Monday, June 30, 2008
this is also why I don't post here much - and why I can't care anymore. People don't listen, won't think, and nobody actually cares.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
People are stupid.
-----------------
By Eli Saslow,
Washingtonpost.com
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25447998/
FINDLAY, Ohio -
On his corner of College Street, Jim Peterman stares at the four American flags planted in his front lawn and rubs his forehead. Peterman, 74, is a retired worker at Cooper Tire, a father of two, an Air Force veteran and a self-described patriot. He took one trip to Washington in 1989 -- best vacation of his life -- and bought a statue of the Washington Monument that he still displays in a glass case in his living room.
He believes a smart vote is an American's greatest responsibility. Which is why his confusion about Barack Obama continues to eat at him.
On the television in his living room, Peterman has watched enough news and campaign advertisements to hear the truth: Sen. Barack Obama, born in Hawaii, is a Christian family man with a track record of public service. But on the Internet, in his grocery store, at his neighbor's house, at his son's auto shop, Peterman has also absorbed another version of the Democratic candidate's background, one that is entirely false: Barack Obama, born in Africa, is a possibly gay Muslim racist who refuses to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
"It's like you're hearing about two different men with nothing in common," Peterman said. "It makes it impossible to figure out what's true, or what you can believe."
Digital rumor mill:
Here in Findlay, a Rust Belt town of 40,000, false rumors about Obama have built enough word-of-mouth credibility to harden into an alternative biography. Born on the Internet, the rumors now meander freely across the flatlands of northwest Ohio --through bars and baseball fields, retirement homes and restaurants.
Faced with polling that shows about one in 10 Americans thinks Obama is Muslim, the candidate's campaign has launched an aggressive effort to discredit rumors and clarify Obama's past. It created a "Fight the Smears" Web site and a new television ad that reiterates Obama's Christian faith, patriotism and family background. Dozens of volunteers have been sent to Ohio five months in advance of the election so they can spend extra time educating voters.
But on Peterman's block in Findlay, the campaign's efforts may already be too late. A swing voter who entered this election leaning Democratic, Peterson faces a decision that is no longer so simple as a choice between Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain, he said. First, he must pick the version of Obama on which he will stake his vote.
Does he choose to trust a TV commercial in which Obama talks about his "love of country"? Or his neighbor of 40 years, Don LeMaster, a Navy veteran who heard from a friend in Toledo that Obama refuses to wear an American-flag pin?
Does he trust a local newspaper article that details Obama's Christian faith? Or his friend Leroy Pollard, a devoted family man so convinced Obama is a radical Muslim that he threatened to stop talking to his daughter when he heard she might vote for him?
"I'll admit that I probably don't follow all of the election news like maybe I should," Peterman said. "I haven't read his books or studied up more than a little bit. But it's hard to ignore what you hear when everybody you know is saying it. These are good people, smart people, so can they really all be wrong?"
'Funny about change':
Peterman bought his single-story house here in 1959, a few months after he left the Air Force and married. His wife,
Mildred, had grown up in Findlay, and they never considered moving anywhere else. On College Street, the couple found all the hallmarks of America's heartland: a house for $9,000; a neighborhood where their two boys, one handicapped, could play outside after dark; a steady "pencil-pushing" job up the road for Jim at Cooper Tire headquarters.
The neighborhood built up around them. Leroy and Wanda Pollard came in 1962, drawn from southern Ohio by a booming auto industry that offered Leroy plenty of work as a mechanic. Mary Dunson bought the place next door in 1963. Don LeMaster, a police officer, moved in up the street with his wife, Margaret, in 1970.
Every newcomer to the block was white, working-class and Midwestern, and the neighborhood jelled easily. They babysat for one another. They complained to one another about their teenagers. They helped raise one another's grandkids. In all, seven different families have lived on the same block of College Street for at least 35 years.
"We all just found a great place at a great time," Leroy Pollard said. Peterman hung the American flag on his porch first, in 1960, and the rest of College Street followed his example. By 1980, patriotic displays had grown into an unspoken contest of one-upmanship. Sixty flags planted in one yard on Memorial Day; a living-room window painted red, white and blue; a Buckeye tree decorated with Christmas ornaments celebrating Americana; a gigantic plastic unicorn perched on a front porch and draped in an American flag.
The entire block -- and, soon, the entire town -- shared in unabashed pride and gratefulness for the country that had given them this place. In 1968, a local congressman persuaded the House of Representatives to officially declare Findlay as Flag City, USA.
But with their pride came a nasty undercurrent, one that Obama's candidacy has exacerbated: On College Street, nobody wanted anything to change. As the years passed, Peterman and his neighbors approached one another to share in their skepticism about the unknown. What was the story behind the handful of African Americans who had moved into a town that is 93 percent white? Why wereJapanese businessmen coming in to run the local manufacturing plants? Who in the world was this Obama character, running for president with that funny-sounding last name?
"People in Findlay are kind of funny about change," said Republican Mayor Pete Sehnert, a retired police officer who ran for the office on a whim last year. "They always want things the way they were, and any kind of development is always viewed as making things worse, a bad thing."
‘We're not ready for him’When people on College Street started hearing rumors about Obama -- who looked different from other politicians and often talked about change -- they easily believed the nasty stories about an outsider.
"I think Obama would be a disaster, and there's a lot of reasons," said Pollard, explaining the rumors he had heard about the candidate from friends he goes camping with. "I understand he's from Africa, and that the first thing he's going to do if he gets into office is bring his family over here, illegally. He's got that racist [pastor] who practically raised him, and then there's the Muslim thing. He's just not presidential material, if you ask me."
Said Don LeMaster: "He's a good speaker, but you've got to dig deeper than that for the truth. Politicians tell you anything. You have look beyond the surface, and then there are some real lies."
Said Jeanette Collins, a 77-year-old who lives across the street: "All I know for sure about Obama is that we're not ready for him."
Only one man on College Street remains open-minded, and recently even Peterman has started to sway. Like most of his neighbors, he dislikes McCain for his stance on the Iraq war and would like to cast his vote for a president who will bring the troops home. But on a recent visit to his son's auto shop, Peterman overheard misinformed customers talking again about a Muslim in the White House.
