Because Grieving Mothers Are Scary

From the wonderful Mr. Fish, at Harper's. Click to enlarge:

A Respite From The Jungle

I'm out of town for a brief trip. Back in a couple days.

Averting Our Eyes, Holding Our Noses

While America shops, Iraq continues to crumble into a chaotic purgatory of murder, kidnapping, crime, torture, and sectarian violence. Just this morning on NPR's All Things Considered, Phillip Reeves interviewed the relative of a Sunni recently murdered by Shiites who guiltily noted that when he hears of Shias narrowly escaping assassination attacks, he wishes they had "got him". He admits he would have joined in anti-Shiite attacks himself except that he is married and waiting on the birth of his son. Then, later, there is the description of the smell of the city morgue, stifling in the high heat of the Iraqi summer with a record number of bodies, many of them bearing the mutilations of torture.

In an August 17 story, Robert Fisk of The Independent, stated that last July was the bloodiest month on record for Baghdad Iraqis since the start of the war: 1,100 Iraqi bodies were brought into the city morgue during that month. (The NPR report has raised that to 1,700.) As Fisk states, it's impossible to assign reasons for all of the deaths; some were simply criminal acts, some were misogynistic honor killings, some involved no foul play at all. But as both his report and the NPR story point up, the deaths by violence, and by sectarian violence in particular, are skyrocketing, and we would know more, if only our own government, in collusion with our media, was not so intent on hiding the truth from us. Nothing brings this home more clearly than this paragraph, reproduced here from the Fisk article thanks to Kevin at PA For Democracy:

"Doctors have been told that bodies brought to the mortuary by US forces should not be given post-mortem examinations (on the odd ground that the Americans will have already performed this function)."

This means that verifications of causes of death are often ommitted. Not that the fools responsible for this abbatoir care enough to keep track.

We are witnessing a deliberate and concerted effort to hide the costs of this illegal war by a criminal element that has wholly overtaken the government of our nation and is ensuring the same criminality will thrive in the puppet government of the new Iraq.

Go to D.C. on September 24 and make your voice heard over their lies.

Enough Already!

Once again, I got off the train this morning trying to see through watering eyes. It's bad enough living and working in a big city where it seems more than half the people are drenching themselves in the foulest scents imagineable under the delusion that it makes them somehow more appealing. What's worse is that these are always the people with whom you find yourself trapped in close quarters, unable to escape or even gulp a lungful of untainted air. Elevators, waiting lines, restaurants (nothing more appetizing when you are about to take a bite of lunch than a good whiff of "Opium" or "Incest" or whatever the fuck they are calling their alcohol-soaked oils of dead glands these days)---all of them become mantraps, holding you at the mercy of these damned olfactory-challenged fools.

But nothing is worse than having one of them sit next to you for a half an hour on the train, where you are unable to even stand up and go to the bar or restroom. You sit there, gasping like a dying fish, assailed by fumes that any normal human being would only endure after donning a hazmat suit, and what can you say? "Please move elsewhere"? Even if there was somewhere else to move to, once the air has been contaminated, it doesn't matter where you are in the car...there it is. This morning a woman got on who sat fully 3 rows ahead of me, yet from the way my trachea closed up and my nasal passages constricted once her vile potions reached my respiratory system, she may as well have poured a liter of the stuff down my throat. And this is not an occasional thing. Everyday I wonder whether the person sitting near me will be slathered up for an evening out at 7:00 in the freaking morning, and how long the effects will linger.

And it's not just a female phenomenon. Men are increasingly dousing themselves in rotgut that promises to turn women into leopardesses in heat, perfumes with matching deodorants with ridiculous names like "Arctic Force", "Ionic", and "Tsunami" (bet they love that one in Aceh). One handshake and I'm stuck back in 1968, smelling like my 15 year old stepbrother at his first dance.

I once thought employee dress codes prohibiting the wearing of scents were facsist, but that was before I began having these chemically-sensitive moments I used to associate with whiny little canary-in-a-coalmine types. It's not that I hate perfume. I hate the way it's used, indiscriminately, with no sense of appropriate place, time or amount. I hate trying to eat and being assailed with odors so completely out of place that they ruin my ability to taste the food. I hate trying to work and getting headaches from the huge clouds of noxious fumes that waft from my coworkers into my office, where ventilation is only an urban legend. And I hate being unable to sit on the train and read because I can't see through the tears brought on by the irritants in the emblaming fluid worn by my fellow commuter. Whether I've just become sensitive from a daily onslaught of chemicals, or whether people have become so desperate to avoid smelling human that they've grown increasingly immune to the amount of scent they use, the effect is just the same. Please, people, I'm begging here...just stop the madness. Use a good soap and a nice Thai crystal, and if you really want women to fall all over you, let your pheromones have a fighting chance.

The Vigil--More Results

Based on the number of events that were filled or almost filled to capacity last night in my local area, the candlelight vigils seemed a success. The one we went to was aiming for 100, but registration and participation exceeded that.



The one I attended was full of folks from all walks of life, but one contingent was noticeably lacking: the youngest adults, the very people whose lives are most at risk thanks to this cannon fodder-happy administration.


We had an opportunity to get the word out about the upcoming D.C. anti-war mobilization the weekend of September 24, and meet some folks who have been participating in activist events since the Vietnam era. Here was the sign I wore, an old Vietnam era anti-war poster:



We had only a few hecklers, one being a car flying past whose driver yelled "Go to hell"! (Hah! You're already there, buddy.) It was heartening that many other people who drove by honked in solidarity, including a city ambulancea and a SEPTA bus driver who banged away merrily at his horn all the way through the intersection.


The upshot was that we will continue to meet each Wednesday and maybe pull more local folks into it. I want to especially thank the Borders store that graciously allowed us to take up their sidewalk space and utilize their much-needed restroom facilities.

More stories to come.

Put Your Body Where Your Mouth Is

Cindy Sheehan has asked that those who support her cause start candlelight vigils in their own communities across the country. Tonight is your chance to stand up and be counted. Helping coordinate this event (as if you couldn't tell from the graphic) are MoveOn.org, Democracy For America, and True Majority. As MoveOn's site says:

"Our vigils will be simple and dignified. Together, we'll acknowledge the sacrifices made by Cindy Sheehan, her son, Casey and the more than 1,800 brave American men and women who have given their lives in Iraq—and their moms and families."

Simply click this link, enter your zip code and the distance you're willing to travel, and a page of events will appear. (It's already set to show Philly events, but you can personalize it for your area by just entering your own zip.) To sign up, just click on the event you want to take part in.

I'm going.

UPDATE: Problems with the site link for the event list. Try this instead. If you keep having problems, keep trying. It seems become accessible and then not by alternate seconds.

