In These Times

Here is the url for an ABC News webpage containing the transcript of the original sermons. http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4719157&page=1

Posted to Bill Moyers Interviews Rev. Jeremiah Wright

"Many are starting to see the Internet as the best place to get more well-rounded coverage." Well yes, 'well-rounded' in the sense that there are many more points of view to access. I generally go to Google's news page, mainly because of the variety available. But there's a lot of nonsense on the internet too, and you have to have a very discerning eye and a critical turn of mind to have a hope in hell of not being just as much misled or partially informed we risk from only going to 24-hr cable news or the local TV station. And, …

Posted to News You Can Lose

One thing I'd like to do is to push Hillary and Barack and John into a corner and get straight from their mouths what exactly they plan to do about that horrorshow law, that truncator of constitutional protections, that ocean of fascistic possibilities, known far and wide as the USA PATRIOT Act. A newspeak-named assault on the whole idea of rights, I say. I've been in hate with the mf'n thing from the second I heard of it. I doubt if any one of them would give me anything but a canned, suck-up answer. I'd love to be proven wrong. First …

Posted to Political Vice Squad

Wow Joel, your article was only on the front e-page for a day or so, got archived almost immediately while older articles stayed up front. Almost as if my perfectly correct and entirely legal expression of political opinion DQ'd it. Sorry about that. Well, sorry the editorial decision went the way it did, especially since your article helps point up the questionability of the law and how it gets used. Not sorry at all about my take on the USA PATRIOT Act. Here are 3 links to the parts of a documentary you all may find interesting, entitled "Unconstitutional: The War …

Posted to Political Vice Squad

Here in the Philippines, where rice is not only the staple food but also an aspect of Filipino cultural identity, food prices for basics have nearly doubled within the past year. Some have gone beyond doubling. Lots of poor local people can't switch out to another calorie source because there simply isn't an equivalent that's consistently affordable. Noodles is the next option, but wheat prices have driven up those prices as well. Also, the Phils has an inordinately large population relative to its land area (~88M, and growing at a rate of between 2 and 3% annually... at that sustained growth …

Posted to As Hunger Rises, Chew on This

Hi whattheheck, I think you're right on the mark with your point about how humans are so slow on the uptake in comparision with other creatures, when it comes to our decisions about how much to consume. I think we can easily compare runaway pursuit of luxuries and treats to addictive tendencies, as we expend enormous amounts of energy and wealth to get our fix, even being willing to do things that are victimizing upon others or destructive to ourselves. (As you know, my opinion about the Iraq War smacks of this sort of addiction-based crime, doing whatever is needed as …

Posted to As Hunger Rises, Chew on This

"Breakfast of Champions"?? Sorry, it's a low point for me. May I suggest "Player Piano" as a more important contribution from KV, though it doesn't get much notice because, perhaps, it's actually done in narrative form, like a story. Complete sentences and an actual attempt at at using setting and character (somewhat) to convey the dystopian message, fancy that! Unlike "B of C", which comes across like random doodles, like he "phoned it in." (spare yourself anguish, don't watch the film "Breakfast of Champions"... A-list cast but awful film, you'll feel stupider by the end, if you make it all the …

Posted to Book Club of Champions

I also appreciate any straight talk about my country that is based on real evidence. Give a point to Condi, maybe there's hope for her after the "Bush era" closes. I don't think that sort of candor should be regarded as unpatriotic (as though Rice is in any way unpatriotic... ridiculous), and in fact every human tribe has blood-soaked hands, even tribe-America (some on the receiving end of American violence or blundering might say, "especially" rather than "even"). No one is immune, no one is above it all, surely not the most powerful nation that has ever existed. So to whitewash …

Posted to A Speech Even Condi Could Love

The problem is that now news divisions are regarded as little more than revenue sources for their parent conglomerates. That means they focus on market share (i.e. ratings), therefore faddish viewing habits, therefore what "interests" the public in the momentary short term whether or not it's truly in the public interest. So, for example, celebrity foibles get more airtime than substantive analysis of economic and foreign policy issues. I guess the old-fashioned view that the role of the journalist (print or broadcast) is to inform, just to devotedly inform as an essential pillar of democratic republicanism, is outmoded. Now it's about …

Posted to In Praise of Reporting Reality--And The Truth

"...American politics is perfectly aligned to help progressives use nationalism for our economic agenda." It's not just about American corporations being given incentives to keep their operations in America, or uphold American labor and environmental standards when abroad. Your economic agenda would benefit from including emphasis upon supporting small businessmen, both rhetorically and legislatively. This might sound like a classically "Republican Party" agenda item (if that matters, and of course to plenty it will), but if it's economic empowerment of regular folks in the neighborhood you want to push, endorsing and supporting the efforts of small business owners by way of …

