Happy birthday to grand-nephew Alex on his
7th birthday earlier in September, with his sister,
Olivia, who will be 1 in November.

remembering my grandparents, Ignazio and Gioconda Severini,
both born at the end of September.

It Gets Worse

The Sunday Washington Post reports that Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert "was notified early this year of inappropriate e-mails from former representative Mark Foley(R-Fla.) to a 16-year-old page, a top GOP House member said yesterday -- contradicting the speaker's assertions that he learned of concerns about Foley only last week."

The admission resulted from some infighting and bad blood within the Republican leadership, leading the Post to conclude that : "Yesterday's developments revealed a rift at the highest echelons of House Republican ranks a month before the Nov. 7 elections, and they threatened to expand the scandal to a full-blown party dilemma."

In an even more directly damaging revelation the New York Times asserts that: "Top House Republicans knew for months about e-mail traffic between Representative Mark Foley and a former teenage page, but kept the matter secret and allowed Mr. Foley to remain head of a Congressional caucus on children’s issues, Republican lawmakers said Saturday."

Even after admitting hearing about Foley's emails, Hastert claimed neither he nor others in the leadership had ever actually read any. But that was soon contradicted by another House Republican in an interview in the St. Louis Dispatch (as discussed by Josh Marshall.) In the Times story, House leaders are still claiming that they did not know about the more sexually explicit email messages obtained by ABC News which seem to have led directly to Foley's resignation. We'll see if that claim stands, and for how long.

The Palm Beach Post writes that ABC News may have emails and instant messages from Foley to five boys.

So here's what we've got so far: The Republican chair of the Congressional caucus on children's issues, a champion of the fundamentalist Christian right, which demonizes homosexuality and considers itself the defender of innocent children, is caught for engaging in sexually explicit emailing with male minors. Foley at first denied the charge, then resigned. The Republican leadership of the House knew about at least some of this behavior for a year but kept it secret, and supported Foley in his continuing activities on childrens' issues as well as his re-election campaign. This includes the Speaker of the House, who denied he knew of the emails but had to admit he did know. The boys were congressional pages, and therefore protecting them was the specific responsibility of the Congress and its leadership.

Hastert has been credibly accused of other kinds of corruption in office, as have other Republican leaders and members of Congress. This may cast new doubt on their fitness for office.

Sunday Update: Democratic congressional leaders have called for the Attorney General to investigate not only whether Foley's behavior constitutes crimes (under legislation he wrote), but whether the House Republcan leadership coverup of his behavior was criminal. The Bush House defended the House leadership on Sunday talk shows, and said there was no need for an investigation.

Think Progress has developed a time line which shows that immediately after a member of the House leadership, Rep Tom Reynolds, learned of Foley's transgressions, Foley made an unusually large $100,000 donation to the National Republican congressional campaign committee, which Reynolds runs. So now the possibility of bribery or blackmail enters the sequence of sordid events and potential crimes.

ABC News moves the timeline's beginning back to at least 2001: it is reporting that five years ago, a GOP congressional staff person warned congressional pages to "watch out" for Foley.

2nd Update: The FBI has begun a preliminary investigation of Foley's emails. This same New York Times story reports that House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi's call for an Ethics Committee investigation of the conduct of the House Republican leadership has been joined by Republican Senator Richard Lugar who "agreed that the personal safety of the pages who work in the Capitol needs to be assured. “I would join Congresswoman Pelosi in saying an investigation ought to occur,” he said on CNN.

A Democratic lawmaker who sits on the page oversight board said she was not told about Mr. Foley’s e-mails. “This should be investigated objectively,” said Representative Jane Harman, Democrat of California, during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.” “I think the Democratic leadership should have been told 10 months ago. This was a very serious charge.”

Baghdad Lockdown

The entire city of Baghdad has been ordered locked down until Sunday by the Iraq government. It imposed a "curfew" that does not permit Iraqis to leave their homes all day Saturday.

As of late Friday, the reason for this action remains unclear. The government cited "intelligence information" on the "security situation." One US TV report suggested the government discovered plans for a military coup. Sectarian violence has increased recently, reports of the curfew noted, but that's been happening for some time.

It's Hitting the Fan

Update: A brief portrait of Mark Foley at Faithful Democrats, a site by people who are Democrats and Christians : "Foley made get-tough laws on sexually exploited children -- particularly exploitation over the Internet -- one of his primary crusades in Congress." He also was outspoken about his Christian (specifically Catholic) faith. The combination got his an 84% positive rating from the Christian coalition in 2004.

The site then says: Foley rails against the depraved; he is the depraved. Foley attacks the predators; he is a predator. Our question: where are the denunciations from the religious right? Where is Focus on the Family? Where is the Family Research Council? Do they only care about sexual misconduct when it's committed by a Democrat? The hypocrisy doesn't belong to Foley alone. The hypocrisy belongs to everyone who rails against sexual sin for political purposes then delivers a sermon of silence when the sinner happens to advance a right-wing, Republican agenda.


When a story this big (the sudden resignation of a Republican Member of Congress over sexually suggestive emails) grows by the minute, a lot of people get caught saying things they wish they hadn't, about five minutes after they've said it. This can vary from just getting beat on the story (like CNN did Chris Matthews: while Matthews guests were trying to figure out why Congressman Foley resigned over the relatively tame emails first released, CNN had the new and more explicit ones, and suddenly there was no mystery) to charges you're likely to regret real soon.