SECOND UPDATE: For those in the Philly area, a vigil at the First United Methodist Church of Germantown will be attended by Celeste Zappala, who also lost her son in Iraq last year. Celeste is from Philadelphia, and spoke at a MoveOn.org event here last October along with Al Franken and Jessica Lange. She was a moving and powerful speaker, and had us all in tears. She has joined in support with Cindy Sheehan. If I hadn't already registered with a different vigil, I would definitely be there.
To get there, follow this link.

Riding While Not-White

So as reported this morning on BBC, and by ITV, who came into possession of the leaked documents via the Independent Police Complaints Commission, and later in CNN, we see that the boy shot by London police for a terrorist was actually a commuter with the bad luck to be non-Anglo. And not only was he not wearing a big heavy coat, he was not running, didn't jump over anything, took a slow escalator to the subway, and was sitting down when they repeatedly shot him to death. The description of the video paints a picture nothing like the "ticking bomb" that supposedly led to an unfortunate, frantic split-second decision to kill him. In fact, it looks as thought there had been plenty of time to verify his identity, or at least apprehend him without gunplay:

"ITV News, citing documents and photographs, reported that de Menezes was not carrying any bags when he entered the Stockwell Tube station and was wearing a denim jacket, rather than a bulky coat as police had previously said.
De Menezes walked at a normal pace, did not vault any barriers and even stopped to pick up a newspaper, ITV News reported.
He descended to the train slowly on an escalator, then ran toward the open subway car and took a seat, according to ITV, which based its account on a document outlining what was captured on surveillance footage.
At about the same time, armed officers were provided with positive identification that de Menezes was either Hamdi Issac, also known as Osman Hussain, one of the suspected bombers from the day before, or another suspect, at which point he was shot, ITV News reported."

And when did this fatal misidentification occur?

"According to the network, the crucial mistake that led to de Menezes' death may have occurred that morning as he left his apartment, when surveillance officers spotted him and he was misidentified as a possible terrorist.
London police were authorized to shoot and kill suspects they believed might try to set off more subway bombs. Shortly after de Menezes' death, police justified their actions by saying he was acting suspiciously and tried to run from officers, forcing detectives to make a split-second decision to shoot him."

So they had a considerable amount of time to verify their identification, but didn't, then covered their fuck-up over with a thin layer of fine bobbie manure. Well done, lads. Worthy of L.A. and New York's finest. And to the defense that was raised earlier, that the cops risked the possibility that he could have been carrying a bomb and would have had time to blow up himself and those around him if they had confronted him, I'd say, if he was carrying a bomb, how likely would it have been that shooting at him could have set off that bomb? I mean. Please.

A Jury Of Her Peers

Sometimes there is nothing you can write that could point up the stupidity, ignorance, racism and utter hard-heartedness of the average American cracker as well as simply reproducing the facts themselves:

"The only woman ever executed in Georgia's electric chair, Lena Baker, is being granted a posthumous pardon, 60 years after she was put to death for killing a man she said had held her in slavery and threatened her life.
The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles plans to make the pardon official by presenting a proclamation to Ms. Baker's descendants at a meeting on Aug. 30 in Atlanta, a board spokeswoman, Scheree Lipscomb, said Monday.
The board did not find that Ms. Baker was not guilty of the crime, but it did find that the decision to deny her clemency in 1945 "was a grievous error, as this case called out for mercy," Ms. Lipscomb said.
In her one-day trial, Ms. Baker, who was black, testified that E. B. Knight, a white man she had been hired to care for, had held her against her will and threatened to shoot her. She said she grabbed a gun and shot him when he raised a metal bar to strike her. She was convicted by an all-white, all-male jury.
Ms. Baker's grandnephew, Roosevelt Curry, has led the family's effort to clear her name."

Tell me again, when is Ken Lay's trial?

What's My Motivation?

John Wooden, getting under the rotting possum hide of the presidential persona, gives voice to the real motives underlying Bush's incomprehensible babble and inactions as only Wooden can.

In the meantime, the Japanese offer hope that a breakthrough in human skin-substitute technology (you didn't know there was such a thing, did you?) may one day be able to provide Bush with the feeling he has so sorely lacked for the past, oh, 59 years.

If you can't wait that long, but would be happy with a fake president who was at least amusing, you could try Christopher Walken, still waiting for his big break courtesy of some jokers at General Mayhem. An actor for president--what a concept!

No, wait...we have one already.

In Case You Think He Forgot

Yesterday, as we celebrated the most successful and important public program ever created in the US, many other folks no longer interested in the issue thought Bush's campaign against it was dead in the water and was pretty much over. But in Reuters' report this morning there's this:

"Social Security, the New Deal-era program credited with keeping millions of elderly people out of poverty, turned 70 on Sunday with Americans rallying around it and President George W. Bush as determined as ever to give it a makeover."

Deep in the bowels of Crawford, the Dauphin dozes, while waiting for his henchman to reconstruct the attack:

"Republican lawmakers have put off any action on Social Security until the fall.
Bush has scaled back the number of his Social Security speeches as he tried to give room to House of Representatives Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas to work on a broad proposal to include such ideas as retirement savings incentives.
Charlie Black, a Republican political strategist, said Bush's lower profile should not be mistaken for waning interest.
"I don't think he's lost any of his zeal for Social Security reform," Black said. "The action has sort of shifted to the Hill now and the Ways and Means Committee so we'll have to kind of see what they can come up with."

Be forewarned. This is a battle we can't afford to lose, because once changes are made, it will never be restored.

Party!

Today's the day. Be there!


UPDATE:

Well, it's over. It was great fun, and a surprising number of folks showed up--maybe 150, give or take. The musicians were great, and the Host Committee (of which my husband was a major player) were generous with their time, money, and musclepower. I cooked corn and hot dogs (and kosher dogs and--ugh!--tofu dogs) all day in the steamy heat, sweating like two whores in church. And I got to meet my blogsister, eRobin, and her lovely family while dripping wet in some of my most unflattering but politically trenchant duds. People stood up and talked about Social Security and how it had made a difference in their lives, and Joe Hoeffel was a mensch as always. Games, speeches, music, and tales of the days before SS.

Exhausted and heading for the couch and a cold drink. Thanks, Robin, for your help in publicizing, and to Mithras and Susie Madrak and anyone I may have missed for putting it on your blogs, and thanks to my blogsibs at Corrente for their support on this, too. Although you all may have less traffic than the biggest boys, you have something better: heart and soul and decency.

Back to the old kvetchmongering tomorrow.

The Gray Lady or The Tiger?

Hmmm. Video game/comic book-inspired graphics come to the Times front page. As a graphic and newspaper layout artist in a former life, I'm on the fence about this one. The right side of my brain likes the sensuality. The analytical, "just the facts, ma'am" side wants more gravitas.

Luckily, it's the Times, so we probably won't get much of either.