Posted to The Upside of Nationalism

Having lived and travelled for years in several Muslim-majority countries, I think the central cultural disjoint a lot of "westerners" will have with many Muslims (perhaps Asmaa as well) is that for a Muslim, it's not something you do, it's something you ARE. The secularized wealthy societies often compartmentalize religion as a personal matter (which, as a secular if not a wealthy guy, is exactly how I look at it, personal only and never to be legally codified). This is totally alien to the Muslim worldview. Since you are presumed to have chosen submission to God and God's mandates as transmitted …

Posted to Caricaturing Danish Muslims

Sometimes you love someone who has a foul mouth. They may have been very good to you personally, guided you in a way you know led to the improvement of your quality of thinking and maybe your quality of life. It may sound sappy, but too bad; you don't always choose who you love and even loved ones can act pretty stupid or mean. It doesn't mean you divorce them. Well, sometimes you do, but not quickly or glibly, and it hurts even when it's necessary. The main message I got from Obama's speech about Wright was exactly that. He had …

Posted to Is Wright Right About Racism?

Here is the url for an ABC News webpage containing the transcript of the original sermons. http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4719157&page=1

Posted to Is Wright Right About Racism?

Without "the movement" to erode and eventually negate the misguided role of race as a qualifier for anything, and the very striking (though not complete) changes in the US it has helped bring about, the man himself would likely have been held back and badly harassed had he shown any kind of similar ambition as he is showing now. Maybe he would have been attacked physically for being what used to be called "uppity", i.e. not willing to stay put in the lower echelon of society or to kowtow to white-dominant social norms. In the America-that-was, his complexion would have trumped …

Posted to The Man or the Movement

I'm sometimes mystified that certain ITT articles get no discussion response at all, like this one (so far). We'd better become clear in our minds, finally and once-and-for-all, regarding what it really is to wage war and what it really does to a huge number of the people who are sent to fight it. Whether they come home luckily uninjured physically or psychologically, or take their own lives due to post-traumatic stress, or live on in a desensitized, spaced-out stupor, it's about time every American came to grips with the shitty reality of it, rather than intellectually ducking their heads into …

Posted to The War That Never Ends

Anthony - You were "done to", and you are owed. You're perfectly correct that vets ought to be able to get follow-up inquiries as to their mental health status, and I mean more than once, as part of the high-quality medical and psychiatric support any vet who needs it should get (but, disgustingly, often doesn't). Try to tail off on the alky, cousin. It's always toxic in big or repeated doses (so we say "intoxicated"), and I can tell from the tone of your post you don't want to hurt an innocent while driving, but you easily could if you let …

Posted to The War That Never Ends

haledavid - I send virtual gassho (palms together at forehead, recognizing the sacred spark in you). Have you ever been furious with someone you dearly love? I've been in that state since about March of 2003, the dearly loved one being my country... ...I continually have asked, "What the hell are we doing? Why aren't more people freaked out about what's happening?" And I will tell you that answering my young-adult children's pointed questions is a challenge, to understate it. Yes, let down, I've felt that again and again, it bloody sucks. How come so few want to think and examine? …

Posted to The War That Never Ends

Natalie - I've read your posts many times on many threads, and I can tell you believe it's important to be a thinking person. I realize you and I don't agree about this, but I ask you to please consider the possibility that the "surge" will necessarily have a (likely temporary, imo) dampening effect on the more overt acts of violence in Iraq but cannot have a lasting effect unless we basically occupy it indefinitely, which John McCain must also think or he wouldn't talk in terms of "100 years". Or, my other concern, unless the government we helped set up …

Posted to The War That Never Ends

I have no idea why ITT's little flag thingy describes me as posting from Germany, I'm in Hanoi.

Posted to The War That Never Ends

Hi again Natalie, I'm always glad to see reasonable responses on these threads, whether it's in agreement with a post I've made or not. As you know quite well, there's always the risk of getting irrationally flamed. Refreshing to not be told I'm full of it, am stupid, etc etc. I can certainly respect your irritation with so many Democrats in connection with this problem. Back in the 2004 election season, I criticized John Kerry for having voted to approve the war but then deciding afterward that it should not be funded, as per his voting record on funding bills. I …

Posted to The War That Never Ends

But to add a major point, I think the eye was taken off the ball. If, as John McCain says, we "need" a victory in Iraq, I submit that we've needed even more a victory in Afghanistan. And beyond the military victory, I think we should have done in 2002 what we should have done in the early 1980s when we trained and equipped the mujaheddin (incl. our asset of the day, Osama bin Laden). I compare with Europe and Japan. Following WW2, it was investment after the military victory that rebuilt those regions, making them far less suitable as environments …