Like these from Republican loyalists in Florida: Ganter said she questions the timing of the reports, given the election is 39 days away. Ganter said it's suspicious that the e-mails have popped up shortly after Republican Virginia Sen. George Allen was painted as a racist."It's a big coincidence that all these things are happening to our fine conservative party," Ganter said. "It does make one wonder."

By Friday night it was becoming clear that the timing was months and perhaps a year late--that at least some of the Republican leadership knew about Foley's sexually explicit emails to under-age pages (or former pages), and Speaker of the House Dennis Hassert may have known for at least six weeks.

Or at least according to one high ranking Republican, who had second thoughts of a different kind about what he said. The Washington Post reported: " House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of inappropriate "contact" between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he then told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). Boehner later contacted The Post and said he could not remember whether he talked to Hastert." Apparently their fine conservative party was going to help re-elect Foley anyway.

sunset from space shuttle Discovery.

Bad Days in the Bush House

Apart from his inspiring successes with his rubber stamp Republican Congress in getting his way on bills to expand detainee and rendition policy, give him absolute power to torture, and provide him with dubious legal cover for warrantless wiretapping, this is not a great week for Bush and the folks in the Bush House, and next week doesn't look it will be any better.

The good news for them statistically is that Bush's job approval has inched up in several polls. But it's not all good news. The Fox News poll does show him moving up 2 points to an otherwise dismal 42%; however, in congressional races this November, the voter preference for Democrats over Republicans has also risen, by 3 points. Nearly half (49%) favor Dems, while 38% favor GOPers.

Meanwhile, scandal has reappeared in the Bush House when a congressional committee report revealed that lobbyist Jack Abramoff, convicted of corruption, had logged in some 485 visits to the Bush House (and not the one or two the Bushites previously recalled), including 82 meetings with Karl Rove.

Reporting on the contents of revealed emails and other information has just begun, but already there are allegations implicating GOP campaign chair Ken Mehlman in getting a nomination killed at Abramoff's request, and Karl Rove in a scheme to deny a government job to the wife of a John McCain aide. A series of emails between Abramoff and ultraconservative Ralph Reed was called, "have you whacked mccain's wife yet?" These revelations are bound to be followed by others.

And there's another story that's just beginning, as the first dribbles of what may well become a flood of revelations from Bob Woodward's new book, State of Denial. First came the report that Woodward told 60 Minutes "that the Bush administration has not told the truth regarding the level of violence, especially against U.S. troops, in Iraq. He also reveals key intelligence that predicts the insurgency will grow worse next year."Said Woodward: "It’s getting to the point now where there are eight-, nine-hundred attacks a week. That's more than 100 a day. That is four an hour attacking our forces."

Then the New York Times reported that the book shows "dysfunction and division" in the Bush House over Irag, and specifically that Bush ignored an urgent request for more troops to combat a dangerously rising insurgency. And Think Progress quotes more of Woodward's 60 Minutes interview to air Sunday: The situation is getting much worse, says Woodward, despite what the White House and the Pentagon are saying in public. “The truth is that the assessment by intelligence experts is that next year, 2007, is going to get worse and, in public, you have the president and you have the Pentagon [saying], ‘Oh, no, things are going to get better,‘” he tells Wallace. “Now there’s public, and then there’s private. But what did they do with the private? They stamp it secret. No one is supposed to know,” says Woodward.

But at least for the weekend, the Bush House may have lucked out a little--a breaking story has Republican Rep Mark Foley, chair of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, resigning over the revelation of sexually explicit emails he wrote to several male congressional pages under the age of 18. When a scandal like that in your own party rescues you from too much attention, you know the Bush House is having a bad week.

The Day After...The Day of Shame

The most important and proximate dangers of the Bush indefinite detention and torture law will be to those who are swept up in current geopolitical terrorism, which mostly (but not exclusively) affects people from the Middle East or of Middle Eastern extraction, or who look like they might come from Pakistan, India--any place where people have vaguely nonwhite skin and dark hair, including Italy (and I say that with no irony at all, because I know of at least one such person pulled out of an airport line.)

But the future of the Bush indefinite detention and torture law can go well beyond that. And it takes little imagination, let alone paranoia, to see where it might go.

Glenn Greenwald in salon describes the general meaning of the law--and I do mean general, because it applies essentially to everyone in the world. He contends that it "would give the Bush administration the power to imprison people for their entire lives, literally, without so much as charging them with any wrongdoing or giving them any forum in which to contest the accusations against them. It thus vests in the administration the singularly most tyrannical power that exists -- namely, the power unilaterally to decree someone guilty of a crime and to condemn the accused to eternal imprisonment without having even to charge him with a crime, let alone defend the validity of those accusations.

The changes that the administration reportedly secured over the weekend for this "compromise" legislation make an already dangerous bill much worse. Specifically, the changes expand the definition of who can be declared an "enemy combatant" (and therefore permanently detained and tortured) from someone who has "engaged in hostilities against the United States" (meaning actually participated in war on a battlefield) to someone who has merely "purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.'