"I don't know. The whole thing just scares me," Peterman said. "I'm almost starting to feel like the best choice is not voting at all."
The truth squad:
So far, those who have pushed the truth in Findlay have been rewarded with little that resembles progress. Gerri Kish, a 66-year-old born in Hawaii, read both of Obama's autobiographies. She has close friends, she said, who still refuse to believe her when she swears Obama is Christian. Then she hands them the books, and they refuse to read them. "They just want believe what they believe," she said. "Nothing gets through to them."
The new advertisement running in Findlay, in which Obama is pictured with his white mother and white grandparents as talks about developing a "deep and abiding faith in the country I love" while growing up in the Kansas heartland, is dismissed by residents of College Street as the desperate lies of another dishonest Washington politician. And they say that Obama's moves to put distance between himself and the Muslim community, with his campaign declining invitations to visit mosques and Obama volunteers removing two women in head scarves from the camera range at a rally in Detroit last weekare just a too-late effort to disguise his true beliefs.
For the past month, two students from the University of Findlay have spent their Tuesdays nights walking from door to door in the city to tell voters about Obama. Erik Cramer and Sarah Everly target Democrats and swing voters exclusively, but they've still experienced mixed results. Sometimes, at a front door, they mention their purpose only to have a dozen rumors thrown back at them and the door slammed "People tell us that we're in the wrong town," Everly said.
Soon, on a Tuesday night, they'll walk down College Street -- past the American flags, past the LeMasters, past the Pollards -- and knock on Jim Peterman's front door. They will ask for two minutes of his
time, and Peterman will give it to them. He will listen to their story,
weighing facts against fiction. For a few minutes, he might even believe
them.
Then he'll close his door and go inside, back to his life. Back to
his grocery store, back to his son's auto shop, back to the gossip on
College Street. Back to the rumors again.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
that would be refreshing, and honest!..... and I think it would make me think a lot more highly of a lot of people. We're taught as children that we all make mistakes, but the best thing you can do when you do hurt someone is to admit it... apologize... and make it right (if you can)
Whether or not the "if you can" part is applicable in Iraq, I don't know. I certainly don't think that "staying the course" of the same shit that got us here will do it. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that.
Anyway.... Riverbend, who has been a brutally honest voice coming from Iraq for so many years, has evidently fled with her family to Syria. If Iraq is so much safer, why are so many families still fleeing in droves? Why is there a completely serious "brain drain" going on of the educated, and often moderate sensible people? If the reasonable folks continue to be pushed out of their homes and country, the only ones left will be the zealots and the unfortunate that cannot afford to escape, only to be caught in the crossfire.
This is from her most recent blog. It's heartbreaking to read, if you have any capacity for empathy.
Go read it.
Even if we can't collectively grow the national balls to admit a mistake, the least we can do is acknowledge the suffering that people are experiencing.
Monday, August 13, 2007
From http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0814/p11s01-usju.html
Many of the harsh interrogation techniques now used in the war on terror bear a striking resemblance to tactics of the former Soviet KGB.
There is a reason. After the 9/11 attacks, US forces put a premium on getting actionable intelligence from suspected terrorists. But most of them refused to talk. Some interrogators complained that traditional techniques that complied fully with the Geneva Conventions weren't working.
So the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency reached back to a military training program with roots in the cold war. The program was originally designed to prepare downed American pilots and special-operations soldiers for capture during a war with the Soviet Union. The Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) school mimicked the anticipated Soviet interrogation techniques. According to former SERE instructors, the grueling program subjects trainees to aggressive questioning, isolation, sleep deprivation, stress positions, and simulated drowning (water-boarding). Soon, the coercive techniques were being used on detainees in Afghanistan; Iraq; Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; and the US Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C.
"An almost invariable feature of the management of any important suspect under detention is a period of total isolation in a detention cell," wrote Lawrence Hinkle and Harold Wolff, researchers funded by the Defense Department, in a 1956 article. "At all times except when he is eating, sleeping, exercising, or being interrogated, the prisoner is left strictly alone in his cell."
The article continues: "He gradually gives up all spontaneous activity within his cell, and ceases to care about his personal appearance and actions."
These tactics appear to have been used in Jose Padilla's case by American military officials against an American citizen in a US military prison.
According to Mr. Hinkle and Mr. Wolff, the Soviets expected their isolation technique to break a man in four to six weeks. The prolonged isolation creates in the subject a powerful desire to talk to anyone about anything. This sets the stage for the interrogation.
If isolation wasn't enough to adequately prepare the subject, the Soviets would ramp up the psychological pressure by adding sleep deprivation, stress positions, or temperature adjustments to make the cell either too hot or too cold, the article says.
The president and members of his administration have stressed that tough interrogation methods (which are similar but not identical to the old Soviet practices) are necessary to protect the country and prevail against Al Qaeda.
Gen. Michael Hayden, director of the CIA, recently highlighted the importance of this approach in a statement to CIA workers. "The information developed by our program has been irreplaceable," he said. It "revealed priceless insights on Al Qaeda's operations and organization, foiled plots, and saved innocent lives."
Many members of the military say US interrogation policy isn't tough enough.
"There's something to be said for sending the message that the gloves are coming off," says Capt. Bryce Lefever, a Navy psychologist and former SERE school instructor. "You don't take a knife to a gunfight."
Captain Lefever says it is unfair to compare US antiterror interrogations with Soviet interrogation techniques. "Their abuse was a systematic practice to conceal the truth," he says. "If Padilla was abused, then it was for a righteous purpose – to reveal the truth."
Lefever opposes the use of torture because in most instances it is ineffective. But sometimes, harsh and brutal tactics can produce results, he adds. The key is that interrogators must be careful in their questions not to telegraph an agenda to the subject, because if the technique is coercive enough, the subject will say anything to make it stop.