If God Had Wanted You To Think, He Wouldn't Have Given You The Washington Press Corps

Things are starting to converge: the war, the criminality of everyday business on the Hill and in the Oval Office, the rape and pillage of our labor laws and environmental and public health regulations, the theft of votes, the force-feeding of poisonous presidential appointments aimed at bringing down the very systems that have protected us, however imperfectly, from boardroom sharks and wealthy conscienceless thugs. It's putting me into an activist state of mind I haven't felt since the protests of 1969 and 1970, remembering the fearlessness of those days. And to watch Cindy Sheehan taking a stand down south recalls those days, as she attracts others to her vigil by the sheer determination and bravery of her stance. The old poster on the left sidebar is a reminder of those days; it came straight out of the Vietnam anti-war movement, and it's a horror and a shame that it's still relevant today. So the Social Security Birthday Party tomorrow is on the agenda for me, and the March on Washington against the Iraq war the weekend of September 24. I don't know if participating will make a difference, but it surely won't if I sit on my ass and keep my mouth shut. Which is more like what the wordpimps running The Washington Post have in mind for their own people, as Editor & Publisher notes:

"The Washington Post has no plans to withdraw its co-sponsorship of a controversial Sept. 11 memorial walk being organized by the Department of Defense, according to Publisher Bo Jones. But, he said the paper would pull out if the event turns out to be some kind of pro-war or political march."

Bo knows political:

"This has nothing to do with politics or the war or support of any political position."

So just to be sure the White House-organized event was not seen as supporting the war, they got this clown for the big finale:

"The gathering will culminate in a concert by country star Clint Black, known for a pro-war song "Iraq and I Roll," which declares, "We can't ignore the devil, he'll keep coming back for more."

You mean like, a third term in office? More about Black in a minute. The problem is, as usual, those who got shall get, and those who don't get to sit down and shut up:

"But Rick Weiss, a Post science reporter and co-chair of the Washington Post unit of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, noted the hypocrisy of the paper's involvement, since it bars reporters from participating in partisan events. "It is dismaying, to say the least, that I can be fired for participating in a peace march while my employer feels free to co-sponsor an event that so blatantly beats the drum of war," Weiss stated."

Dismaying. Indeed. We really are on our way to besting the Brits at understatement these days, especially since braying our "dismay" too loudly can get us canned or hauled off for a body cavity search.

Not political? Please, people. Since when did this administration ever do anything that wasn't calculated to advance its agenda and "catapult the propaganda"? And right now, with support for the war at an all-time low, what better time to try to re-capture the high-androgenic pre-war excitement once stirred up so successfully by Clear Channel and its herd-intoxicant whupass rallies? (I once watched the faithful stream past in the hundreds for one held in Valley Forge National Park. A stench of anger and belligerence hung over them as they marched their paunchy bodies over the gentle hills, waving flags and celebrating the impending deathfest--of which, from the look of them, most would never have to take part.) But just to make it interesting, E&P points this out:

"Post spokesman Eric Grant echoed the publisher's view, claiming the paper's interest was strictly non-partisan...
"The walk was never presented to us as a rally to support the war and we would be very disappointed if it took that approach."

Whew! That's enough for me. They never told us it was political, so it's not. Mind you, these are supposed to be people whose careers are based on winnowing truth from lies, so how could the wool be pulled over their ever-vigilant eyes? If the President says it, well, then, by God, that's good enough for the millions of readers who trust them to get to the bottom of any funny business, right?

Sad. Grown people taking paychecks to make decisions that would be as easily made in the sandbox of any progressive kindergarten. Not a pro-war rally, no way! Oh, and remember Clint? He validates the wistful trust of WaPo with this verse of his crowd-pleasin' pulp fiction, soon to mark the crescendo of the rally:

"IT MIGHT BE A SMART BOMB
THEY FIND STUPID PEOPLE TOO
AND IF YOU STAND WITH THE LIKES OF SADDAM
ONE JUST MIGHT FIND YOU"

Speak out against criminality, murder, and lies, and now you're just like Saddam Hussein. And if that's not enough to shut you up, just remember:

"I'VE GOT INFRARED, I'VE GOT GPS AND I'VE GOT THAT GOOD OLD FASHIONED LEAD
THERE'S NO PRICE TOO HIGH FOR FREEDOM
SO BE CAREFUL WHERE YOU TREAD"

Are you going to let these moral insects determine what kind of country you will live in?

Riding The Wave

From the United For Peace & Justice website:

Sept. 24-26 D.C. Anti-war Mobilization
Three Days of Action for Peace and Justice in Washington, D.C.

Saturday, September 24
Massive March, Rally & Anti-war Fair
Gather 11:00 a.m.at the Washington Monument

Sat., Sept. 24 -
Operation Ceasefire Concert

Sun., Sept. 25 -
Interfaith Service,
Grassroots Training

Mon., Sept. 26 -
Grassroots Lobby Day and
Mass Nonviolent Direct Action and
Civil Disobedience


• UFPJ approach to 9/24: Unity in the Streets
• Receive email updates
• Latest details
• Download leaflets and outreach materials
• Order buttons and stickers
• Download website banners
• Endorse the mobilization
• View list of endorsers
• DC mobilizing
• Volunteer Form for DC-area residents
• NYC mobilizing
• Offer or find a ride on our rideboard
• Offer or find housing in DC and affordable hotels


Here's a partial list of groups and folks who also plan to be there:
Code Pink
Vietnam Veterans Against The War
U.S. Labor Against The War
DC Anti-War Network (DAWN)
Many of UFPJ's member groups (massive list)
---and many more to be announced when I can get the time.


And in Great Britain, a show of solidarity on the 24th in Central London:

Military Families Against The War
Stop The War Coalition
Campaign For Nulear Disarmament
Muslim Association of Britain


Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink, said back in June:

"The peace movement, demoralized after the unsuccessful efforts to both stop the war and get George Bush out of office, must lift itself out of the doldrums and into the streets and the corridors of power. We must push our representatives to sign on to the new legislation, keep demanding an investigation into the Downing Street Memo, and pressure the media to cover these new developments in a serious, respectful way. We should march in July 4 parades with the "Bring the Troops Home" message, reinvigorate our local vigils, step up the counter-recruitment efforts that are making it so difficult for the military to get enough new soldiers for this war. And the next big anti-war mobilization scheduled for September 24 in Washington DC, coupled with lobbying on September 26, must be huge.
We've got new momentum. Now let's ride the wave. "

This is one of the most important events you may ever be able to join--be there!

A Gentle Reminder

As eRobin at Fact-esque says,

"This is the party that the DNC/DCCC/DSCC should have organized to happen on the National Mall and across the country. When people talk about the Dems being dinosaurs, it is partly because of massive, embarrassing failures of imagination like this.
So you know what will get the press on August 14th? This."

She's right. Don't let "Justice Sunday--The Retread" get all the publicity. Bloggers and citizens! Let us eat cake! It's our solemn duty:


An Invite From Your Local DFA & Philly For Change

If you live in the Philadelphia area, and you care about what your government is trying to do to Social Security, come out and join with others who are working to save it---meet great people, stuff your face with good eats, and talk with some of your local candidates and representatives to exchange ideas on how to do it.