Posted to The War That Never Ends

In a loosely related note, I mention that Peter Gabriel has co-founded a group called "Witness", that distributes digital videocameras so as to make it more possible for instances of human rights abuses to be recorded and distributed via internet. Their website includes access to their "Hub", at which you can upload or view relevant content. Material that gets 30 seconds of attention at best from, say, CNN or BBC, can be seen at length at The Hub. Naturally, most of what you can view will never make the 11:00 Report. Most recently featured, as you'd guess, are videos of the …

Posted to Kenya’s Indy Media

Al Gore�s loss of the election in 2000 has been explained by saying� 1. �his home state went to Bush, electorally speaking. Or� 2. �Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris effectively disenfranchised thousands of voters in likely-Democratic districts in Florida, tipping the scales toward Bush electorally. Or� 3. �voting machines were fraudulently managed, favoring Bush. Or� 4. �high-profile scandals from Clinton�s presidency stained Gore sufficiently that voter enthusiasm for him was partially eroded. Or� 5. �Gore�s uninspiring demeanor turned off too many voters. Or� 6. �the Republican program was compelling to more voters than the Democratic program. Or� 7. �the Supreme Court …

Posted to The Nadir of Nader

They all dig power, headed, and not just the contenders for 1600. The will to serve translates as the appetite to lead, i.e. the conviction that they each clearly have, which is that their personal leadership is what's necessary to make that vital break with the past OR to carry on with the mission in hand. When we're lucky is when we get one who feels compelled to advance interests beyond their own and those of their faction, which fortunately isn't as rare as we complain of in our most cynical moments. (That's MY most cynical moments... I'll try not to …

Posted to The Nadir of Nader

Regarding the paragraph near the end of the article about health care, I've often wondered whether it's truly feasible to promise full health support for 300M people. I'm not claiming expertise, but when I read figures related to this issue, it hits me as counterintuitive. The author's view that the best solution is to remove the profit element and simply make health care a state-guaranteed "right" gives me pause, because the mathematics implied by that solution do not seem realistic. If they are, I would want to see hard figures. I say this because it seems as though the demand for …

Posted to The Malign Magic of Misdirection

I cannot ever agree that a man's skin color defines him! It is the defining of men and women with that single physical attribute that has led to the long tale of suffering that is race relations in America. However, whether or not Obama is descended from slaves, the one thing that can always be said is that a non-"white" has not only made a serious run at the presidency, but has been taken seriously as a candidate by people across racial categories and across regions. He is supported or opposed on a variety of grounds, over and above the issues …

Posted to How Black is Obama?

Doesn't mean that everything is now cake and ice cream, on the racial front. Just a hopeful development. I'll take it!

Posted to How Black is Obama?

"Yoo�s overriding legal rationale is that the president�s powers give him constitutional license to override any law�including laws against torture�if he deems it necessary to wage a war." If the President has constitutional license to override literally ANY law, does that include the power to nullify or ignore the Constitution itself, the basis of all US and state/local law? If so, that means he or she has the legal power to, um, ignore the foundation of his or her legal power. That effectively means that there is no limit to the power of the President, as long as winning an ongoing …

Posted to Jose Padilla Brings Torture to Trial

The entire legal and philosophical foundation that underlies the War on Drugs is bogus. It makes a crime out of something that isn't criminal, sets up conditions for contraband markets to evolve that result in unholy amounts of wealth going to the most ruthless people, and reinforces the idea that we need a paternalistic government to "protect" us from unhealthy influences. And, as though it's an aside, it hasn't led to the abandonment of recreational drugs. If anything, America is more drugged up than ever (but of course, rampant and unhealthful use of antidepressants, on top of our love for a …

Posted to Women Behind Bars

One of my dear friends and colleagues (she's Af-Am, fyi) tells me that the word can't be demystified or neutralized, in her opinion. She and I spoke of it recently and I asked that very question, but she said that Nigger has too much of a poisonous history, especially when said white-to-black. She says it comes across very differently than if another black person says it, has too much ugly historical baggage, for me to every be able to say e.g. anything like "my niggah" to her without triggering very bad feelings and possibly damaging our friendship. It's a line she …

Posted to Nas: Whose Word Is This?

It's about time to revive the ideal that every adult citizen in the country (actually the world, I submit) should have exactly the same legal rights as any other, and more to the point, to bring policy in line with that ideal. Anything less than a devoted, specific, energetic agenda for rights equalization is to continue to enshrine gratuitous and malignant discrimination within the law. The US has a long, unhappy history with that sort of thing, as do so many societies. Every step toward equal rights is a step away from dogmatism and the victimizing out-grouping that invariably follows. It's …

Posted to The Next Gay Moment?