Others argue that isolation and coercive interrogation methods are counterproductive. "In interrogation, what we are trying to capture is somebody's accurate and complete memory of an event, or a person, or a discussion," says Steven Kleinman, an Air Force Reserve colonel and former interrogator who taught in the SERE program. But Soviet methods will produce unreliable Soviet-like results. "That is not an intelligence process. That is the antithesis of an intelligence process," he adds.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Revealed: MI5's role in torture flight hell
David Rose
Sunday July 29, 2007
The Observer - [all emphasis in article is mine]
An Iraqi who was a key source of intelligence for MI5 has given the first ever full insider's account of being seized by the CIA and bundled on to an illegal 'torture flight' under the programme known as extraordinary rendition.
In a remarkable interview for The Observer, British resident Bisher al-Rawi has told how he was betrayed by the security service despite having helped keep track of Abu Qatada, the Muslim cleric accused of being Osama bin Laden's 'ambassador in Europe'. He was abducted and stripped naked by US agents, clad in nappies [diapers], a tracksuit and shackles, blindfolded and forced to wear ear mufflers, then strapped to a stretcher on board a plane bound for a CIA 'black site' jail near Kabul in Afghanistan.
He was taken on to the jail at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba before being released last March and returned to Britain after four years' detention without charge.
'All the way through that flight I was on the verge of screaming,' al-Rawi said. 'At last we landed, I thought, thank God it's over. But it wasn't - it was just a refuelling stop in Cairo. There were hours still to go ... My back was so painful, the handcuffs were so tight. All the time they kept me on my back. Once, I managed to wriggle a tiny bit, just shifted my weight to one side. Then I felt someone hit my hand. Even this was forbidden.'
He was thrown into the CIA's 'Dark Prison,' deprived of all light 24 hours a day in temperatures so low that ice formed on his food and water. He was taken to Guantanamo in March 2003 and released after being cleared of any involvement in terrorism by a tribunal.
A report by Parliament's intelligence and security committee last week disclosed that, although the Americans warned MI5 it planned to render al-Rawi in advance, in breach of international law, the British did not intervene on the grounds he did not have a UK passport. The government claimed he was the responsibility of Iraq, which he fled as a teenager when his father was tortured by Saddam Hussein's regime.
The report confirmed that al-Rawi, 39, was only held after MI5 sent the CIA a telegram, stating he was an 'Islamic extremist' who had a timer for an improvised bomb in his luggage. In reality, before al-Rawi left London, police confirmed the device was a battery charger from Argos.
The committee accepted MI5's claim, given in secret testimony, that it had not wanted the Americans to arrest him, in November 2002, concluding the incident had damaged US-UK relations.
But al-Rawi alleged that the CIA told him they had been given the contents of his own MI5 file - information he had given his handlers freely when he was working as their source. He said an MI5 lawyer had given him 'cast iron' assurances that anything he told them would be treated in the strictest confidence and, if he ever got into trouble, MI5 would do everything in its power to help him.
When al-Rawi was in Guantanamo, he asked the American authorities to find his former MI5 handlers so they would corroborate his story but, because he did not know their surnames, MI5 said it could not assist.
The committee report cited MI5 testimony claiming that when al-Rawi was transported in December 2002, it could not have known how harsh his treatment might be. Yet eight months earlier, Amnesty International had published a lengthy report on US detention in Afghanistan, quoting several ex-prisoners who described conditions very similar to those experienced by al-Rawi.
He had conveyed messages between the preacher Abu Qatada and MI5 when Qatada was supposedly in hiding in 2002. At MI5's behest, he came close to arranging a meeting between the two sides.
Al-Rawi has now spoken out in an effort to help his friend Jamil el-Banna, who remains in Guantanamo. A Jordan-ian who also lived in London for years, where his wife and five children are British citizens, he too has been cleared by the Americans. However, he has been unable to leave Guantanamo because Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, says she is reviewing his right of residence on national security grounds.
Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrat MP for Brent East in London, where el-Banna lives, said his case revealed 'decrepitude at the heart of the government'. The government had 'no regard for the welfare of his children'.
His lawyers have filed a statement from al-Rawi as part of a judicial review case. In the action, they accuse MI5 of having a 'causative role' in both men's ordeals, stating it was 'complicit' in the illegal rendition and guilty of an 'abuse of power'.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Wednesday July 18, 2007 14:18 EST
The National Review mind
(updated below - updated again - Update III)
The New Republic's Johann Hari recently went on the National Review cruise and then filed this extraordinary report about what he witnessed (the full article is also available here). Hari mingled in with the NR faithful who, unaware that he was a reporter, provided him with material like this:
I lie on the beach with Hillary-Ann, a chatty, scatty 35-year-old Californian designer. As she explains the perils of Republican dating, my mind drifts, watching the gentle tide. When I hear her say, " Of course, we need to execute some of these people," I wake up. Who do we need to execute? She runs her fingers through the sand lazily. "A few of these prominent liberals who are trying to demoralise the country," she says. "Just take a couple of these anti-war people off to the gas chamber for treason to show, if you try to bring down America at a time of war, that's what you'll get." She squints at the sun and smiles. " Then things'll change."
And, at a dinner Hari attended on the first day:
To my left, I find a middle-aged Floridian with a neat beard. To my right are two elderly New Yorkers who look and sound like late-era Dorothy Parkers, minus the alcohol poisoning. They live on Park Avenue, they explain in precise Northern tones. "You must live near the UN building," the Floridian says to one of the New York ladies after the entree is served. Yes, she responds, shaking her head wearily. "They should suicide-bomb that place," he says. They all chuckle gently. How did that happen? How do you go from sweet to suicide-bomb in six seconds?There was a virtual unanimous consensus that Muslims are taking over Europe and then the world. I've been reluctant to write about this article because -- as well-written, insightful and darkly amusing as it is -- it relies upon isolated, selected anecdotes to indict a broad political faction, a practice I generally dislike, given that it is the province of the Bill O'Reillys and Michelle Malkins of the world.
But then I read the discussions from the National Review pundits themselves and it is hard to dispute Hari's methods. Today, for instance, National Review and Fox News pundit Larry Kudlow was addressing the latest findings from the intelligence community, documenting -- again -- that the Bush administration's conduct over the last six years has resulted in a robust, resurgent and powerful Al Qaeda. What is Kudlow's view of all this?
So we've invaded two countries so far, both of which we continue to occupy, andThe reality here is that all three al Qaeda branches -- in addition to its
jihadist cohorts elsewhere -- are coming at us.