Expanding the definition in that way would authorize, as Kate Martin of the Center for National Security Studies points out, the administration's "seizure and indefinite detention of people far from the battlefield." The administration would be able to abduct anyone, anywhere in the world, whom George W. Bush secretly decrees has "supported" hostilities against the United States. And then they could imprison any such persons at Guantánamo -- even torture them -- forever, without ever having to prove anything to any tribunal or commission. (The Post story also asserts that the newly worded legislation "does not rule out the possibility of designating a U.S. citizen as an unlawful combatant," although the Supreme Court ruled [in the 2004 case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld] that there are constitutional limits on the government's ability to detain U.S. citizens without due process.)

Greenwald points out that despite what the Court says, there are American citizens already so detained, and he contends that this law will subject all American citizens to the risk of this treatment. And there is nothing in the law that says it applies only to those suspected of connections with Middle Eastern terrorists. Who else could it be used against?

Recall all those reports about Bush or Bush inspired survelliance of domestic peace groups, including Quakers. Even on the day this bill was passed by the Senate, George Bush himself as well as other Republicans were accusing their political opponents of harming America, of being disloyal and making America unsafe by opposing Bush policies. Recall as well the hatefilled anti-gay rhetoric coming from Bush-supporting fundamentalist Christian zealots, the veiled (and unveiled) racism, the intolerance for other points of view, the disregard for facts and reason, and the conscienceless attacks and violent threats made against opponents of reactionary right wing ideologies. These are the people in control of this government.

As for the future, David Roberts reminds us that until Middle Eastern terrorism became the Bushite rhetorical focus, the Bush partisans were redefining at least some aspects of protest and opposition to the environmental policies of Bush and his corporate sponsors as eco-terrorism. That's potentially the first step to a wider application of the term.

Sent to Gitmo for protesting greenhouse gas pollution? Seems incredible. But ask many of the people who supported the Patriot Act in 2001 whether they believed America would be the world's champion of torture a few years later, and hear what they say.

Day of Shame

It will be hard for future generations to pick a single Day of Shame, on which to mourn this shameful period in American politics and history, to review its hard lessons and to renew their commitment to ensuring that never again will America do these things: brandish cowardice as righteousness, use fear for political gain, make unnecessary war and continue it for bloody year after bloody year, and especially turn the clock back on civilization to conduct, justify and insist on brutality and torture that in the end yields nothing but emnity and shame.

Maybe they will choose the day the US invaded Iraq, or the day the first torture photos were revealed. But they might choose today as well, when the President of the United States made his second trip to Capitol Hill to lobby for a law allowing him to define what torture is, and when the US Senate voted to give him that power.

At least at this moment, that's the assumption, because a key vote on an amendment with the best chance of passing, and of denying Bush his power over international law and the US court system, failed in a close vote of the full Senate. Every Democrat but one voted against it, and five Republicans joined them. But it was not enough. And though some Democratic Senators--Kerry, Feingold, Leahy among the leaders--were aggressive and steadfast, in the end not even the Democrats could muster the courage to fillibuster the bill, purportedly for fear of being attacked by Republicans and their massive moneybags for being weak on terrorism.

Update: Senate Dem Leader Harry Reid issued this statement at the end of the Senate's day, stating that many of the worst provisions of the bill were put back into it after a so-called compromise was reached, and his belief that the resulting bill will be eventually found unconstitutional. Of course that will be many torture victims from now.

As Christy Hardy Smith writes at firedoglake, there are multiple reasons for the Bush push, all of them cowardly. Apart from whatever sad security the Bush cowards feel from torturing helpless people, there is the politics of election year--of appearing tough and castigating opponents of international outrages for being weak-willed, as if torturing someone you have imprisoned is brave, instead of as cowardly as it is useless in obtaining reliable information.

But I believe the third reason is really the strongest--Bush needs this law to keep himself and his buddies out of court, out of jail and maybe even out of this same Senate for an impeachment trial.

Smith quotes Jack Cafferty from CNN, and so will I, because this is a succinct summary of this ploy and its effects:


Cafferty: "President Bush is trying to pardon himself. Here’s the deal: Under the War Crimes Act, violations of the Geneva Conventions are felonies, in some cases punishable by death. When the Supreme Court ruled that the Geneva Convention applied to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, President Bush and his boys were suddenly in big trouble. They’ve been working these prisoners over pretty good. In an effort to avoid possible prosecution they’re trying to cram this bill through Congress before the end of the week before Congress adjourns. The reason there’s such a rush to do this? If the Democrats get control of the House in November this kind of legislation probably wouldn’t pass.

You wanna know the real disgrace about what these people are about to do or are in the process of doing? Senator Bill Frist and Congressman Dennis Hastert and their Republican stooges apparently don’t see anything wrong with this. I really do wonder sometimes what we’re becoming in this country. "

There is really nothing more that needs to be said about how future generations will view this day. This is a day of Shame for the country and for everyone in it.

I've begun collecting old comic book and sc-fi pulp magazine covers from the Internet. The appeal of all of them to boys is partly summarized in this very old one.

Failing Feel-Safe

Do Americans feel safe, or safer? Are they safer, or as the devastating National Intelligence Assessment reportedly says, have they been made less safe from terrorism by Iraq? Now that you mention it, how about those people who live in Iraq--the ones who were there before the U.S. brought its occupation force, its monumental bases and Burger Kings? How safe do they feel?

Well, obviously they don't feel safe and they aren't safe, and they have strong opinions on why, and what will make them feel safer. According to the Washington Post, a poll by the U.S. State Department shows that over 75% of Baghdad's people believe an immediate American withdrawl will make them safer. Overall, the Post reports, "A strong majority of Iraqis want U.S.-led military forces to immediately withdraw from the country, saying their swift departure would make Iraq more secure and decrease sectarian violence..."