Try to undereat. It prolongs your life, keeps you from getting torpid, uses up less of everything.

Posted to Fat Kids, Fat Profits

One thing I have to add is that if we're going to let advertizing have such a powerful shaping effect on our behavior, we really don't have a lot of room to complain. It's a choice we make, eating processed food as our main sustenance. We're not B.F. Skinner's damn pigeons, pecking the button on cue when the next novelty food is offered. Or at least, we have the potential not to be. As a matter of self-respect, yes? Body type isn't the issue. Eat healthy, eat less, move around more. Just walk some, a couple-three times a week at first, …

Posted to Fat Kids, Fat Profits

I don't attend any more, but there's something to the admonition to "resist temptation" that I recall from my earlier church-going days. At least when it comes to borrowing money. Upon moving from the Philippines to California, my 18-year-old son was amazed to discover, while filling up the paperwork for a new checking account, that the bank had "pre-approved" him for a $10,000.00 line of credit. At that time, he had been in CA all of 3 weeks, was unemployed, had a temporary address, and had not even had time to finish driver training, therefore had no driver's license. All of …

Posted to Killer Credit

My kids, who now live not far from Los Angeles, tell me that in stores this past Halloween they saw costumes for trick-or-treat that made little girls look like they were selling it; fishnet stockings, stiletto heels, and what would have been a push-up bustier if the girls had any breasts to push up. Comes with a little make-up kit with garish eye-shadow and lipstick colors. The way the kids described it (and believe me, neither my son nor my daughter is a prude), it sounded like the sort of thing you'd get arrested for having pictures of. But it was …

Posted to The Jamie Lynn Effect

Good. I don't agree with the death penalty because I don't want the community, via the law, to have the power to kill an individual. Some things should not be subject to a referendum, for the simple reason that passionately held feelings, even (especially) by "the majority", can lead to terrible outcomes. And too many erroneous convictions have taken place for me ever to have confidence in capital punishment; you can let a guy out of a cell if he's been put there wrongly, you can't let him out of the grave. For those who really do carry out heinous crimes …

Posted to N.J. Closes Death Row

"Warrior, like SWORDS, is currently being designed to have human operators, but engineers are simultaneously testing the ability of robots to 'think' for themselves. This 'disruptive technology,' Dyer said, is 'going to change the way we fight, the way we live—it’s going to change our entire lives.'" I'm no robotics engineer and my acquaintance with AI is distant at best, so I don't know for sure whether the reference above is even theoretically possible. However, just to throw in my two cents, regardless of what setting may be, I'd prefer it if no mechanical device anywhere had the "cognitive" ability to …

Posted to RoboCop in Iraq

I'm more disturbed by the "architecture" of so many enduring military bases. All of this comes down to our addiction to the petro-tit and the echoes of past interventions in the region going back two generations on behalf of that same wasteful addiction (which includes an addiction to being wasteful, sorry to say... last time I was stateside I couldn't get over the number of elephantine vehicles all around, as though the drivers figured to be driving up a mountainside instead of a wide-laned Southern California boulevard... the great-grandchildren are going to hate our guts...).

Posted to Empire's Architecture

Each state is given the charge to choose how it will select its Electors, but one possible problem with NPV is that the law compels Maryland's electoral votes to take into account voting patterns outside the state's borders. The Constitution is clear that electoral votes are allotted by state, to represent, as best an indirect voting method can, the choice of the majority of voters within that particular state. As for the legality of the law itself, the article is not entirely correct in saying that "no federal approval would be required", because the constitutionality of all laws, federal or state …

Posted to Dropping Out of Electoral College

Which may not sound encouraging, but maybe we can agree that instantaneous reporting of results, prediction of outcome based on samples, and love affairs with tricky machines that are easy to manipulate are comparatively trivial concerns, compared to the integrity of election results.

Posted to Dropping Out of Electoral College

One last thing, sorry for the afterthought... The majority-take-all approach for Electoral votes is neither required by the Constitution nor is it universal among the states. Citizens can gang up on their state legislatures to change those rules, if they so choose.