The question now becomes whether the U.S. government will stay on the offensive, maintain all of its Patriot Act tools, and beat down the bad guys.
we have acted militarily in countless others. And Al Qaeda has strengthened as a
result. So what do we do now? "Beat down the bad guys." Truly, that is how an 8-year old reasons.
Speaking of which, in a post almost immediately preceding Kudlow's, Jonah Goldberg laid down his Lofty Principles of American Warfare: namely, we must favor democracy in the world because it "is morally preferable to tyranny"; our wars must keep in mind "America's sense of decency"; "Americans want to feel good about their wars, particularly their wars of choice"; to beat terrorism, we need "something," and "Our something must be freedom"; and when waging war, Americans "need to be reassured they are the good guys."
And with these inspiring principals in mind, what does Jonah think we should now in Iraq?
As a matter of analysis and prescription, I'm all in favor of the war in Iraq becoming less "liberal" -- as you folks are using the term around here -- and more realistic, i.e. ruthless. No fan of "liberalizing" Iraq can be against winning there first.Absolutely. The problem we have in the Muslim world is that we have not been sufficiently "ruthless" in our wars. We need to make sure that we are the good guys and on the side of freedom and maintain our sense of decency. And to do this, we must -- after four straight years of decimating that country -- increase our ruthlessness.
As I've highlighted before, neoconservative tough guys love to run around with hard-core-sounding slogans ("we need to get our hands dirty" - "we need to stop being so sensitive in how we fight" - "there need to be 'consequences' for anti-war activists who embolden the enemy"), but they constantly lack the courage ever to say what they actually mean, specifically. What kind of person says we should be more "ruthless" as his prescription for winning a four-year-old war without bothering to provide any specifics? It'd be instructive to know what Jonah thinks we should do in order become "more ruthless" in the Iraq War, in what ways have we been insufficiently "ruthless." One could email him and ask.
One more anecdote from the NR cruise:
These truly are the people who have been running our country for the last six years. No matter how many times one thinks about it, it never gets any less difficult to believe. And it really does explain virtually everything of any political significance in this country.The conversation ebbs back to friendly chit-chat. So, you're a European, one of the Park Avenue ladies says, before offering witty commentaries on the cities she's visited. Her companion adds, "I went to Paris, and it was so lovely." Her face darkens: "But then you think -- it's surrounded by Muslims." The first lady nods: "They're out there, and they're coming." Emboldened, the bearded Floridian wags a finger and says, "Down the line, we're not going to bail out the French again." He mimes picking up a phone and shouts into it, "I can't hear you, Jacques! What's that? The Muslims are doing what to you? I can't hear you!"
Now that this barrier has been broken -- everyone agrees the Muslims are devouring the French, and everyone agrees it's funny -- the usual suspects are quickly rounded up. Jimmy Carter is "almost a traitor". John McCain is "crazy" because of "all that torture". One of the Park Avenue ladies declares that she gets on her knees every day to " thank God for Fox News". As the wine reaches the Floridian, he announces, "This cruise is the best money I ever spent."
UPDATE: I would be remiss if I failed to highlight this passage from Hari's report:
What can one even say about all of this?[Cruise attendee Norman] Podhoretz is the Brooklyn-born, street-fighting kid who travelled through a long phase of left-liberalism to a pugilistic belief in America's power to redeem the world, one bomb at a time. Today, he is a bristling grey ball of aggression, here to declare that the Iraq war has been "an amazing success." He waves his fist and declaims: "There were WMD, and they were shipped to Syria ... This picture of a country in total chaos with no security is false. It has been a triumph. It couldn't have gone better." He wants more wars, and fast. He is "certain" Bush will bomb Iran, and " thank God" for that. . . .
"Aren't you embarrassed by the absence of these weapons?" [William] Buckley snaps at Podhoretz. He has just explained that he supported the war reluctantly, because Dick Cheney convinced him Saddam Hussein had WMD primed to be fired. "No," Podhoretz replies. "As I say, they were shipped to Syria. During Gulf War I, the entire Iraqi air force was hidden in the deserts in Iran." He says he is "heartbroken" by this "rise of defeatism on the right." He adds, apropos of nothing, "There was nobody better than Don Rumsfeld. This defeatist talk only contributes to the impression we are losing, when I think we're winning." The audience cheers Podhoretz. The nuanced doubts of Bill Buckley leave them confused. Doesn't he sound like the liberal media? Later, over dinner, a tablemate from Denver calls Buckley "a coward". His wife nods and says, " Buckley's an old man," tapping her head with her finger to suggest dementia.
UPDATE II: In response to email inquiries, Jonah unveils his Plan of Ruthlessness for Glorious Victory in Iraq:
First he says that the objections in the emails were "to a point well-taken" because "I don't think ruthlessness as it's commonly understood -- dogged, merciless, belligerence -- is necessarily what we need most." What do we need, then?
Jonah next cites, as an example of where more ruthlessness was needed, a story about how the CIA proposed some scheme which its own lawyers said was illegal, suggesting -- apparently -- that being more "ruthless" means ignoring (i.e., breaking) our own laws. Finally, Jonah "clarifies":
But, what I mean by ruthlessness . . . is a single-minded determination to win.By "single-minded determination to win," does that mean we bomb more indiscriminately, forget about ethical restraints, break the law, re-instate the draft, raise taxes to pay for a larger military? Who knows. He won't say. They never do, because their real goal is to sound tough and avoid admitting error ("the Iraq War isn't a failure; not at all. We just need to stiffen our spines, take the kid gloves off, and commit ourselves to a single-minded determination to win").
To Larry Kudlow, what we need to do in order to Win the War on Terror is Beat Down the Bad Guys. To Jonah Goldberg, to win the War in Iraq, we need to be more ruthless, which means we have "a single-minded determination to win." Those are the serious-minded -- and, of course, "tough" -- foreign policy geniuses who have been driving our actions since 9/11. The only real surprise is that the damage hasn't been even greater than it is.
UPDATE III: It is worth noting that while many of the comments Hari includes are from anonymous NR cruise passengers, many are from NR writers and other prominent neoconservative spokespeople.