A separate poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland shows that 71% of Iraqis want Americans to cut and run within the year. But nearly 80% believe that the U.S. plans to permanently occupy the country.

Forget religion, forget ideology, forget cultural differences---that alone tells you why there is a growing insurgency in Iraq and in the Middle East. And why the National Intelligence Assessment concluded that Iraq is BushAmerica's gift to terrorism recruitment.

The Climate Crisis

Who's Paying? Who Will Pay?

Another week, another scientific study (this time by the National Academy of Science)showing the planetary temperature trending higher than in thousands of years. And another revelation (this time in the journal Nature) that the Bush adminstration suppressed science that doesn't jibe with its big money authoritarian agenda--this time by deep-sixing a study within the federal government linking more and fiercer hurricanes to global heating.

You can imagine how the Climate Crisis Deniers and other neocons are reacting to this. Actually you don't have to--Steven D at Bootrib tells you. Same old story.

So what's new? Maybe this trend: trying to hold the Climate Crisis Deniers accountable, first of all by identifying them and who is paying for it. Here's an article about Exxon-Mobil's efforts in the UK, and the implication of our old friend of Truth, the Philip Morris tobacco company.

It's clear to this little blog that some big money is being poured into Climate Crisis denying in the U.S. I'm getting regular emails from one of the bigger DC operations, out of the office of the Senate's Denier in Chief, James Inhofe, the chairman of the Senate Environment and Fossil Fuel Corporation Advancement committee. For them to find my email address and clutter my inbox tells me they've really got money to burn.

I've begun to suspect that some if not most if not all of the Deniers who show up here in the comments are paid to do so. Well, I have yet to make a nickel on this blog but I'm not going to stop advocating for the future. I'd like to see Climate Crisis Deniers identify who is paying for them. But I know who is going to pay for what they are doing: everyone in the future.

Pacific Spirit by Susan Point at spiritwrestler.com.

Q and N

It's the nail in the coffin of the Bush administration's war in Iraqnam, and its conduct of the war on terror simultaneously: a consensus report of 16 U.S. national security agencies that the warfare in Iraq has increased terrorism and made the world, and specifically the people of the United States, less safe than on 9/11/2001.

This conclusion of a classified report was published by the New York Times and the Washington Post, and confirmed in an Associated Press report carried in the Washington Post on Sunday.

The report concludes that the occupation of Iraq has helped create a new generation of radical Islamicist terrorists. Combined with the falsities that evidence shows were deliberate lies leading to the invasion of Iraq; with the evident misconduct of the aftermath of the invasion, the occupation and the warfare resulting in continung needless loss of life, and the relentless and accelerating drain on our military, our youth and our resources to the tune of a more than a billion dollars every week ; the official defense of a policy of torture that has inflamed the world and brought shame to America with no intelligence or security benefits, and the failures of Homeland Security and FEMA along with the billions lost in corporate corruption in Iraq, Homeland Security, FEMA and in Republican- run Washington in general; the Bush government is a tragic and continuing failure on a scale unknown in anyone's memory.

Yet reports persist that the Bush administration is deep into planning a repeat performance, this time exchanging the Q for an N by making war on Iran. Recent military movements as well as political whispers prompt some, including former Senator Gary Hart, to predict a Rovian October surprise, featuring the US bombing of Iran shortly before the November elections.

The stakes of such a reckless action should be self-evident, but how far they could go is outlined in a series of essays by Jeff Huber at E Pluribus Media. Others (including former CIA Larry Johnson) contend that the US started a shift of power in Iraq that moves it towards alliance with Iran. A U.S. war on Iran would simply accelerate the process. The Bush administration's policies and mistakes would be an even greater contributor to the causes of terrorism as well as to terrorist recruitment.

And while we wait for the other shoe to drop on torture, we are already seeing the strange fruits of Bush's dark and erratic policies on nuclear weapons: planning new ones for the U.S., helping India acquire more, while threatening to bomb Iran for nuclear weapons it doesn't have and can't develop for years. One result is this significant but under-reported event (covered by Think Progress ): the possibility that Egypt will embark on a nuclear weapons program.

For the Bushites, exchanging an N for a Q in their patriotism sandbag of voters along with the biennual fearmongering and tough talk on terrorism (we'll torture the world into a safer place for Americans) is part of the political calculation that is supposed to equal electoral victory in November. The ultimate price to the world and to every non-superwealthy American doesn't count.

Only when Americans stop falling for this cynical button-pushing--only when voters stop being played for saps--will it ever stop. It's got to stop now.

Flower stalls at Pike's Market, Seattle
photo: BK

Happy Birthday

And lots of flowers, to Margaret, and my sister Debbie (tomorrow)

View from West Seattle, 9/2006. Kowinski photo.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"80% of Republicans are just Democrats who don't know what's going on."

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Seems Like Old Times

Lately I've been catching myself making references that a dwindling number of people get. Like "Mr. Tooth Decay." I gather that Mr. Tooth Decay makes something of a comeback in kid circles from time to time, but the basic reference is to beloved old Colgate toothpaste commercials that ran on Howdy Doody, and you have to be way way old to remember those.