Posted to Dropping Out of Electoral College

Hello farmer, As you're likely aware, it has happened a few times that the popular vote went to one candidate while the electoral vote went to the other, with the president-elect being the electoral winner. I can't say I'm 100% pleased with that possibility of outcome either (although in 2000 my main discontent was that Bush took office, more so than that there was a disjoint between popular and electoral result per se... I'd have been unhappy even if there had been no such conflict). However, I do see why the framers of the constitution were most concerned about the status …

Posted to Dropping Out of Electoral College

Hello again farmer, A new understanding of who exactly should elect the Prez would have to develop, and NPV may be a step in that direction, although it is still odd to me that the law would compel one state's Electors to take into account the rest of the country's cumulative results. That new understanding was what happened when Amend 17 came down and led to Senators being popularly elected, and I can't see that it hurt the democracy. It may be that a new amendment would be enough, I just don't know the absolute fact of that. It was enough …

Posted to Dropping Out of Electoral College

Sup farmer, Sorry for delay, busy busy� 32 states + DC have a higher % of electoral votes than % of population. 8 of those are within 1%. 13 states have a higher % of the pop than % of electoral votes. CA, NY, TX are among them. 5 states have equal % of pop v. electoral votes. MD is among them. I give the nod to the electoral system if only to put some kind of brake on the biggies or any particular region dominating any more than they already do, because the US is after all a federation of …

Posted to Dropping Out of Electoral College

"Rap is a scapegoat not just for generational reasons, but also because it is a class-bound, cultural product of America�s most criminalized and marginalized population: urban black youth. The genre has a ghettocentric vibe that tends to discomfort many middle-class blacks." Perhaps because they're so often expected to identify not only with those who have been unfairly criminalized and marginalized, but also those who are truly criminal and marginal, based on loose similarity of racial features. "Many of those demonstrating against Jackson are jobless former inmates who argue that the civil rights leadership does little to ameliorate their plight." What could …

Posted to Come on Cosby, Stop Hatin'

"Lynching has been America’s own form of domestic terrorism, columnist George Curry wrote recently in the Philadelphia Inquirer: 'Far from being merely a prank, the hanging of nooses harks back to a shameful period in American history. It was not until 1952 that the United States went a whole year without a single lynching.'" Actually this is a good point. To not recognize the emotional body-blow that is intended by using nooses as a "prank" (as though it's all in good humor or something... how idiotic, Mr. Walters, you should be humiliated to have uttered such a thing!)... ...using them to …

Posted to Hanging Hate

I didn't see any reference to Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886), in which the Court decided that the State of California could not tax corporations differently than it did individuals. It is very often cited as the decision that, in effect, granted corporations the status as legal "persons" and therefore protected by the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. They were then considered to be entitled to Constitutional protections as though a living human being. The timeframe of the article was much more recent than that decision, but there's no doubt that as a precedent, it has …

Posted to Supreme Court Inc.

Seems to me that governments in today's world should be collecting this kind of information to help forestall unnecessary conflict and perhaps war itself, to help them see the potential drastic blunders they themselves could avoid, more so than merely trying to find a way to persuade tribals to "jine up" as frontline sacrifices. Oh yeah, "allies", I meant "allies". After mountains of ethnographic data is collated, they'll probably discover that people don't like foreign sponsorship and promotion of madcap dictators in their country, or foreign invasion and occupation on trumped-up pretexts, or foreigners' idiotic tactics leading to the looting and …

Posted to Anthropologists on the Front Lines

Rights of all descriptions are under the gun in Russia these days, and here's another example. The Russian government will show how modern and "21st century" they've become when they prosecute the first gay rights activists under, what else? Anti-terrorism law, of course.

Posted to Dark Side of Russias Rainbow

Yes, good point wolf. I think all of the materials that lie within the public domain should be uploaded onto the web, as with a large amount of such stuff that's on the web now. Same for out-of-print materials for which we have remaining hard copies. Surely there are tons of material like this in the stacks and archives of libraries all over the world. I'm sure something can be devised for intellectual property that is still a source of earnings for authors, as with online scientific journals or other periodicals one can subscribe to now, essentially an expanded supply of …

Posted to Public Libraries For Profit

Kids of the "millennial" generation are not going to fit easily into neat little categorical boxes identified by the 20-year range of birthdates sociologists (or recruiting strategists) want to put them in. Their tastes, attitudes, prejudices, and expectations will be even more diverse than previous generations', because they will have been exposed to more various values and fewer unquestionable "givens" than any previous youthful demographic. I work with the little darlings every day. If there's anything most of them have in common, it's that they don�t see the standards and beliefs of their parents' and grandparents' generations as binding upon them. …

Posted to Kids LOL @ Navy Recruiters

The young man in the YouTube video from Natalie's link has it dead on, right on the money. I'll be showing that clip to my students. However, although it is obvious that leftish types who shout down their rightish opposite numbers and refuse to allow the airing of their views are guilty of being boorish, illiberal fools, I think the same can be said about a number of public personalities and leaders who claim to be on the side of "right", not least George W. Bush and the faction who brought him to power, and the media apologists who stump for …