Join us at an old-fashioned
Sunday picnic in the park to say "Happy 70th Birthday, Social Security!"

Sponsored by
Montco DFA
and
Philly for Change,
the party will be held at Fort Washington State Park in Flourtown, PA on August 14.

We'll have food, fun, and good company.

RAIN or SHINE

PARTY FOOD

• BIRTHDAY CAKE • Grilled Hot Dogs • Corn-on-the-Cob • Soft Drinks •

SPECIAL GUESTS

• Former U.S. Rep. Joe Hoeffel • PA Sen. LeAnna Washington • Billionaires for Bush •

• County Commissioner Ruth Damsker •

• Marty Berger, PA President, Alliance of Retired Americans •

Congressional candidates • Lois Murphy • Pat Murphy • Ginny Schrader • Lois Herr • Paul Scoles

LIVE MUSIC

• The Ellis Reed Band • Old time country/folk/rock/singer-songwriter 5-piece acoustic band •
• Marti Rogers • Songs from Social Security’s 1935 start: the Depression and union roots •
• Rusty & Jan + Terry • Country meets Rock and Classical Flute, with a dash of renegade Cowboy •
• The Song Sheets Plus • Folk Songs of the 60s and 70s •

GAMES

• Socially Secure Three-Legged Races • Yer on Yer Own Sack Races • 50/50 Raffle •

• Pin the TALE on the Politician • Lotsa Luck Horseshoe Pitching • Privitization Pig Piñata •

Please RSVP here.

$5 per person suggested donation. Please note that alcoholic beverages are prohibited in Pennsylvania State Parks and that pets must be leashed at all times. Sorry.

Please RSVP here.

The Flourtown Day Use Area is located on West Mill Road between Stenton Ave and Bethlehem Pike in Flourtown. Click here for a map.

A special thank you to Our Host Committee for helping to make this event possible

Sen. Leanna Washington • Josh Shapiro • Lee Nelson • Mary Clark Thompson • Frank and Maggie Moya • Ben Burrows • Kevin Shaw • Ruth Damsker • Ginny Schrader • Joe Hoeffel • Patrick Murphy • Lois Herr • Paul Scoles

Thank you!

For those interested in using SEPTA, it's a piece of cake (!) Take the R7 Chestnut Hill East (30 mins.) to the end of the line and pick up the 94 bus. Hop off at Mill Rd (Flourtown Shopping Center, 6 mins on the bus) and walk west on Mill Rd ~0.2 mile (5 mins.) to the picnic area. Both the R7 from Center City stations and buses from Chestnut Hill run hourly on the half-hour (10:30, 11:30, 12:30, etc.) all day Sunday.

Devolution In The Heartland

What's the matter with Kansas? Who cares anymore?

"The Kansas Board of Education has voted six-to-four to include greater criticism of evolution in its school science standards, but will submit the standards to an outside review before taking a final vote.
The language favored by the board comes from advocates of intelligent design, who say life and the universe are too complex to have evolved by accident."

It's plain these people are more interested in teaching Sunday School than science, so why don't they just close down the schools and start sending students to their neighborhood church basements for 5 days a week of hymn-singing and Bible study?

Everytime you think things couldn't get more backward, whoomp! there it is. At this rate I expect "Creation Myths of the Levant" to soon become a requirement for any future high school or GED diplomas handed out within the borders of the United States.

We're a humorless, ignorant bunch. And if the unfolding educational debacle above fails to prove my point, lets return to the those glorious days of yesteryear (that is, 2 months ago):


Dan Hicks And His Tepid Licks

Can someone, anyone, explain to the good people of the heartland what difference exists between art, anthropology, and religious worship? Let us follow the terrible, irresistable force of these philosophically immovable objects:

The Gauntlet Is Flapped--
June 7, 2005: Over at Freepland, from the think tank known as Crackingham:

"A couple of displays at the Tulsa Zoo have angered some critics. And another that's been suggested is controversial too... Over by the elephants at the Tulsa Zoo, there is a statue of an elephant called "Ganesha". For Hindu's (sic), Ganesha is a revered deity, one of the most important in the religion. But the curator of the exhibit at the Tulsa Zoo says it's not religious, in this setting. Brett Fidler: "We exhibit it out of the religious context, strictly as a museum piece."
For Dan Hicks..., that's unbelievable...
Hicks wants his religion included or the Hindu icon removed. He's suggested a biblical account of creation that zoo staff has so far, rejected. The Tulsa Zoo says the belief that God created the animals has no scientific merit and that's why it's not mentioned at the zoo. Brett Fidler: “we display things that have been proven through the scientific method and intelligent design has not been proven, to the point that it belongs at an institution like the Tulsa Zoo.”
The critics also think one of the zoo's most visible symbols, the big globe by the entrance, evokes religion through the saying "the earth is our mother, the sky is our father". Zoo staff says it's there to add a Native American flair, but Hicks believe it's another example of openness to anything but the Christian view. The Tulsa Parks Board, which oversees the zoo, takes up the controversy at a meeting Tuesday. It will vote on whether or not to allow a display on the biblical view of creation."

Well, God bless Brett Fidler! Let us continue our adventure.

Art & Science Are Gelded--
June 14, 2005: From the horse’s ass--er--mouth, Charisma Now, fighting the good fight toward (as Jon Stewart put it) that glorious day when Christians will be free to worship openly:

"In "a big victory" for creationists, the Tulsa Zoo has acquiesced to add a display featuring the biblical account of creation following complaints about other displays with religious significance in the Oklahoma facility, including a Hindu elephant statue.
...said Dan Hicks, the Tulsa resident who approached the zoo with the idea. "It's a matter of fairness. To not include the creationist view would be discrimination."
Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis (AiG), which claims to be the world's largest creation organization, praised Hicks, vice president of the Southern Plains Creation Society.
"We need more people like Dan Hicks who are willing to boldly lead the battle (yes, and even to endure some ridicule) to tell people the truth concerning the creation of the universe..."

Yes, even to endure some ridicule. Is there no limit to the martyrdom of some for the sake of their faith? Is there no limit to the cluelessness of mindless acolytes? Evidence would indicate not. We push on.

The Intelligently Created Worm Begins To Turn--
June 24, 2005: Can’t tell difference between an art display and a religious display? Over at The Pluralism Project they’ve been keeping track:

On June 8, 2005 The Associated Press reported, "...those who favored the creationist exhibit, including Mayor Bill LaFortune, argued that the zoo already displayed religious items, including the statue of the Hindu god, Ganesh, outside the elephant exhibit and a marble globe inscribed with an American Indian saying: 'The earth is our mother. The sky is our father.'"