More importantly, the most inflammatory comments Hari reports are hardly unrepresentative of the conservative movement. Recall, for instance:
* Michael Reagan's call for Howard Dean to be hanged as a traitor for having said the war in Iraq could not be won;In light of this record, it is difficult -- one could say impossible -- to argue reasonably that any of the comments reported by Hari, including the call by Hillary-Ann to put a few antiwar liberals in the gas chamber, are truly aberrational.
* Ann Coulter's arguing that "We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors";
* Ben Shaprio urging that Al Gore, John Kerry and Howard Dean be criminally prosecuted for sedition for opposing the war;
* Frank Gaffney fabricating an Abraham Lincoln quote in order to argue that traitors, such as Sen. Carl Levin, should be executed (specifically, hanged).
-- Glenn Greenwald
Thursday, October 27, 2005
SLIMING THE QUAKERS, PART 2: Last week Michelle Malkin and Little Green Footballs characterized candlelight vigils by the Quakers marking the milestone of 2000 military deaths in Iraq as "parties." Today, the MilBlog Blackfive follows them into the gutter.
"There are two groups that will celebrate and use George Alexander's sacrifice. The morally bankrupt anti-war movement. And Al Qaeda."
I find this rash of posts suggesting that anti-war activists "celebrate" the deaths of American soldiers to be both tragic and telling.
Tragic, because it represents a descent into depraved, gutter-level slander as a form of argumentation, and it is a profoundly un-American approach to a most American of activities: dissent. Telling, because it means these bloggers have nothing left to justify the deaths of Americans in Iraq but desperate and transparent attacks on those who want our troops home.
Regular readers know this issue is personal for me. I did what many of these war-supporting bloggers (MilBloggers excluded) have never done but are eager to encourage others to do: I fought the "terrorists" in Lebanon as a young man. I defended my family against the Syrian military and helped lay the groundwork for the "Cedar Revolution." I was in Beirut when we lost hundreds of brave Marines. I experienced the horrors of war in the Middle East, the rivers of blood in the streets. And because I knew the hell we were sending our young men and women into, I marched in opposition to the Iraq invasion.
I did it for one basic reason: I believed that our government was lying about the rationale for war. If we send courageous Americans to die in a foreign land, the moral underpinning MUST be rock solid. Unassailable ethical justification for war is essential if we want to maintain our moral standing, our dignity, our humanity. In a word: America isn't America if we lie our way into war. There's no better way to undermine the sacrifice of our military men and women than to deprive them of the purity of purpose that undergirds their mission.
Earlier I linked to a post on Pre$$titutes called The Great Vindication Of The Anti-War Movement. In part, it said, "In case the world hasn't noticed, the events of the past few months have vindicated the millions of people in the U.S. and around the world who protested the Iraq invasion on the basis that it was being justified by lies and that it would lead to a long, bloody struggle.
"It's fascinating - and disturbing - to listen to pundits deconstruct the inner workings of the White House Iraq Group, to have Bush Sr.-era stalwarts like Brent Scowcroft break with the administration, to watch the New York Times implode over Judy Miller's neo-con cheerleading, to see the Plame scandal come to a head.... three years late.
"What's so breathtaking (yet so predictable) is that in all the retroactive analysis, the hand-wringing, and the grudging acknowledgment of the mess that Iraq has become, the fact that the outcome of this grand misadventure was predicted by anti-war demonstrators goes unmentioned. It didn't take foreign policy experience or national security expertise or top-secret Intel briefings for the anti-war movement to know, unequivocally, that the Iraq invasion was a hyped-up, over-sold war. It was crystal clear from day one what Bush, Cheney, Condi, Rummy, Colin, et al were up to..."
The post goes on to say, "War-happy wingers 'supported the troops' with bumper stickers and jingoism, slandering anti-war protesters as traitors. In their contorted logic, wanting troops in the line of fire is a good thing and wanting them home with their families is bad."
Bottom line: If Malkin, LGF, and Blackfive think opponents of the Iraq war are "celebrating" the deaths of American troops, let them answer the basic paradox of their position, namely, how is it that wanting our troops NOT to die is worse than wanting them to remain in the line of fire?
Monday, September 26, 2005
I'll quote Rivka at Respectful of Otters....
Today's Social Psychology Lecture
A story I read in a social psychology text long ago has been going through my head for a couple of weeks now. I finally had to track it down:[A]fter four students at Kent State University were shot and killed by members of the Ohio National Guard, several rumors quickly spread: (1) both of the women who were slain were pregnant (and therefore, by implication, were oversexed and wanton); (2) the bodies of all four students were crawling with lice; and (3) the victims were so ridden with syphilis that they would have been dead in 2 weeks anyway. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, these rumors were totally untrue. The slain students were all clean, decent, bright people. Indeed, two of them were not even involved in the
demonstrations that resulted in the tragedy but were peacefully walking across campus when they were gunned down. Why were the townspeople so eager to believe and spread these rumors? It is impossible to know for sure, but my guess is that it was [...] because the rumors were comforting. Picture the situation: Kent is a conservative small town in Ohio. Many of the townspeople were infuriated at the radical behavior of some of the students. Some were probably hoping the students would get their comeuppance, but death was more than they deserved. In such circumstances, any information putting the victims in a bad light helped to reduce dissonance by implying that it was, in fact, a good thing that they died.
Cognitive dissonance is the uncomfortable collision of two or more contradictory beliefs. It usually results in (unconscious) efforts to reduce the discomfort by modifying one's appraisal of the situation. The classic example is a smoker resolving the dissonance between "I want to live" and "I smoke cigarettes" by downplaying the health risks of smoking or deciding that old age isn't worth living through anyway.
Cognitive dissonance gets particularly ugly when reality collides with the just world hypothesis, the belief that "the world is an orderly, predictable, and just place, where people get what they deserve." Faced with tragedy, victimization, or injustice, just world believers have four options to reduce the cognitive dissonance: they can act quickly to help relieve the victim's suffering (restoring the justice of the situation), minimize the harm done (making the tragedy a less severe blow to their beliefs), justify the suffering as somehow deserved (redefining the situation as just), or focus on a larger, more encompassing just outcome of the "poor people will receive their rewards in heaven" variety. The first response - the only actually helpful one - isn't always possible. Unfortunately, the latter three pretty much always are.