In a recent theatre review I mentioned that the only Latin phrase I remembered from my Catholic schooling was from a cartoon in my high school Latin book, in which a police officer has pulled over a driver and asks him "Ubi ignus est?" That people wouldn't understand the Latin was part of the joke, because I thought (as the creator of the cartoon did) that the context would suggest it. However, I hadn't realized that cops pulling over speeders and asking them, "Where's the fire?" is no longer a well-known cliche. (Nothing as pathetic as an unknown cliche, is there?) The editor actually looked up the Latin, got the phrase, then asked me what it all meant--could the cop have pulled over a firetruck? I cut the joke, pronto. (That means," right away." Cowboys used to say it in...well, never mind.)

But just when I was ready to put all that ancient history behind me, I read something like this in Dan Froomkin's Washington Post blog, and damn if 1968 doesn't come back as big as life:

On the dominant issue of our time, the president is in denial. By most reliable accounts, three and a half years into the U.S. occupation, Iraq is in chaos -- if not in a state of civil war, then awfully close. But President Bush insists it's not so. He says the people he talks to assure him that the press coverage about how bad things are in Iraq is not to be trusted.

You might think that the enormous gulf between Bush's perceptions and reality on such a life-and-death topic would be, well, newsworthy. But if members of the Washington press corps consider it news at all, apparently it's old news. They report Bush's assertions about Iraq without noting that his fundamental assessment of the situation is dramatically contradicted by the reporting from their own colleagues on the ground.

I call it Iraqnam, and this is why. We've already destroyed it in order to save it, and people keep dying and getting maimed in horrible ways there, because a lot of people have forgotten 40 years.

"24" is Torture Porn

Update: A Washington Post editorial has come out strongly against the compromise torture bill that came out of Senate committee, because "In effect, the agreement means that U.S. violations of international human rights law can continue as long as Mr. Bush is president, with Congress's tacit assent. If they do, America's standing in the world will continue to suffer, as will the fight against terrorism." BooTrib is advocating that Dems make an issue of it by opposing and filibustering if necessary.


Here's how the Newsweek story I linked to in my last post on torture begins:

It’s probably not too farfetched to say that what most Americans know about torture comes from watching the TV show “24.” (There is even a Web site called The Jack Bauer Torture Report.) Jack and his comrades and enemies have at various moments on the Fox television program used electrical wires, heart defibrillators, old-fashioned bone breaking and chemical injections to wrest information from their captives. In one episode, Agent Bauer forced a terrorist to watch streaming video—staged—of his child’s execution. The terrorist talked.

The story goes on to say that, first of all, actual torture doesn't much look like what is shown on "24," and that: In recent interviews with NEWSWEEK reporters, U.S. intelligence officers say they have little—if any—evidence that useful intelligence has been obtained using techniques generally understood to be torture.

But a lot of people do believe it works. Partly because Bush and Cheney say so, and if we don't believe them, it's the same as saying that they are morons or liars or both, and war criminals to boot. Not something that anyone wants to believe of their leaders. But I believe it's also partly because of Hollywood and specifically "24."

Entertainment shows stretch reality a lot to be funny--we all understand that-- and also to create drama, but that's done with such apparent realism that we don't always realize it. But why torture? Is it the only way to advance the plot dramatically? These shows present human beings causing prolonged pain in other human beings. And people watch.

Forget for the moment that by portraying a false idea of something that goes on in the real world, "24" and shows like it are lying to people about something important, and the consequence is more suffering and more people endangered, including innocent people.

Forget even that it is often a cheap device, the easy ploy of lazy writers and directors when they want to push buttons of sensation and can't be bothered to do it with honest drama. We've got to grip the audience and we've got a story that's ten minutes short, what do we do? I know: torture somebody.

No, what I want to focus on here is the evident reason we see torture on TV, and that's because it evokes strong sensations--people may not be entirely shocked anymore, they see it so often, but it does push some buttons, and they're all about primal emotions. And in having those buttons pushed, people are entertained. They "like" to watch torture.

My question is: how is this not pornography? I'm not saying ban it, I'm just saying let's name it for what it is, and stop the pretense. Because the pretense is the prime factor in making it believable--I mean, if it's not porn fantasy, then we have to believe this is how it really works.

Real torture is immoral, and I believe that dramatizing torture in the way "24" does is gratitious violence, and I don't watch it. I happen to have met one of the writers who just got an Emmy for that show, and I don't congratulate him. He used to work on the Star Trek series, Enterprise, and during his watch as a producer, there were several instances of gratuitous torture on that show (which had a family audience, insofar as it had an audience). Which I suppose turned out to be his audition for "24."

I think "24" and its depiction of torture and violence does harm for these several reasons, and I have no respect for it. Those who watch it for porn purposes should at least be honest with themselves about it, and deal with it as fantasy. But that's not how it is played--not in a nation that goes berserk over a milisecond glimpse of a bare breast.

Bare breast bad, torture entertainment, does not compute. And then there's the morality of torture itself, defended by self-appointed professional guardians of morality, whose absolutism otherwise extends to defining cells as babies. Here's an example from Molly Ivins:

"I was interested to find that the Rev. Louis Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition is so in favor of torture he told McCain that the senator either supports the torture bill or he can forget about the evangelical Christian vote. I’d like to see an evangelical vote on that one. I don’t know how Sheldon defines traditional values, but deliberately inflicting terrible physical pain or stress on someone who is completely helpless strikes me as ... well, torture. And, um, wrong.."