On June 24, 2005 the Associated Press reported, "A recently formed group has started circulating a petition asking [Tulsa's] Park and Recreation Board to reverse its June 7 decision authorizing a biblical creation story exhibit at the Tulsa zoo... [Supporters of the petition] said the park board, by ordering creation story exhibits at the zoo, put public officials in the position of making decisions about theology... Mayor Bill LaFortune and his chief of staff, Clay Bird, came in for most of the group's criticism. 'If the mayor hadn't been behind this, we don't think it would have happened,' [Brian Cross, an Oklahoma State University graduate student and supporter of the petition] said. LaFortune said he had no intention of changing his mind."

Assuming, that is, he had a mind to change. And the light at the end of the tunnel grows brighter.

Specialness--
July 7, 2005: The Washington Post weighed in with a report on the sudden sanity which gripped the Tulsa city board and resulted in the rejection of a "creation display" being pushed by the Genesists:

"Board members voted 3-1 against installing an exhibit on the origin of life from the Bible. The vote, made at a special meeting of the board, reversed a June 7 decision to add a Genesis story to the zoo.
As one of only nine "living museums" in the country, the Tulsa Zoo should develop displays that explain the cultural significance of animals, (Board member Dale) McNamara said. She said an elephant-like stone statue near the elephant exhibit fit within that mission."

Who was the single holdout vote? Mayor LaFortune, of course. His further utterances were forgettable, but the brain trust behind this whole bright idea was making "never-say-die" noises:

"In the meantime, the zoo continues to have a representation of a Hindu god, a globe sculpture that promotes pantheism and a Maasai display that contains the equivalent of posting Scripture, Hicks said. Presenting this material represented an affront to the majority Christian population of Tulsa, he said.
"There must be something very special about the Genesis account for opponents to fight so hard to suppress those words," Hicks said."

In the old days we had a slightly different interpretation of the euphemism "special".

Oh, Backwater, Keep On Rolling--
July 10, 2005: The NYTimes op-ed puts the recent unpleasantness to bed:

"Christian creationists won too much of a victory for their own good in Tulsa, where the local zoo was ordered to balance its evolution science exhibit with a display extolling the Genesis account of God's creating the universe from nothing in six days. A determined creationist somehow talked three of the four zoo directors, including Mayor Bill LaFortune, into the addition by arguing that a statue of the elephant-headed god Ganesh at the elephant house amounted to an anti-Christian bias toward Hinduism.
After the inevitable backlash from bewildered taxpayers warning that Tulsa would be dismissed as a science backwater, the directors "clarified" their vote to say they intended no monopoly for the Adam and Eve tale but rather wanted "six or seven" creation myths afforded equal time."

That damned Ganesh! Why does he always have to stick his trunk into it?

I can lay odds the this won't be the last rough beast of its kind to raise its misshapen snout into the public arena.


UPDATE: And as the latest heralds from Kansas proclaim, it wasn't.

The Lesser Evil

"The first casualty, when war comes, is truth."
---Senator Hiram Johnson, 1917

My father fought in the Pacific Theatre of World War II as an Army sergeant in the Philippines, and then beyond. He was not far from Japan when the atomic bombs were dropped, and right after the peace treaty was signed, he was stationed in Japan itself for a brief period. He never spoke about it, never volunteered information, but if pressed he would tell me some thing fairly innocuous, like how a Zero suddenly appeared above their camp and sent everyone flying for cover, including the driver of a jeep, whose sudden abandonment of the vehicle sent it careening over him. Thereafter he always carried a scar on his shin from where the tires ran over his leg, and the scar, like the jungle rot in his feet that never quite went away, or his revulsion toward seafood, which had come from a steady diet of fish heads and rice, remained a constant reminder of where he'd been and what he'd done. But when he and his friends got together, or the other veterans in my family, none of them ever exchanged war stories. None of them could even be coaxed into talking about it.

He had been back from the war for almost 8 years by the time I came along. I was still a very young child when I first remember poring over the old photos he brought back, of himself and his friends posing in front of some monument with a nameless Japanese woman who smiled pleasantly for the camera. I remember thinking, even as a child, how unlikely that smile seemed. I remember running my hands over the hilt of the samurai sword he brought back as a souvenir, fascinated by that tangible link to an impossibly alien place, and how, despite all entreaties, he refused to tell me how he'd come by it. He once showed me the helmet he wore in the jungle, with the bullet hole through the gap above the webbing that had held the helmet away from his head, and I thought more than once on how close he had been to never coming home.

The popular take on those days, the post-war 50's and the early 60's, is that they were ones of halcyon innocence and peace, and endless prosperity and opportunity, and in many ways, for many people, they were. But they were also days of incredible paranoia, of enemies under every rock, and if it wasn't the Communists it was the fallout in the icicles dangling from your house, or the Conelrad alerts and Civil Defense drills. My uncle, a classic sailor with fascinating tattoos on his muscular forearms, had by then become a career Navy man, and went from World War II to Korea hardly missing a beat, while Joe McCarthy was hard at work creating the seige mentality that would enable our governments to justify sending us to war for decades to come. By then the phrase used so hopefully during the First World War, that "war to end all wars", was beginning to look a little threadbare. Still, after being fed a steady diet of nationalist propaganda, cover-ups, and re-written history, we were psyched to shrug our collective shoulders with a sigh, accept that this was just the way it would have to be, and ready to embark on the brave new world of industrial slaughter those in power had in mind for us.

Never have a nation's demurs against war rung so blatantly false or for so long. Even now we delude ourselves into thinking that we are never aggressive, never looking for a fight, always being pushed into situations where war is our only option and therefore justified. Here we are, always just minding our own business, and along comes some pushy country just spoiling for a fight. The fact that for the last 60 years those pushy countries have happened to be small, powerless, backward, irrelevant, or all four, has somehow failed to make an impression on a people whose national myth includes standing up for the underdog and playing the part of the hero. That was the story we told ourselves in World War II, and that is the story we continue to tell throughout the subsequent years of evidence to the contrary.
It was in 1975 that in "Home to Roost", her speech on the state of the union immediately after Watergate, Hannah Arendt lamented the desperate lengths to which we went to make ourselves feel good after the humiliation of Vietnam:

"What comes home to roost now is this long education in imagery (i.e., the retreat from uncomfortable truths and quest for lies from which to create positive images), which seems no less habit-forming than drugs. Nothing in my opinion told us more about this addiction than the public reaction, on the street as well as in Congress, to our 'victory' in Cambodia, in the opinion of many 'just what the doctor ordered' (Sulzberger) to heal the wounds of the Vietnam defeat. Indeed, 'Twas a famous victory!' as James Reston aptly quoted in the New York Times, and let us hope that this was finally the nadir of the erosion of self-confidence when victory over one of the tiniest and most helpless countries could cheer the inhabitants of what only a few decades ago really was the 'mightiest power on earth."

So the anniversary of the use of the atomic bomb against human beings is being noted this weekend, and as it inevitably will, the discussion has arisen as to whether it was justified. The usual arguments are made for it: that a million servicemen's lives were saved, that Japan would have never surrendered otherwise, that an example had to be made to ensure their will was broken and they never became a threat again, that Truman warned them and they wouldn't listen. That something good came out of it after all. That like the war itself, it was a moral action justified in the cause of eradicating evil. That it was a lesser evil chosen for a greater good.