The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina confronted Americans with a constant parade of images of suffering. Terrible suffering, to extremes hardly imaginable in a wealthy and highly developed society. American citizens dying of thirst, dead bodies lying uncollected on the streets of a major city, elderly people and children penned into the Convention Center and the Superdome in unimaginable squalor, denied even the most basic of aid from their government. There was no immediate way for private citizens to help them. Faced with those horrific images, most of us had powerful reactions of grief, rage, shame, fear, pity. In others, however, the images of Katrina caused cognitive dissonance too great for them to tolerate. Where is the "just world," when wheelchair-bound grandmothers die of thirst? How to maintain, watching the abandonment of New Orleans victims to day after day of imprisonment without relief, the conviction that this is the "greatest country in the world"?
So rumors about the depraved criminal nature of stranded New Orleans citizens spread like wildfire. People managed to convince themselves that the suffering and dying victms of Katrina were too bad to be let out of their flooded prison. People argued that they chose to be there, that they were freeloaders in it for the relief money, that ther losses meant less to them than we would feel in their situation. In short, many people were desperate to restore their faith in a just world by clambering over the bodies of innocent hurricane victims, by convincing themselves that the starving, dehydrated, ailing people in the Superdome had somehow gotten what they deserved.
And who were those people, exactly?people who have a strong tendency to believe in a just world also tend to be more religious, more authoritarian, more conservative, more likely to admire political leaders and existing social institutions, and more likely to have negative attitudes toward underprivileged groups. To a lesser but still significant degree, the believers in a just world tend to "feel less of a need to engage in activities to change society or to alleviate plight of social victims."
Ironically, then, the belief in a just world may take the place of a genuine commitment to justice. For some people, it is simply easier to assume that forces beyond their control mete out justice.
Most people subscribe at least somewhat to the just world hypothesis, on an unconscious level - if you didn't, you'd have little reason to try to do anything. But conservative media commentators have surely taken it to a higher art, and - to the detriment of their essential humanity - their listeners have become experts themselves.
also see.... Katrina Reststop Story
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Monday, January 03, 2005
Monday, December 13, 2004
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
I'm depressed, and mourning for what I thought my country was... for what we supposedly "stood for".
I don't know when, but I'll be back.
-------------------------------------
(11/7/04)
no, not just democrats...
From Newsweek
Kerry himself was itching to hit back at the Swift Boat vets. He had been warned by a McCain aide two years earlier to watch out for the mudslingers on the Republican right. "They'll make it look like you fought for the Viet Cong," said the McCain aide, recalling the dirty tricks played on his own boss in the 2000 primaries. Kerry was furious at former senator Bob Dole, who had gone on TV to say that not all the Swift Boat veterans could be Republican liars. Kerry called his old Senate colleague (and fellow Purple Heart recipient). "You can't say this kind of stuff," Kerry lit into Dole, "and by the way, Bob, I bled from every one of my wounds." Dole blathered that Kerry was a great friend and that he admired him, but he didn't take back what he had said. ("He's an attack dog rehabbed as a statesman, and then he allows himself to be wheeled out for this," growled Shrum, in the midst of a fulmination about "the Big Lie.")
Kerry wanted to blister the Swift Boat vets in a speech he was scheduled to give to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Aug. 18. "We need to get these guys," he said. But at the last minute his handlers on the road were ordered by headquarters in Washington to restrain the candidate.
......
But as early as Aug. 5, when the Swifties were just getting traction, Edwards wanted to push back, hard. McCain had just told the Associated Press that the Swift Boat ads were "dishonest and dishonorable... the same kind of deal that was pulled on me." Edwards wanted to begin a speech, "I join with Senator McCain in calling on the president to condemn this dishonest and dishonorable ad." But Kerry headquarters said no. Stephanie Cutter, the boss of the Kerry communications shop, explained that the campaign didn't need to give the Swift Boat vets any more attention than they were already getting.
Edwards played along, but his aides were indignant. They warned the veep candidate that the story was already out of control and about to get worse. Historian Douglas Brinkley, author of a wartime biography of Kerry, cautioned that Kerry's diary included mention of a meeting with some North Vietnamese terrorists in Paris. Edwards was flabbergasted. "Let me get this straight," the senator said. "He met with terrorists? Oh, that's good."
......
Kerry was personally hurt by the Swift Boat attacks on his valor and honor. On his cell phone, he called Vanessa several times in August to vent about the Swift Boat vets. He would go on about the unfairness of it all. Vanessa could hear the anguish in his voice.
The pain reached deep into the Kerry family. His first wife, Julia Thorne, had been the forgotten woman of the campaign. Divorced from Kerry since 1988, she lived quietly in Montana, recovered from bouts of depression that had plagued her as the privately unhappy wife of a very public man. Thorne never gave interviews, but she was watching the campaign closely, talking to her daughters, Alexandra and Vanessa, at least once a day. She was very upset, she told Vanessa. She could remember how Kerry had suffered in Vietnam; she had seen the scars on his body, heard him cry out at night in his nightmares. She was so agitated about the unfairness of the Swift Boat assault that she told Vanessa she was ready to break her silence, to speak out and personally answer the Swift Boat charges. She changed her mind only when she was reassured that the campaign was about to start fighting back hard.
But Kerry's old ambivalence and caution were surfacing once again. At home he had always been reticent about telling his daughters about the war. They were intensely curious, and they knew their father had suffered. But he would not tell them exactly how. They never knew he had killed someone until they read about it in the newspapers. Alex had become a professional filmmaker. Her first short film was the "fictional" tale of a daughter struggling to connect with her father, a shellshocked veteran of a war reminiscent of Vietnam.
Vanessa assumed that her father was not hitting back because he did not like the dirty side of politics. The Kerry girls saw their father as a pillar of New England rectitude. He had never punished them for being late or for petty rule breaking, only for failing to tell the truth. He would invoke their Brahmin ancestors, looking at them sternly and intoning, "Vanessa Bradford Kerry," "Alexandra Forbes Kerry."