I hope this is just an example of the Rev. Sheldon's arrogance and not the true sentiments of people who call themselves Christians. I could understand some "greater good" argument, if there was any evidence a greater good could be obtained. But to defend the morality of torture on its face, and threatening politicians who want some legal and moral constraints, passeth my understanding.

Centaurus wheel within wheel...

The Climate Crisis

Looking to the Law

There are several efforts underway to use existing law to force action on restricting greenhouse gas pollution. California is getting headlines for suing car companies, and though it's not strictly a legal matter--at least not yet--the Royal Society in England is demanding that Exxon keeps it promise to stop funding climate crisis deniers.

Meanwhile, the case against the Bush government to force them to apply Clean Air Act enforcement to greenhouse gases has gotten stronger with this brief, which places even more scientific expertise in partnership with law. In particular it counters the Bush attempt to distort the findings of scientists in a report it requested.

When the environmental movement first got into its legal and political phase, it lost a lot of its focus. Getting into that nitty-gritty is necessary of course, but this time a good deal more clarity needs to remain central, or once again the goals and the needs to be addressed can get lost in technicalites and the lifestyle of lawyers, lobbyists and pols.

UPDATE: Patrick Kennedy's summary of the Bush announcement on R&D for future technologies to address the climate crisis. His conclusion: too little, too vague, and certainly no "U-turn" in policy.

UPDATE 2: Richard Branson pledged $3 billion over ten years--corporate profits from Virgin Airlines-- to address the Climate Crisis by investing in biofuels, through President Clinton's Global Initiative. Three billion also happens to be the amount the Bush administration says it has spent on global heating associated R&D in the past six years. $3 billion represents what the US spends on the Iraq war every ten days.

The Politics of Torture

Or is it the torture of politics? I've held off commenting on the apparent conflict among Republicans in Congress over several bills that give Bush legal cover to have tortured and to keep on torturing, because I wasn't sure how real it was. Some bloggers and other commentators believe certain GOPer Senators are taking courageous stands in opposition to Bush, others suspect it's all orchestrated politics to provide some Republicans with political cover, or just to keep media attention off the really deadly conflict in Iraq.

Wednesday a House committee voted against it before they voted for it but there's still nothing certain about this except they're going to keep making noise about terrorism and torture and toughness until the election, and nothing is really going to even begin changing until the Democrats control Congress, and we get on their cases big time.

How torture plays politically is a fairly disgusting subject, especially because it should be well outside the political, beyond the pale. First of all, and most absurd of all, the argument over whether the morality of saving innocents by getting information from bad guys versus cruelty to people who may be bad but also may very well be innocent, is all so useless, because torture doesn't work in acquiring useful information, nor even in intimidation, not in the long run. The Canadian citizen captured and tortured by the U.S. who was fully exonerated as completely innocent this week by a Canadian panel, had admitted under torture that he was trained as a terrorist in Afghanistan, despite documented proof that he had never been in Afghanistan.

A federal judge has ordered officials to disclose some information about some Gitmo detainees. The International Red Cross is finally getting to interview some prisoners. Canada is planning an official protest based on this new report. Everyone in the world knows this is wrong and deeply harmful and universally degrading in every conceivable way.

And the practical downside is enormous. It makes a mockery of law. The bar has been lowered so that innocence no longer matters, and even a member of the press can be essentially imprisoned in Iraq for months, and no one knows and no one cares. That we're even talking about this is sickening and more frightening than any terrorist attack.

Apropos of nothing but this mood, this blog has attracted some hatemongering trolls and I've temporarily restricted comments until they lose interest.

UPDATE: A UN report says torture in Iraq is out of control. American occupation has brought with it torture that may exceed Saddam's. This is a completely predictable outcome of US policy and practice under Bush. When a superpower and supposed moral leader unleashes the dogs of torture, everyone feels they have permission to unleash savagery and escalate it without penalty. This is a consequence of immoral leadership. Among other tragic ramifications, we now have no moral standing to condemn the torture of Americans by others. Especially when our government apparently feels free to torture Americans, Canadians, Europeans, anybody.

UPDATE 2: The Bush House and apparently rebellious Republican Senators made a deal on pending legislature involving torture and trials for alleged terrorists, but the substance of the agreement is not clear, and the details of the legislation has apparently not yet been worked out. In other words, mostly P.R, which seemed to be the subtext of Senator Warner's statement that they'll have a deal when he sees Bush's signature on it.

Meanwhile, David Broder, Washington Post columnist and Beltway Elder, is the latest to see this revolt as a declaration of independence on the part of these Republicans, and an indication that a centrist "independent party" is forming. Broder's rhetoric is unusually brutal:

Bush was elected twice, over Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry, whose know-it-all arrogance rankled Midwesterners such as myself. The country thought Bush was a pleasant, down-to-earth guy who would not rock the boat. Instead, swayed by some inner impulse or the influence of Dick Cheney, he has proved to be lawless and reckless. He started a war he cannot finish, drove the government into debt and repeatedly defied the Constitution.

The question of what constitutes "centrism" is a matter for another day, but as a reflection of this year's 'throw the bums out' mood from an unlikely source, this column has some resonance.