My head, much like Hiroshima, wants to explode.

There are plenty of sites on the internet and at the library where you can immerse yourself in the facts and fantasies that surrounded the event, and although I believe the bombings were the greatest atrocities my nation ever committed (and I do not believe they saved my father's life), I'm more interested in the idea of a "moral" war. Chris Hedges, in his wonderful book, Losing Moses on the Freeway, calls on his many years as a war reporter, and interview with a Vietnam vet who went on to become a Bishop in the Episcopal church, to answer those who posit the existence of a moral war. After recounting incidents from the war in which the bishop committed acts he would have never thought himself capable, Hedges says this:

"Bishop Packard discovered in the war the capacity we all have for evil. He discovered the darkness that allows us, when the restraints are cut, to commit acts of brutality against the weak and the defenseless, including children. He discovered the ghoulish delight soldiers can take in killing"

And to answer the suggestion that war can be moral, he says this:

"Wars come wrapped in patriotic slogans, call for self-sacrifice and glory. They come wrapped in the claims of divine providence... It is what is right and just. War is always waged...to make the nation and the world a better place, to cleanse evil...
But up close war is a soulless void. War quickly descends to raw barbarity, perversion, pain and an unchecked orgy of death. It is a state where human decency and tenderness are crushed, where those who make war work overtime to destroy love, where all human beings become objects to use or kill. The noise, the stench, the fear, the eviscerated bodies and bloated corpses, the crying wounded spin us into another universe. In this moral void, blessed by institutions at home, the hypocrisy of our social conventions are laid bare. We call for strict adherence to some commandments and laud the purposeful violation of others. Hypocrisy rules. War, for all its horror, has the power to strip away the trivial and the banal, the empty chatter and foolish obsessions. It lets us see."

War is evil. It is the industrial slaughter of human beings we do not know, and when our weapons hit their marks, we can't possibly know whether one of them lays low a deserving victim or not. We cannot help but kill non-combatants, many of whom are children, old people, pregnant women, mothers, fathers, sisters, people who were loved as much as we ourselves are loved, and whose claim to the right to life is as strong and legitimate as any of our own. When we engage in it, for whatever reason, we do evil, and commit sin. Yet, with few exceptions, you seldom hear the institutionalized religions speak out against government when war is waged. How often did you hear the voices of the churches of the land raised in protest and condemnation as Bush pushed the country inexorably toward Iraq? How often do your hear churches, so eager to shut off communion for politicians in favor of choice, threaten the same for those who support and fight the war? The most self-righteous and judgmental of them actually praise it as a just retribution, and support those who engineered and maintain it. Their religion is actually a civic one, and as Hedges states:

"These institutions have little or nothing to say in wartime because the god they worship is often a false god, one that promises victory to those who obey the law and believe in the manifest destiny of the nation. The god of war takes over the pulpits and airwaves. Religious leaders line up to bless the enterprise of war."

When religion and the state become one, they enable one another, and the combined force of their authority can push a nation into committing any conceivable horror.

Robert Jay Lifton told Hedges:

""Ordinary men can all too readily be socialized to atrocity. These killing projects are never described as such. They are put in terms of the necessity of improving the world, of political and spiritual renewal. You cannot kill large numbers of people without a claim to virtue. Our own campaign to rid the world of terror is expressed this way, as if once we destroy all terrorists we destroy evil."

This is the lesson of Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo, and Bagram: when we choose torture because we are "forced to by desperate circumstances", when we drop a nuclear bomb because we must "eliminate the danger posed by Japan for all time", we bargain with demons. The bargain says: "We know we do evil but it's a lesser evil, and we hope we won't have to do this again, but if we do, we hope you forget that we promised you our soul". Hannah Arendt said this about lesser evils:

"Politically, the weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they choose evil... Acceptance of lesser evils is consciously used in conditioning the government officials and the population at large to the acceptance of evil as such."

We have already chosen far too much of the lesser evil, and have been doing so for decades. How much more can we choose before it becomes indistinguishable from the very evil we thought we were running away from?

A Tale Of Two Dictators

Vladimir Putin, unlike our own president, appears actually able to learn from the stupid mistakes of his past:

"A Russian mini-submarine with seven sailors aboard snagged on a fishing net and was stuck on the Pacific floor with only enough air for the seamen to survive one more day, Russia's navy said.
The U.S. Navy is rushing an unmanned, remote-controlled vehicle from San Diego to Russia to help in the rescue efforts, the Navy said...
Russia appealed to the United States and Japan for assistance, the Interfax news agency quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Boris Malakhov as saying."

Back in August of 2000, Putin was faced with a similar problem when the submarine Kursk went down, after which he fended off the world's offers of assistance for days, and pulled off a Bush-like feat of silence on the matter.

Perhaps he could teach the Dauphin something about learning from the past, as Bush now appears to be on a course of preparations for yet another Mid-east war of agression with Iraq's neighbor:

"The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States...
As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing—that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack—but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections."

Where have we heard that before?

For Kevin

My dear fellow blogger and mentor, Kevin Hayden, the creator, heart and soul (and very often the main posting force) of the wonderful site The American Street, lost 2 brothers in the last week, and has suffered uncounted problems and setbacks over the past half year. In spite of it all he has worked tirelessly to make TAS one of the best blogs on the net, and as a cat-herder to the unruly mass of bloggers in his stable, he's maintained a network of cooperative effort that has been more like a family thanks to his warmth and generosity.
But these last losses have taken their toll, and he has gone on hiatus, from the site and from his e-mail. You won't see him posting now for awhile, and the rest of us will try to fill the void. Please visit the site often and, if you're a member or former member, feel free to add your talents when you wish, or when you see a need. If you're not a member, add your voice and insights to the comments. This is the way to keep it as Kevin always wanted--a place of energetic dialogue and a vital forum for public discussion on all the wide range of issues affecting the human condition--until he returns.

Bygones

Writing at The New York Observer, Nick von Hoffman notes the racist pedigrees of the senators who failed to support last month's resolution apologizing for over a century of refusal to end lynching, and makes a powerfully compelling case for reparations. He sets it up with this:

"The Republican performance on this harmless resolution reinforces Howard Dean’s recent remark about the G.O.P. being white and Christian. His words, which were received with such indignation, are more or less a statement of fact—and not even a new one. Everybody in politics knows that the Republican Party set out to win the anti-black South years ago and has done so.
Racial antipathies in their less violent forms have been strengthened by the party’s alliance with Southern religion. White Southern Christianity has a history of supporting slavery, the black codes, discrimination and intolerance toward people of color stretching back 200 years. In the 1950’s and 60’s, when some northern and western Christian denominations remembered their abolitionist past and backed the civil-rights movement, the white churches of the South did not, and it is they who have supplied the moral dynamic of modern Republicanism."