The girls were frustrated. At campaign events, voters would come up to Vanessa and say, "Did your dad really deserve his medals?" Why couldn't her father set them straight? He wouldn't be lying; he'd be telling the truth.
Kerry wanted the truth to come out, but he wanted to get it out in his own careful, deliberate way. The former prosecutor wanted to marshal the evidence, to build a case that would hold up. But that took time, and in the world of bloggers and 24/7 talking heads on cable, every day spent fact checking was a day lost.
.....
In an earlier phone call, Clinton—ever the political triangulator, looking for ways to pick up swing voters by reaching into the so-called Red States—had urged Kerry to back local bans on gay marriage. Kerry respectfully listened, then told his aides, "I'm not going to ever do that."
.....
On Sept. 9 Alex Kerry traveled there with her father. At a Kerry rally she decided to try to find out what "real people" thought by asking a few of them. A group of Democratic voters didn't recognize her. Encouraged by her anonymity, she crossed the street to talk to some Republican protesters. "We know who you are," one of them spat out. Others began shouting that her father was a "baby killer." Shocked by their vehemence, she went to find her father, who quickly saw how upset his daughter had become. He cleared the room of aides. Alex dissolved in tears. "What if they steal the election?" she cried. "We're not going to let that happen," Kerry tried to reassure her. Alex was feeling more and more isolated. Her friends tried to console her, telling her, "Everything will be all right." But she didn't believe them.
.....
Former Clinton pollster Stan Greenberg had been pressing Kerry to tie the war to domestic needs—to declare that $200 billion spent on Iraq meant that much less funding for education and health care at home. Kerry used the line in a few speeches, but reluctantly. He didn't really believe it. In truth, he was willing to spend whatever it took to win in Iraq, or at least to extricate the United States with some semblance of honor.
Still, he was appalled by the carnage in Iraq and the waste of the war. On Sunday night, Sept. 19, the campaign staff met to discuss, one more time, the candidate's position on Iraq. The Clintonistas pushed a harder line against the war. But the campaign's old guard wasn't so sure. Couldn't Kerry play it both ways? Shrum cautioned against appearing too dovish. Kerry seemed to let the debate go on, circling around and around.
But then he spoke. "It's gut-check time, folks," he said. "This is not about whether it's politically expedient. This is a f---ing war. Kids are dying out there, and this president continues not to tell the truth. You'd have to be out of your mind to go in there the way he did. There was no WMD, no imminent threat, no ties to Al Qaeda. The answer is no. Anything else is crap."
The Republicans Won.
America Lost.
Monday, November 01, 2004
This will be my last post until after the election....
President Kerry
President Kerry
President Kerry
Visualize Winning
See you all in a few days.
And we saw an excellent Cure tribute band....
overall... lovely night, last night.
Saturday, October 30, 2004
Bullet In The Head
Rage Against the Machine
This time the bullet cold rocked ya
A yellow ribbon instead of a swastika
Nothin' proper about your propaganda
Fools follow rules when the set commands ya
Said it was blue
When your blood was red
That's how you got a bullet blasted through your head
Blasted through your head
Blasted through your head
I give a shout out to the living dead
Who stood and watched as the feds cold centralized
So serene on the screen
You were mesmerised
Cellular phones soundin' a death tone
Corporations cold
Turn you to stone before you realise
They load the clip in omnicolour
Said they pack the 9, they fire it at prime time
Sleeping gas, every home was like Alcatraz
And mutha fuckas lost their minds
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Run it!
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Checka, checka, check it out
They load the clip in omnicolour
Said they pack the 9, they fire it at prime time
Sleeping gas, every home was like Alcatraz
And mutha fuckas lost their minds
No escape from the mass mind rape
Play it again jack and then rewind the tape
And then play it again and again and again
Until your mind is locked in
Believin' all the lies that they're tellin' you
Buyin' all the products that they're sellin' you
They say jump and you say how high
You're brain-dead
You've gotta fuckin' bullet in your head
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Uggh! Yeah! Yea!
You're standin' in line
Believin' the lies
You're bowin' down to the flag
You've gotta bullet in your head
You're standin' in line
Believin' the lies
You're bowin' down to the flag
You've gotta bullet in your head
A bullet in your head
A bullet in your head
A bullet in your head!
A bullet in your head!
You've got a bullet in your fuckin' head!
Yeah!
"The longhoped-for bullet was entering his brain.
... But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."
1984 - George Orwell
The best thing ever to come from a homophobic misogynist... and something you MUST watch if you haven't seen it yet...
Eminem's Mosh
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
John Kerry is ineligible to be president!
That's right. Taking a cue from the bright minds that carefully brought us the truth, by gleaning knowledge from this photo:*
to let us all know that
"This picture exposes just how close John Kerry was to Jane Fonda," he says. However, he says the photograph doesn't reveal anything that many veterans of Vietnam didn't already know.
"Joining the antiwar movement was possibly the worst thing he could have done to the soldiers still in the field," he said. "He basically gave aid and comfort to the enemy."
and the chorus of bloggers and pundits everywhere joining in to show that this proves an "intimate" relationship between the two, and how a vote for Kerry would basically be a vote for Fonda....
I submit to all of you, oh wise interpreters of truth...
This photo:
and I assert that John Kerry is actually British!
You see, this shows that John Kerry was pretty much a Beatle, and therefore you should consider him as one and that same with John Lennon. Even more evidence is the fact that they both are called "John"....
hmmmm.....
------------
* I actually believe that this article was written about the photoshopped picture of Kerry and Fonda that made the rounds, since one quote from the article was... "When he stands up with Jane Fonda, someone that is so notorious and hated by veterans....." It seems the only photo published on the Washington Times site is the photo above, however.
I don't have the fake photo here, but I know it's easily googled. Just beware - there are a load of nutcases who think that the photoshopped version is the actual "true" version - and plenty of folks who think the dems must have planted this themselves.... which leads me to wonder if those same people think Bush is behind the forged documents given to Rather......
I finally changed my Kucinich for President button on the side of the blog for a Kerry for President button.... It pained me to do, but it was LONG overdue. I'm not sure that anyone noticed, however - not many people, if any, actually visit the blog!
