time". And a couple of hours later, the House passed heinous anti-gay legislation as part of a DC appropriations bill. You may ask yourself, how could a discriminatory law be passed in our Democratic House? Because 40 Democrats voted for it. 40. Democrats. Excuse me while I go throw up.

Shame On Colonel Morris Davis

The New York Times today published a rebuttal not only of justice but of moral practice in its most forgiving sense.

The article, an op-ed piece by Morris Davis, an Air Force lawyer, generously and insipidly defends the existence of and practices within America's Guantánamo Bay detention facility.

Culture Project does not stand for everyone. But many, many people stand with us in our fight to close Guantánamo, now, and to end the Bush regime's suspension of habeas corpus ("Latin: [We command that] you have the body") that has kept hundreds of men locked in cages in Cuba, wondering why they are there and when they are going to go home, go to jail, or even die.

The questions we continue to have with regard to Guantánamo and all attendant persons and practices are not, are emphatically not: "Are the prisoners kept there particularly comfortable; do they have the Qur'an [not 'Koran,' Mr. Davis]; are their meals hot enough, fibrous enough, etc.?"

The lingering question that we have is this: Is it right to keep men detained for indefinite periods of time without charging them, in a foreign country, on the pretext that they are or may be "terrorists" or "enemy foreign combatants" or some other jargon, as opposed to ordinary, respectable criminals? If a man commits a crime - if the government thinks a man commits a crime - that man should be jailed, according to the rule of law, and given a swift and fair trial. He should not be detained forever in another country, no matter how hot his meals are (now, after our play and others like it and a general shitstorm of media attention).

Mr. Davis seems uninterested in justice in the grand, ideal, popular sense - the sense of "justice" that we think many of you out there are most interested in. Not the justice of which Geneva Conventions article specifies what number of hot meals must be provided for which class of "enemy combatant," but the kind of justice that would never hold so many men without trial for so long.

It is right that the United States should respect international law regarding the detention of prisoners. It is more right that we should not detain them indefinitely, caged like dogs, and call ourselves heroes for closing Camp X-Ray five years ago, or for admitting that not every inmate is guilty, or for handing out Qur'ans.

From wikipedia and MSNBC.com:

Most of the detainees still at Guantánamo are not scheduled for trial. As of November 2006, according to MSNBC.com, out of 775 detainees who have been brought to Guantánamo, approximately 340 have been released, leaving 435 detainees. Of those 435, 110 have been labeled as ready for release. Of the other 325, only "more than 70" will face trial, the Pentagon says. That leaves about 250 who may be held indefinitely.

let's all stop throwing rocks! (literally and figuratively)

Joss Whedon is a feminist man, writing about the "honor killing" of seventeen year old Dua Khalil in Kurdistan and the deeply disturbing resemblance it bears to the trailer for a new film in the US, “Captivity” (or vice versa).

Last month seventeen year old Dua Khalil was pulled into a crowd of young men, some of them (the instigators) family, who then kicked and stoned her to death. This is an example of the breath-taking oxymoron “honor killing”, in which a family member (almost always female) is murdered for some religious or ethical transgression. Dua Khalil, who was of the Yazidi faith, had been seen in the company of a Sunni Muslim, and possibly suspected of having married him or converted. That she was torturously murdered for this is not, in fact, a particularly uncommon story. But now you can watch the action up close on CNN. Because as the girl was on the ground trying to get up, her face nothing but red, the few in the group of more than twenty men who were not busy kicking her and hurling stones at her were filming the event with their camera-phones.

There were security officers standing outside the area doing nothing, but the footage of the murder was taken – by more than one phone – from the front row. Which means whoever shot it did so not to record the horror of the event, but to commemorate it. To share it. Because it was cool.

I could start a rant about the level to which we have become desensitized to violence, about the evils of the voyeuristic digital world in which everything is shown and everything is game, but honestly, it’s been said. And I certainly have no jingoistic cultural agenda. I like to think that in America this would be considered unbearably appalling, that Kitty Genovese is still remembered, that we are more evolved. But coincidentally, right before I stumbled on this vid I watched the trailer for “Captivity”.

A few of you may know that I took public exception to the billboard campaign for this film, which showed a concise narrative of the kidnapping, torture and murder of a sexy young woman. I wanted to see if the film was perhaps more substantial (especially given the fact that it was directed by “The Killing Fields” Roland Joffe) than the exploitive ad campaign had painted it. The trailer resembles nothing so much as the CNN story on Dua Khalil. Pretty much all you learn is that Elisha Cuthbert is beautiful, then kidnapped, inventively, repeatedly and horrifically tortured, and that the first thing she screams is “I’m sorry”.

“I’m sorry.”

What is wrong with women?

I mean wrong. Physically. Spiritually. Something unnatural, something destructive, something that needs to be corrected.

How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence -- is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.

I try to think how we got here. The theory I developed in college (shared by many I’m sure) is one I have yet to beat: Womb Envy. Biology: women are generally smaller and weaker than men. But they’re also much tougher. Put simply, men are strong enough to overpower a woman and propagate. Women are tough enough to have and nurture children, with or without the aid of a man. Oh, and they’ve also got the equipment to do that, to be part of the life cycle, to create and bond in a way no man ever really will. Somewhere a long time ago a bunch of men got together and said, “If all we do is hunt and gather, let’s make hunting and gathering the awesomest achievement, and let’s make childbirth kinda weak and shameful.” It’s a rather silly simplification, but I believe on a mass, unconscious level, it’s entirely true. How else to explain the fact that cultures who would die to eradicate each other have always agreed on one issue? That every popular religion puts restrictions on women’s behavior that are practically untenable? That the act of being a free, attractive, self-assertive woman is punishable by torture and death? In the case of this upcoming torture-porn, fictional. In the case of Dua Khalil, mundanely, unthinkably real. And both available for your viewing pleasure.