Then he delivers the goods:

"There is no statute of limitations on atrocity. Crimes only become ancient and beyond restitution when the wounds inflicted are no longer carried in living hearts. The massacres of Armenians by the Turks and the Turkish government occurred almost 100 years ago, but for many Armenians those things were done yesterday. The same is true for Native Americans.
We know the names of many—probably most—of the murdered people. We have the means to find their families and offer a substantial financial compensation. There is compensation for the Holocaust’s survivors and families. We have compensated the families whose relatives died in the World Trade Center, where fewer perished than have been lynched and where it was not Americans who committed the crime. That’s well and good, but then what do we owe the victims of crimes committed not only by American individuals, but by the government as well?"

Nothing gets up the backs of the good white people of the heartland like the idea of handing over their hard-earned money to the families of blacks or Indians who never did nuthin' for it except to be robbed, tortured and massacred by the (let's face it)millions. Black slave labor made the magnificent architecture of our nation's capitol possible. The wholesale theft of Indian living space made it possible for us to convert bountiful resources into historically unprecented wealth. But let's let bygones be bygones, and not discommode the comfortable with the truth about their debts. A piece of paper causes less fuss, and buys off a lot of troubled dreams...that is, for those with enough conscience left to be troubled.

Wombs 'R Us

For all you Philip K. Dick fans out there:

"Brain Dead American Woman Gives Birth to Girl

A 26-year-old brain dead pregnant woman kept on life support for almost three months at a Virginia hospital gave birth to a baby girl on Tuesday, a hospital spokeswoman said.
The baby, delivered by caesarean section, weighed one pound and 13 ounces (0.8 kg) and was being monitored in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Virginia Hospital Center, the hospital said in a statement.
The mother, Susan Torres, suffered a stroke on May 7 in the 17th week of her pregnancy due to an aggressive melanoma and was brain dead, her family said...
"The entire staff and administration of Virginia Hospital Center, especially the physicians and nurses caring for Susan Torres and Baby Girl Torres, are delighted with the successful delivery," the hospital statement said."

So glad they finally figured out how to eliminate the middlewoman. And see there, they managed to manufacture a brand-new womb to replace the dead one, so science can march on. The Church is surely pleased.

In all seriousness, this was a choice made by the husband, who said it was based on "what Susan would want". And though I find it shockingly creepy, unlike the Terry Schiavo protesters I can accept his right to make such a private decision, even though it resonates with problems for the future for women and how they are perceived when pregnant. It has been hard enough for pregnant women to maintain some kind of human persona when the world of anti-abortionists is telling they are little more than incubators.

O brave new world, that has such people in't! Where's the exit?


UPDATE: eRobin from the lucid and passionate Fact-esque responded to the above with this:

"Well said. You're so right about the danger of the issue turning into a flag-waver for anti-choicers.

It's none of my business but I thought the decision was the right one. It would be great if everyone who had an opinion on this started off by saying three times "IT'S NONE OF MY BUSINESS." That's the point that people who care about women's reproductive rights need to make clear."

My first impulse was to condemn what her husband did, but when I put myself in his shoes, and those of his wife, I really could understand how someone would want to do this. All those hopes and dreams of bringing a new child into the world, a child she evidently wanted very much, too, and then the devastating news of her impending death, leading to a desperate desire to keep a living memory of the wife he loved through that child. And though I remain concerned about the ramifications of it, it's ironic that the freedom to make that choice within the confines of one's own family is actually crucial to preventing the Morality Police from taking what should be a case-by-case personal decision and strongarming it into a law.

Conservatives make much fun of liberals for having "minds so open everything falls out", and for bending over so far backward to be "tolerant" that we tolerate everything, and judge nothing. But this is a deliberate distortion of how we think, and it's time we started yanking these concepts out of right-wing hands, clean off the muck with which they've been smeared, and take a stand behind them.

Tolerance and open-mindedness do not exclude the ability to judge, but they do exclude the rush to judgement many conservatives are so eager to join. One has to use common sense and a moral compass to decide when making a judgement is called for. We judge based on a continuum of tolerance, which results in hard choices and some serious internal debate.

When this continuum is lacking, as with sociopaths or right-wing extremists, we are either indifferent to thedecisions of others (if we are unable to relate to others) or judgementally tyrranical (if our desire for control is too great). But for one to bring the least delicacy or nuance to these extremely difficult decisions invariably brings on charges of "fuzzy moonbat thinking" from people whose own idea of thoughtfulness is beating an opponent over the head with schoolyard insults and spewing grossly absurd fantasies of slippery slopes. Wingers make the serious mistake of assuming that liberals have no moral compass, because they cannot comprehend the complexity with which we use it.

Given the choice (and with choice, in this case, we've come full circle), I'll take my liberal tolerance every time.

Meaningless Toil

I just lost a post I'd been working on since this afternoon, and due to a stupid error on my part, I destroyed hours of work ina couple seconds. And the worst part was, it was really wonderful.

Days like this, I just don't even feel like writing anymore.

Spreading The Love

I'm at The American Street today, if you like prison movies.

Or if you prefer something with Omar Sharif on a camel, try Corrente.

Life's vast canvas, eh?

Boltonfest 2005

It's summer, and that means repeats. So since I've been away and need time to catch up, it's as good a time as any to pull up 2 more older posts which remain uncannily timely. Yes, this is what comes from being cursed with a gift for prescience: one becomes a veritable Cassandra, wailing into the void months before the shit flies, and then when it does, no one remembers you. Ah, well. Put it this way: the man is not only a depth charge unleashed by Bush on one of his most hated enemies, multilateralism, but he also played a part in the WMD scam that helped his master lie us into this goddamned illegal, immoral, and totally useless bloodbath. In an honest world he would be in jail. But neither the government nor the American people have much stomach for honesty these days.

So thus I give you a couple of Bolton pieces: the first, below, from The American Street in March, and the second one from Corrente in June.


Yet Another Bad Accident

There's been something fascinating about watching Bush extend his ideological hegemony since he arrived in office courtesy of the Supreme Court---fascinating like experiencing the shock of a gory accident. As he continues to nominate cabinet members and appointees, he exhibits an almost supernatural ability to pick the worst possible candidates, people who may not only be incompetent or baldly partisan, but even deliberately antithetical to the missions for which their posts exists. And each time the news arrives, it feels like another slap across the face. We've seen this in his appointments of Gale Norton, John Ashcroft, W. David Hager, Michael Powell, Henry Kissinger (short-lived though it was), John Negroponte, ad nauseum.

His nomination of John Bolton, a truly tactless and pugnacious character, to be Ambassador to the United Nations, exeplifies this fuck you attitude almost more than any of the others. This is just the person to persuade and conciliate with the world community. The Times Online notes the Bizarro World element in this move:

"Mr Bolton has made clear he is no friend of the UN. He once said: “There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is only the international community, which can only be led by the only remaining superpower, which is the United States.” He also said: “If the UN Secretariat building in New York lost ten storeys, it wouldn ’t make a bit of difference."