Posted to Wingnut Awareness Week

Hello Natalie, I suppose it's a difference of experience between the two of us. It's true what you say that lefty partisans can be guilty of forcing false choices with bullying talk, and the example you cite is a good one because when I've tried to talk to some acquaintances I know who are global warming partisans (e.g. mentioning Freeman Dyson's skepticism about the computer models used to measure and anticipate climate change effects), I have been shut down and the conversation pretty much ends. Questioning the faith, yes? Guilty of heresy. Yes. Thank God for heresy. That's only partly tongue-in-cheek. …

Posted to Wingnut Awareness Week

Yes, "with us or against us", or as he apparently believes, "with me or against the country". The little red book thing has been done. Incredible that the connotations escape him. Or maybe they don't at all.

Posted to Wingnut Awareness Week

The overriding point is, whatever your skin color, as soon as you take refuge in thinking that it's someone else's duty to make sure your life is fulfilling instead of your own, you shrink the likelihood of it ever happening by orders of magnitude. There's also a huge risk of sinking into moral cowardice, of losing any self-respecting gumption you might otherwise have been able to preserve if you had fought off the self-abasement that results from regarding your life as anything other than a unique, precious, never-to-be-diminished privilege to have been born into. Even if you have to cope with …

Posted to Come on People! Bill Cosby is Right

Wow, a man who just wants to be regarded as a man. A pleasant surprise, for a change. Too rare. May the idea catch on!

Posted to Come on People! Bill Cosby is Right

There is a disparity, and the status quo isn't worth keeping, and I have no use for any unearned privilege, racial or otherwise. If "white" privilege disappeared today, it wouldn't affect my personal quality of life a bit, except that it would get the society closer to what I want in the first place. I have no need for a privilege linked to my pale face because I'm smart and capable, exactly like millions of others who both do and also do not share my light complexion. Also, "not talking about it" is certainly not what I'm about. I'm one who …

Posted to Come on People! Bill Cosby is Right

"'We are guided by what the constitution allows,' NYPD spokesman Sgt. Reginald Watkins" From your lips to God's ear, Sargeant.

Posted to Rudy Guiliani: Criminal or Liar?

I can't understand why more citizens around the world aren't disturbed to the point of anger over laws like this. It shows how effective the use words that conjure frightening images can be in manipulating people's feelings, therefore their behavior. All you have to do is cry "terrorist", even if there's no terroristic event in hand, and masses of otherwise decent people just roll over. In whose interest is it that we be afraid all the time, even (especially!) if the fear exists at a subliminal but steady level? Who benefits by the use of the word "terrorist" to describe a …

Posted to El Salvadors Patriot Act

Yes Maria, and what really upsets me is the ease with which these strategies play out. As you say, it doesn't even require real oppression any more, in the sense of an overtly fearsome government posture. It's not needed, because the people themselves go right along. I'm not in the habit of using pejoratives like "sheeple" and the like, but damn, it's just too easy to fool too many of the people too much of the time!

Posted to El Salvadors Patriot Act

It is potentially depressing, the true things you mention, Maria. But depression is immobilizing, and giving up is what some crafty bastards want us all to do, to give up and to just go along, overfed by cheap junk food, celebrity-worship, and all the other distractions. Working with young people helps remind me that there's no such thing as stasis, and there are reasons to keep pushing for those forward steps, slow and halting though they are. But people are interconnecting more than ever, gaining affinities with one another more and faster than at any time in the world's history. For …

Posted to El Salvadors Patriot Act

"According to Ret. U.S. Lt. Gen. William Odom, the situation is becoming one in which the U.S. army is 'arming the enemies of the government whose election and legitimacy we sponsored. 'The muddled, contradictory and ludicrous nature of this policy would deserve a horse laugh if it were not so tragic,' says Odom, who served as the Army�s senior intelligence officer under Reagan. There is 'no example where stable states were created by diffusing weapons and power to local and regional groups.'" May be, General. But if you want justification for planting enduring bases on foreign soil because of the chaos …

Posted to Funding Iraqs Citizen Soldiers

1. Grow industrial cannabis for seed. The oil can be used in properly configured diesel engines. For those who get their panties in a twist over the dreaded demon weed, remember that industrial hemp is entirely low in THC, as are the seeds. Any smokers will only get "high" off the carbon monoxide. Hemp also grows on marginal land much better than most food plants. 2. Use bikes for short trips in town, or walk if it's within a mile and you're not carrying a heavy load. Hard to beat by almost any measure of practicality. If you can't walk a …