I've got plenty to blog about - and will do so soon... Last friday, the roomie and I ventured into the belly of the beast. We bought tickets to see a "debate" about the election between Al Gore and Bob Dole. It wasn't until half way to Virginia Beach that I actually looked at the paper and the description of the other buildings at Regent University - I get the dumbass of the week award for not knowing that Regent is Pat Robertson's School! I will say that it took balls of steel for Gore to come there and play for an audience massively stacked for the "other side". I honestly believe that there was maybe one other democrat in the audience beside the roomie and myself.... and that was Tipper.
Anyhoo.... more on that later...
for now, I think this letter from Riverbend's Blog is worthy of being reprinted in full....
American Elections 2004...
Warning- the following post is an open letter of sorts to Americans.
So elections are being held in America. We’re watching curiously here. Previously, Iraqis didn’t really take a very active interest in elections. We knew when they were being held and quite a few Iraqis could give an opinion about either of the candidates. I think many of us realized long ago that American foreign policy really had nothing to do with this Democrat or that Republican.
It sometimes seems, from this part of the world, that democracy in America revolves around the presidential elections- not the major decisions. War and peace in America are in the average American’s hands about as much as they are in mine. Sure, you can vote for this man or that one, but in the end, there’s something bigger, more intricate and quite sinister behind the decisions. Like in that board game Monopoly, you can choose the game pieces- the little shoe, the car, the top hat… but you can’t choose the way the game is played. The faces change but the intentions and the policy remain the same.
Many, many people have asked me about the elections and what we think of them. Before, I would have said that I really don’t think much about it. Up until four years ago, I always thought the American elections were a pretty straightforward process: two white males up for the same position (face it people- it really is only two- Nader doesn’t count), people voting and the person with more votes wins. After the debacle of four years ago, where Bush Jr. was *assigned* president, things are looking more complicated and a little bit more sordid.
I wouldn’t normally involve myself in debates or arguments about who should be American president. All I know is that four years ago, we prayed it wouldn’t be Bush. It was like people could foresee the calamity we’re living now and he embodied it. (Then, there’s that little issue of his being completely ridiculous…)
So now there are three different candidates- Bush, Kerry and Nader. We can safely take Nader out of the equation because, let’s face it, he won’t win. We have a saying in Iraq, “Lo tetla’a nakhla ib rasseh” (if a palm tree grows out of his head) he won’t win. The real contest is between Bush and Kerry. Nader is a distraction that is only taking votes away from Kerry.
Who am I hoping will win? Definitely Kerry. There’s no question about it. I want Bush out of the White House at all costs. (And yes- who is *in* the White House *is* my business- Americans, you made it my business when you occupied my country last year) I’m too realistic to expect drastic change or anything phenomenal, but I don’t want Bush reelected because his reelection (or shall I call it his ‘reassignment’) will condone the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq. It will say that this catastrophe in Iraq was worth its price in American and Iraqi lives. His reassignment to the White House will sanction all the bloodshed and terror we’ve been living for the last year and a half.
I’ve heard all the arguments. His supporters are a lot like him- they’ll admit no mistakes. They’ll admit no deceit, no idiocy, no manipulation, no squandering. It’s useless. Republicans who *don’t* support him, but feel obliged to vote for him, write long, apologetic emails that are meant, I assume, to salve their own conscience. They write telling me that he should be ‘reelected’ because he is the only man for the job at this point. True, he made some mistakes and he told a few fibs, they tell me- but he really means well and he intends to fix things and, above all, he has a plan.
Let me assure you Americans- he has NO PLAN. There is no plan for the mess we’re living in- unless he is cunningly using the Chaos Theory as a basis for his Iraq plan. Things in Iraq are a mess and there is the sense that the people in Washington don’t know what they’re doing, and their puppets in Iraq know even less. The name of the game now in Iraq is naked aggression- it hasn’t been about hearts and minds since complete areas began to revolt. His Iraq plan may be summarized with the Iraqi colloquial saying, “A’athreh ib dafra”, which can be roughly translated to ‘a stumble and a kick’. In other words, what will happen, will happen and hopefully- with a stumble and a kick- things will move in the right direction.
So is Kerry going to be much better? I don’t know. I don’t know if he’s going to fix things or if he’s going to pull out the troops, or bring more in. I have my doubts about how he will handle the current catastrophe in Iraq. I do know this: nothing can be worse than Bush. No one can be worse than Bush. It will hardly be fair to any president after Bush in any case- it's like assigning a new captain to a drowning ship. All I know is that Bush made the hole and let the water in, I want him thrown overboard.
Someone once wrote to me, after a blog barrage against Bush, that I should tone down my insults against the president because I would lose readers who actually supported him. I lost those readers the moment I spoke out against the war and occupation because that is what Bush is all about. He’s not about securing America or Iraq or ‘the region’- he’s about covering up just how inadequate he is as a person and as a leader with war, nonexistent WMD, fabled terrorists and bogeymen.
I guess what I’m trying to say is this: Americans, the name of your country which once stood for ‘freedom and justice’ is tarnished worldwide. Your latest president has proved that the great American image of democracy is just that- an image. You can protest, you can demonstrate, you can vote- but it ends there. The reigns were out of your hands the moment Bush stepped into the White House. You were deceived repetitively and duped into two wars. Your sons and daughters are dying, and killing, in foreign lands. Your embassies are in danger all over the world. ‘America’ has become synonymous with ‘empire’, ‘hegemony’, and ‘warfare’. And why? All because you needed to be diverted away from the fact that your current president is a failure.
Some people associate the decision to go to war as a ‘strength’. How strong do you need to be to commit thousands of your countrymen and women to death on foreign soil? Especially while you and your loved ones sit safely watching at home. How strong do you need to be to give orders to bomb cities to rubble and use the most advanced military technology available against a country with a weak army and crumbling infrastructure? You don’t need to be strong- you need to be mad.
Americans- can things be worse for you? Can things be worse for us in Iraq? Of course they can… only imagine- four more years of Bush.
and oh yeah.... watching the video from PA....
I really miss the big dog, too.
Friday, October 22, 2004