As for the supposed central issue--torture, remember?--the transcript is up of Wednesday's Olbermann interview with Jack Rice, former CIA and Minnesota prosecutor. They talk about torture eliciting whatever the torturers want to hear, but go beyond that patent lunacy to the further lunacy--although I suspect it's intentional --of what's been done with some of this so-called information:

OLBERMANN: The name Abu Zubaydah seems relevant here. Zubaydah broke under—I guess the technical term is aggressive interrogation, told the interrogators about plans to booby-trap banks and ATMs, and Homeland Security says, Watch out for banks. Then he said malls, Homeland Security said, Beware of the malls. Then he said apartments, we plan to lease apartments and fill them full of explosives, and Homeland Security said, Be alert in apartment buildings. Then he said the Brooklyn Bridge, and Homeland Security says, Be careful on the Brooklyn Bridge.

The only problem was, he was making all of it up. If we torture supposed terrorists, and they make stuff up, and the government tells people the things that they made up, are we not, in essence, doing the terrorists‘ work for them? Is there not an indirect cause and effect here? Starting point is, you torture suspects into lying, and at the end, you wind up spreading information that scares Americans.

RICE: Absolutely. And the worst part, in the end, is that when there are real threats out there, there‘s something called dread fatigue. We all heard about this. Oh, my gosh, it‘s level yellow. Oh, my gosh, it‘s level orange no. And in the end, the real threats that are out there, we ignore.

Here's how the interview ended:

OLBERMANN: So what works instead of torture, or aggressive interrogation, or whatever they‘re calling it today?

RICE: In many cases, we‘re looking at a lot of things. And we‘ve used these in the States in the past, because it provides reliable information. Sometimes it‘s about personal understanding. Sometimes it‘s allowing people to talk. Sometimes it‘s trying to understand. I would sit in front of somebody and say, I don‘t understand what motivates you. Explain to me so I understand. Teach me. Sometimes it‘s about vanity. You allow them that, if it‘s useful. But what you‘re looking for is truth in the end.

I‘m not a priest. I‘m not trying to be. But what I am trying to do is get something reliable, so our policy makers, so our police, so our military can do the right thing, not the wrong thing.

OLBERMANN: So fact-check me on this, on my simplified version of this whole picture. If it‘s wrong, tell me so. The president wants torture, or a nice euphemism for torture, and all he‘ll get out of it is made-up information, revenge later against American prisoners, perhaps, and destroying any moral high ground we might still have in the world.

RICE: Yes, one other thing besides that. He gets to wrap himself in the flag and say he hates the bad people.

The Climate Crisis

A Plan to Stop It

In a major speech yesterday, Al Gore described a practical plan for proceeding on a realistic path to the goal of stopping the runaway greenhouse effect that imperils the future of the planet. After having successfully made the case for the reality and causes of the Climate Crisis in his movie and book, in this speech he outlined steps for action.

In its story on the speech, the Washington Post led with one creative proposal: for a "Connie Mae" federal mortgaging fund to finance carbon-neutral homebuilding--a Fannie Mae for the Climate Crisis.

Here is how columnist Donnie Fowler elsewhere summarized Gore's main action points:

First, immeditately freeze CO2 emissions and begin reductions. California has done it and so have 295 American cities.

Second, join the Kyoto Treaty. "The absence of the United States from the treaty means that 25% of the world economy is now missing. It is like filling a bucket with a large hole in the bottom ... Many American businesses that operate in other countries already have to abide by the Kyoto Treaty anyway, and unsurprisingly, they are the companies that have been most eager to adopt these new principles here at home."

Third, recognize that the answer is not found in a silver bullet but in "silver buckshot."

Two Princeton professors have identified 15 to 20 building blocks that can make a difference even if only 7 or 8 of them are used. A few of the most important building blocks are:

a. eliminate the energy it takes to make energy and to transport it
b. change our transportation infrastructure, switching to new flex fuel, plug-in, and hybrid cars
c. reduce deforestation
d. pursue renewable sources of energy -- biomass, wind, solar.
d.new building designs drawn from innovative engineering and architecture.

f. place a price on the CO2 pollution that is recognized in the marketplace -- eliminate all payroll taxes ­ including those for social security and unemployment compensation and repleace that revenue in the form of pollution taxes, ­principally on CO2. The overall level of taxation would remain exactly the same.

Gore's proposals are valuable because they combine current scientific knowledge (climate scientists have found no significant errors in Gore's movie or book) and his own hard-won political wisdom. For example, from the speech itself:

... we should start by immediately freezing CO2 emissions and then beginning sharp reductions. Merely engaging in high-minded debates about theoretical future reductions while continuing to steadily increase emissions represents a self-delusional and reckless approach. In some ways, that approach is worse than doing nothing at all, because it lulls the gullible into thinking that something is actually being done when in fact it is not. An immediate freeze has the virtue of being clear, simple, and easy to understand. It can attract support across partisan lines as a logical starting point for the more difficult work that lies ahead.

Gore goes on to say that in the 80s, he thought the "nuclear freeze" movement was naive, while he was behind a complex plan to control nuclear weapons. But the idea of a nuclear freeze caught on, he realized, and paved the way for detailed steps to be taken to reduce nuclear weapons.

Similarly, Gore has revived a proposal he says he made 14 years ago, but now sees it could have much more political resonance: end all federal payroll taxes, and replace them with taxes on pollution, principally CO2. ... instead of discouraging businesses from hiring more employees, it would discourage business from producing more pollution.

Gore also proposes some sweeping yet exciting and very possible changes, such as improvement in our antiquated system of distributing electrical energy, that would further enhance our efficiency and security. Together with homegrown energy systems, smarter application of information technology and energy efficiency, Gore makes a strong case for lessening dependence on foreign oil.