Posted to Biofuels Are No Cure for Climate Change

"Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) voted against the bill because he objected to the government spending new money on this project when the House just passed a $37 billion appropriations bill for Homeland Security, Flake’s spokesman told In These Times... Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) issued a statement saying that the money could be better spend funding preexisting law-enforcement efforts, rather than funding another commission." Precisely! There's no need for an extra commission, or a new agency, or another amalgamation of bits and pieces into a patchwork executive department. Good police work and courts that rely on substantive evidence and that work to …

Posted to Examining the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act

"The War on Drugs explains much of the explosion, sending huge numbers of men and women, a disproportionate number of them poor blacks and Latinos, into state and federal prisons. The sentences handed out to drug offenders often exceed those served by rapists and other violent offenders." Yes, and it's going to get worse, as those convicts who don't stay behind bars find entrance back into the straight economy hugely difficult, if it's even possible. Back to selling drugs, then probably back inside. For those who don't die from turf/profits wars in the meantime, that is. Clear evidence of dehumanization. Their …

Posted to Prison Breakdown

Thanks for that reference, frog, I was not familiar with Ramsbotham, although it doesn't surprise me that a prison inspector would reach such conclusions. It's merely right before our eyes that the current paradigm feeding incarceration patterns is not working at all. As I've said in other threads, I believe we are creating a permanent criminal underclass, which will (perhaps not coincidentally) also correlate with non-Caucasian "racial" backgrounds. It's worth asking, in whose interest is this? Who benefits? The cons, their neighbors and families back home, the general citizenry, and the taxpayers certainly don't. A basic shift in thinking is called …

Posted to Prison Breakdown

I will add sale of those mind-altering substances to kids who have not reached the age of consent as being acceptably punishable. I wouldn't put a teenaged stoner or boozer in the slam, it would be smarter to educate and if necessary give treatment to him. The guy who sold to him, I would punish.

Posted to Prison Breakdown

What a waste of time! WTH is right, don't those clowns have anything better to do?? And if they do officially classify the Armenian slaughter as "genocide"? Then what? You can see how that word got everyone up and moving to protect the people of Darfur, right? Wrong.

Posted to A Resolution Too Far?

No dispute from me that the prison system is a striking social ill, more likely to create a permanent criminal underclass than to inhibit the likelihood of more crime. Also no dispute from me that non-whites get treated rougher and are arrested more on average than whites, and get longer sentences, and are assumed to be crooks with greater frequency. All that is real, indisputable I think. However, it doesn't matter race a real criminal is, I mean a real one, most especially a violent criminal. What's the difference? The only question that really counts is, did he or she do …

Posted to Jena and the Post-Civil Rights Fallacy

(continuation of rant) As I complained on the thread linked to the article about the mother of the accused Purvis, why don't the facts of the case, specifically the 6-on-1 nature of the assault, the severity of the victims injuries, etc, get more attention? Presuming the 6 didn't do it, truly had nothing to do with an event of shocking violence, why were they charged? Unless of course, they were charged because they're black. Racism. But if they did do it, jumping a guy and beating him so bad he needs a hospital bed, why all the indignation that they were …

Posted to Jena and the Post-Civil Rights Fallacy

This crap of treating Filipinas as everyone's easy-tap, tail-for-sale bimbos is so offensive and so relentless as to boggle the mind. It happens so often, in-country and out, by the most boorish foreigners imaginable. They'd never be caught dead treating women from their own countries like that, and would freak out if anyone else did, but they come in here and act like local women are all just inflatable sex-dolls (there is a thriving sex trade here, which distorts the local economy out of all sensible shape... a bargirl can earn more than a Ph.D.). And an OFW (overseas Filipino worker) …

Posted to Harassment Unchecked at Army Hotel

Hi wolf, The sex trade here is sort of what you'd call unofficially tolerated (and profited from by a number of those same officials) while strictly speaking it is not legal, although as with a number of law-related issues here, there's a lot of grey area and inconsistent enforcement, enough so that a bar owner can avoid a charge of pandering even while everyone knows what's really up. The "dancers" will go with a customer for hired sex, but it's discussed as though she chose of her own free will. Which I guess is "true" in a twisted way, but again, …

Posted to Harassment Unchecked at Army Hotel

Which, by the way, is not to confuse the massive majority of OFWs with sex workers. They actually do an incredible variety of jobs, from domestic helpers to entertainers, teachers to casino employees, cargo ship workers to soldiers in the US military. I'll wager the women in the article above sure aint sex workers!