It’s safe to say that I’ve snapped. That something broke, like one of those robots you can conquer with a logical conundrum. All my life I’ve looked at this faulty equation, trying to understand, and I’ve shorted out. I don’t pretend to be a great guy; I know really really well about objectification, trust me. And I’m not for a second going down the “women are saints” route – that just leads to more stone-throwing (and occasional Joan-burning). I just think there is the staggering imbalance in the world that we all just take for granted. If we were all told the sky was evil, or at best a little embarrassing, and we ought not look at it, wouldn’t that tradition eventually fall apart? (I was going to use ‘trees’ as my example, but at the rate we’re getting rid of them I’m pretty sure we really do think they’re evil. See how all rants become one?)

Now those of you who frequent this site are, in my wildly biased opinion, fairly evolved. You may hear nothing new here. You may be way ahead of me. But I can’t contain my despair, for Dua Khalil, for humanity, for the world we’re shaping. Those of you who have followed the link I set up know that it doesn’t bring you to a video of a murder. It brings you to a place of sanity, of people who have never stopped asking the question of what is wrong with this world and have set about trying to change the answer. Because it’s no longer enough to be a decent person. It’s no longer enough to shake our heads and make concerned grimaces at the news. True enlightened activism is the only thing that can save humanity from itself. I’ve always had a bent towards apocalyptic fiction, and I’m beginning to understand why. I look and I see the earth in flames. Her face was nothing but red.

All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause – there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once. If you can’t think of what to do, there is this handy link. Even just learning enough about a subject so you can speak against an opponent eloquently makes you an unusual personage. Start with that. Any one of you would have cried out, would have intervened, had you been in that crowd in Bashiqa. Well thanks to digital technology, you’re all in it now.

I have never had any faith in humanity. But I will give us props on this: if we can evolve, invent and theorize our way into the technologically magical, culturally diverse and artistically magnificent race we are and still get people to buy the idiotic idea that half of us are inferior, we’re pretty amazing. Let our next sleight of hand be to make that myth disappear.

The sky isn’t evil. Try looking up.

a clarification...

In the post below, I noted that the 9 attorneys who replaced the 'purged' US Attorneys all had histories of voter suppression. I got ahead of myself - only 3 have been proven to excel in that particular line of work. I'm sure the other 6 have other distinctions we'll soon come to know....

The Tide is Turning!!

2 incredible things happened today:

1. The Senate voted 94 - 2 to revoke Bush's ability to fire US Attorneys without going through the Senate.

AND THEN.....

2. Elias Zerhouni, Bush-appointed Director of the NIH and a religious FREAK conservative, testified before Tom Harkin's HHS Committee and here was the exchange:

HARKIN: Would scientists have a better chance of finding these new cures, new interventions for diseases if the current restrictions on embryonic stem cell research were lifted?

ZERHOUNI: I think the answer is yes. My experience has been this. In 2001, I think the policy that was put in place was the first one to fund embryonic stem cell research. I think NIH has done a great job in the first three years of that, in establishing infrastructure, funding new scientists which weren’t fundable before. Since 2004, I think it’s very clear, from the point of view of science, and what I have overseen, that these cell lines won’t be sufficient to do all the research we need to do. For the reasons that you mentioned, but the most important one is that these cell lines have exhibited instability from the genetic standpoint, and it’s not possible for me to see how we can continue the momentum of science in stem cell research with the cell lines that we have currently at NIH that can be funded.

So from my standpoint, it is clear today, that American science will be better served — and the nation will be better served — if we let our scientists have access to more cell lines that they can study with the different methods that have emerged since 2001, the different strategies that we now understand, which underlie the fundamental issue, which is nuclear programming, or DNA programming, or reprogramming. So the answer is yes.

This is unbelievable - just simply unbelievable. I don't know what's in the water in DC these days, but Republicans are growing some serious balls. Amazing.

Buh-Bye

So, it's the end of the week and another amazing week it was in the world of White House madness. I thought last week was full of news and newsworthy-ness (kind of like truthiness, if you're a Colbert fan) - but this week just took the cake!

Today brought us the Congressional testimony of the former covert CIA op Valerie Plame Wilson. She was brilliant. She made mincemeat of the handful of Republicans with the balls to show up, and represented herself and her colleagues admirably and with great conviction. If you didn't get a chance to see it, go to www.cspan.org and check out the highlights.

Speaking of conviction, if you thought Karl Rove might make it through the next year and a half free and clear, think again. "Turdblossom" as his boss so lovingly refers to him, is getting close to the edge. If you haven't heard about the US Attorney purge, check out Josh Marshall's excellent reporting to fully understand the depth and scope of the bamboozlement. You can learn everything you need to know right here. The bottom line is that Karl and Alberto Gonzalez fired US Attorneys that were delving too deeply into Republican corruption (like Carol Lam in San Diego who was in charge of investigating Randy "Duke" Cunningham).

Speaking of Duke - MAN! Those Blue Devils went down to crushing defeat last night - lost to Virginia Commonwealth - first time they lost in the first round since 1997! I have to say that was mighty sweet! But I'm a UCONN fan, and they shit the bed all season and didn't even make it in to the NCAA, so..... you understand my animosity. I have to live with the nightmare of Christian Laettner, March 1990, with 3 seconds left as he hits a shot from half court at the buzzer to send my Huskies home.... oh God, it still hurts.

So buh bye Duke. Buh bye Karl. Buy Bye Alberto.

Life is getting sweeter by the day.....

Happy weekend!