By emphasizing innovation in confronting the Climate Crisis (and I would add, in addition to these efforts to Stop It, the Fix It component--dealing with the effects of the Climate Crisis already on the way-- also will require imagination, innovation and new production) there is vast potential to revive American industry (including exports), education and community. As Gore points out, the Chinese symbol for crisis combines the symbols for danger and opportunity. We seen opportunists turn danger into political advantage; wouldn't it be refreshing if we could confront a real danger with real transformation that would benefit everyone?

As the news of Gore's speech spreads, there is this incredible report from the Independent, that sounds a little like a reprint from the Onion:

President Bush is preparing an astonishing U-turn on global warming, senior Washington sources say. After years of trying to sabotage agreements to tackle climate change he is drawing up plans to control emissions of carbon dioxide and rapidly boost the use of renewable energy sources.

I'll reserve my skepticism on the plans he is "drawing up" for further indication this is actually going to happen, but it does suggest that a sea-change is ahead in our nation's approach to the Climate Crisis.

Why You Can't Take Shampoo On the Airplane

I've seen brief references to the difficulty of creating the kind of explosion the Brit plotters were supposedly planning, that led instantly to our first Red Alert and the banning of shampoo and other liquids and gels from commercial airplanes. And certainly common sense suggests that if it was that easy, it would have been done long ago. But after all this time, I finally stumbled across a credible description of just how difficult it would be--in fact, impossible in any practical sense.

Here's how the plot was reputedly supposed to work: According to security sources, the terror suspects were planning to board up to ten civilian airliners and detonate highly volatile liquid explosives on the planes in a spectacular terrorist operation. The liquid explosives -- either TATP (Triacetone Triperoxide), DADP (diacetone diperoxide) or the less sensitive HMTD (hexamethylene triperoxide diamine) -- were reportedly to be made on board the planes by mixing sports drinks with a peroxide-based household gel and then be detonated using an MP3 player or mobile phone.

But a former British intelligence officer and military munitions expert with the spy novel name of Lt. Colonel Nigel Wylde is quoted as describing what the process would really entail: The liquids would need to be carefully distilled at freezing temperatures to extract the required chemicals, which are very difficult to obtain in the purities needed."

Once the fluids have been extracted, the process of mixing them produces significant amounts of heat and vile fumes. "The resulting liquid then needs some hours at room temperature for the white crystals that are the explosive to develop." The whole process, which can take between 12 and 36 hours, is "very dangerous, even in a lab, and can lead to premature detonation," said Lt. Col. Wylde. ...All this means the planned attack would be detected long before the queues outside the loo had grown to enormous lengths." And of course most domestic flights in the US would be long over.

Even if the explosive was somehow pre-mixed, Wylde said, it still requires a detonator, probably made from TATP, would be needed to set it off. "It is very dangerous and risky to the individual," Wylde said. "As the quantity involved would be small this would injure the would-be suicide bomber but not endanger the aircraft, thus defeating the object of bringing down an aircraft."

In other words, if this story is correct, the whole thing is exactly the farce it appears to be: even more ridiculous than the shoe bomb. Nevertheless, there we all are, shoeless and beltless, watching our toiletries be tossed, boarding airplanes without so much as a drink of water, and not much hope of being offered one. The whole point seems to be to treat us like sheep so we'll act like sheep. Especially on election day.

And it's clearly working. First of all on journalists who didn't bother to question all this in the first place.

"Two Eagles" by Robert Davidson at Inuit.com.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"So, the world happens twice--
once what we see it as;
second it legends itself
deep, the way it is."

William Stafford

Democracy in Question

Usually I have editors to blame for my published pieces that have problems, but this time the subpar performance is almost all mine. (They cut one sentence and screwed with the paragraphs which upset the all-important rhythm, but that's it this time.) Still, you might get something out of this review of two new books, Whose Freedom? by George Lakoff and Does American Democracy Still Work? by Alan Wolfe. I recommend the Wolfe book.

If you are left aghast and amazed by politics and government today, these two books are for you. There are plenty of screeds and exposes on the details, but Boston College political scientist Alan Wolfe and UC Berkeley professor of linguistics George Lakoff concentrate on the bigger picture of what is happening and why.

This is not your grandfather’s democracy, they say; it’s not even your father’s. Most Americans over 30 -- especially liberals and moderates -- who formed their impressions of political institutions and the political dialogue before, say, 1984, are in for a rude awakening.

Continued at the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review.

Update: An article in the Washington Post today seems to support one of the central assertions of these books--it cites a study which purports to show that political ads need to engage emotions to be effective. Well, duh. I don't see that the extrapolation--emotions matter, ideas don't--necessarily follows. It's such bipolar thinking, don't you think?

Anyway, there was this interesting side-finding: It is comparatively difficult to persuade anyone to change their mind on an issue. What works much better, because it influences people at an emotional and subtle level, is to get people to focus on a different issue -- the one where the candidate is the strongest. Of course, I thought immediately of Al Gore in 2008. And it is interesting that the Wapo writer linked "emotional and subtle." Since when are emotions more subtle than ideas? Only when you conceive of ideas as yes/no, up/down bipolar positions. Or when you're so spooked by the unconscious or the preconscious that you think of anything that operates on that level as voodoo.