Did he say "only" enough times there? Indicating a tendency to "be alone"? As in, "my nation is an island"? As in, "who gives a damn what you think"? Nice prep for playing with others in the international Wall of Death, eh? A story run by Salon back in July of 2003 (sit through a Cadillac plug first) reveals a wealth of detail on Bolton that may be of use in predicting what impact he'll have if successful---which, given the Dems' astonishing display of belly-crawling in previous like hearings, can hardly be in doubt. Just a sample of the reading pleasure that awaits you:

"The administration pulled back Bolton after the CIA and other agencies strenuously objected to its assessment of the threat posed by Syria's weapons of mass destruction."

"Christian Westermann accused Bolton of trying to pressure him on intelligence estimates of Cuba's biological weapons capabilities -- coinciding with charges that intelligence data about Iraq had also been cooked."

"Bolton has played an important role in strengthening the crucial alliance within the Bush administration between the Christian right and the neoconservatives"

"...support (of) former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet against the international courts that hope to bring him to trial on charges of gross human rights violations."

"With Bolton's tireless leadership and assistance, the Bush administration has undermined the International Criminal Court, the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention, and a potential international treaty on small arms trafficking -- while also opposing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. "

Keep your eye on Syria if he gets in. A repeat of the run-up to the Iraq War looks like the least of our possible worries.


More Salt In The Wound

Via Buzzflash, an interesting development in the Bolton force-feed: in 2002 he engineered the removal of a UN family agency head whose actions threatened to expose Bush's allegations of Iraqi weapons for the sham they were, and whose proposed plan to send chemical weapons inspectors to Iraq could have ruined the intelligence fakery on which the eventual invasion depended:

"John R. Bolton flew to Europe in 2002 to confront the head of a global arms-control agency and demand he resign, then orchestrated the firing of the unwilling diplomat in a move a U.N. tribunal has since judged unlawful, according to officials involved.
A former Bolton deputy says the U.S. undersecretary of state felt Jose Bustani "had to go," particularly because the Brazilian was trying to send chemical weapons inspectors to Baghdad. That might have helped defuse the crisis over alleged Iraqi weapons and undermined a U.S. rationale for war.
Bustani, who says he got a "menacing" phone call from Bolton at one point, was removed by a vote of just one-third of member nations at an unusual special session of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), at which the United States cited alleged mismanagement in calling for his ouster."

Bustani himself revealed some interesting, and by now familiar, Bolton tactics:

"In June 2001, Bolton "telephoned me to try to interfere, in a menacing tone, in decisions that are the exclusive responsibility of the director-general," Bustani wrote in 2002 in a Brazilian academic journal.
He elaborated in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde in mid-2002, saying Bolton "tried to order me around," and sought to have some U.S. inspection results overlooked and certain Americans hired to OPCW positions. The agency head said he refused. "
In March 2002 the US went public to get rid of Bustani, and succeeded in April by threatening the OPCW with the withholding of operating funds. All this, mind you, at a time when Bush repeatedly assured the American public that he was doing everything possible to get Iraq to comply with weapons inspections and to avoid having to go to war. And only 3 months later, the Downing Street memo stated that the US saw "war as inevitable".

Later, when Bustani appealed the termination to the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labor Organization in Geneva, where UN agencies go with personnel issues, the tribunal ruled in Bustani's favor, stating his removal was unlawful and awarding him damages.
So Bolton was complicit in the warping and cover-up of information related to the invasion of Iraq in order to facilitate the Bush administration's plans to wage an illegal war, and he used his by now well-known bullying tactics to accomplish that, against a head of an agency that is a family member of the UN, where Bush now wants to appoint him as the representative of our nation.

Do I have it right?

The Healing Angel Spreads Its Wings Revisited

(As a companion piece to the Ethics Inaction piece I wrote last month, this post from March offers more background on the destructive effect on medical ethics that Bush administration policies are having. Both posts were originally written for Corrente.)


American Progress Report has a number of Easter eggs in this week's basket, including this on the willing collusion of medical personnel in the application of torture and abuse by the Army:

"The first rule of medical ethics is as clear as day: Do no harm. It's no wonder, then, that alarms went off when the recent Church report on detainee abuse noted a "growing trend in the global war on terror" for military psychiatrists and psychologists to take part in interrogations. According to Time magazine report, the practice has been ongoing for quite some time. Army investigators have already found that military-intelligence officers at Abu Ghraib "had psychiatrists review their 'interrogation plans' for Iraqi detainees," and the Army surgeon general is currently investigating "whether some doctors helped direct what amounts to psychological torture." Not all mental health professionals find this acceptable. An Army psychiatrist told Time, "We should not be using our abilities to make things difficult for a person," but admitted there has been some "blurring of the boundaries."

Wonder what he's referring to?

Back in November on my own site, I noted the evidence turned up by the Red Cross on "flagrant violations of medical ethics" by doctors and medical personnel down in Guantanamo (scroll down). Part of the story contained this:

"Doctors and medical personnel conveyed information about prisoners' mental health and vulnerabilities to interrogators, the report said, sometimes directly, but usually through a group called the Behavioral Science Consultation Team, or B.S.C.T. The team, known informally as Biscuit, is composed of psychologists and psychological workers who advise the interrogators, the report said."

Biscuit. So cute. This would be the same "Biscuit" whose helpful memos turned up heavily redacted in the recent response to the ACLU's FOIA request for information on torture and interrogations. The same "Biscuit" Neil Lewis was referring to on PBS when he said:

"They would meet with the medical staff. They would meet with other people who knew about the detainees and make recommendations on how they could successfully be coerced into talking. So... and the other part of the medical staff, the medical files were open. And this... this is an interesting issue because medical files between you, let's say, and your doctor, you assume are confidential. I'm not sure we expect them to be confidential at Guantanamo, although some of the ethicists say it should be, but I mean, this is Guantanamo; it's not Kaiser Permanente or some HMO."

I mean, let's not put too fine a point on it, shall we, guys and gals? We'd never go so far as to compare the slow degradation of our medical establishment with that of the Third Reich's, would we?

Not me.

Update: In retrospect, I'm feeling a touch bad about seeming to come down so hard on docs the last couple days. And just for clarification, I don't think, nor do I mean to insinuate, that all docs are reckless ethical monsters. If they were, they wouldn't be held in the godlike regard they are by so many millions. What I do believe, and have seen evidence of in the course of the real-life work I do, is that when serious ethical violations do crop up, the protective screen put up by their colleagues is so thick that it almost requires being a serial killer to have one's license revoked. As alert reader Rebecca noted, those guilty of the above incidents should have licenses pulled. But this is unlikely to happen, not just because the government is loathe to investigate, but also because the AMA, APA, and other like bodies won't be looking too closely either.