Posted to Harassment Unchecked at Army Hotel

The racialist paradigm at work. First it's nooses in a goddamn schoolyard tree and then a potentially lethal 6-on-1 attack. The rampant stupidity just flows like a river from a polluted spring. Same as it ever was, same as it always will be for as long as we've got this psychopathological barb stuck in our minds, like a festering, corrosive fishhook buried in the brain. So other than my usual (correct) rant, I have to say this was a very unsatisfying article. We get nothing about any evidence against those charged, nothing about why Mychal Bell's conviction was thrown out. The …

Posted to A Mother's March For Justice

"The problem with the Americans is that they�re working with the wrong people... This is the American method.� Shades of Tora Bora.

Posted to Make-a-Sheikh

Hi whattheheck, �An economy should be judged by how well it supports and enhances the deepest values of a society.�, from your quote of Robert Reich. This is actually a little disheartening, because an economy that's buoyed up by finagled number-data, cheap and maybe hazardous imported junk, fast-food and all its analogies beyond foodstuffs, thyroidal automobiles, outsourcing of every possible facet of production while crowing Buy American to the customer-base, and poorly delivered services, might actually support and enhance some very salient American "values". Not really the values we'd like to associate with America, but I mean ones like going after …

Posted to Feeding the Hungry is a Crime

Anarchy means that if my daughter gets raped, the only possible responses are acceptance or vendetta. It means my gang of friends will target and destroy as many of our enemies as possible. After all, we'll be on our own, having to make our own "justice" as best we can. Hell with justice, we'll just focus on survival. It would probably be most efficient if we kill off their kids too. What was it that guy at the Sand Creek massacre said? "Nits grow into lice"..? It's not laws, it's unjust laws, and laws that are unevenly enforced. It's not court …

Posted to Feeding the Hungry is a Crime

"After the Telecommunications Act of 1996 deregulated radio ownership, media giants gobbled up their smaller counterparts, which, according to the FCC�s own data, has transferred control of the airwaves into the hands of a powerful few." The exact point of the law. Damn Bill Clinton for signing it. "Congress created the FCC in 1934 to ensure that media companies act as �public trustees,� serving the needs and interests of the local community as a form of payment for their free access to public airwaves. But, as Copps said during his opening statements at the Chicago hearing, �for the past 25 years, …

Posted to FCC Rocks Chicago, Chicago Rocks Back

Hm, personally I'm more of a humanist than a feminist, although I'm not a true "-ist" of any kind because I'm too suspicious of "-isms". More inclusive, more timely, at least as necessary as feminism once surely was (and may still be, at least in some contemporary incarnation). "Women, especially young women, are not about to give up the gains won by feminism, but they also see the costs of failing to conform to a narrow, corporate definition of femininity." I hope this is an editing error, but shouldn't it say, "...the costs of conforming to a narrow, corporate definition of …

Posted to The Times vs. Feminism

"Buy food from local farmers. Go to the farmer�s market in your town. Go see how your food is grown. Keep the $$ in the community. It is one of the most political acts you can perform." lady farmer has hit the nail square on its proverbial head. It's not easy in some places, for example here in the Phils (esp. Metro Manila) the market is so open to the dominance of imported goods that "staying local" in terms of purchases necessarily means that some very yummy and nutritious items will get passed over. Plus, most of the agro land here …

Posted to Recipe For Disaster

The point has always been to figure out ways to evade legal structures that bind government personnel and government action. Prisoners held in Guantanamo, hiring of mercs, suspension of civil liberties via the USA Patriot Act, to name 3 big examples. All allow this government to carry out its plans inhindered by military or constitutional law. Because this administration, in so many realms, apparently considers the law to be an intolerable impediment. So much for the rule of law. They say this is a "special" war, for which unprecedented latitude of government action must be accepted if there is to be …

Posted to Merc is the New Crack

Hola, Jon B, On the thread connected to Brian Beutler's article "Crocker's Kooky Economics" (ITT online, 13 Sep 2007), I made a remark about the administration desperately searching for a silver lining to go with their big, dark war-cloud. I'm not yet certain, but it may be that I've seen one. It may help lead to a more multilateral world, and allow this "single-superpower" mystique to fade back. I'm not positive, the future-webs are still fluxxing too much to predict very well, but it may be so. If, that is, one thinks that a more multilateral world would really be beneficial …

Posted to Merc is the New Crack

One can only hope that Ms. Gorman's ITT articles and the relevant material from her weblog may be compiled into a book, once she is no longer preoccupied with her work representing her clients. Future attorneys who take on government's attempts to maintain extralegal facilities and to hold prisoners in limbo may hopefully find a book like that instructive. The article above is a case in point, showing the inherent absurdity of carrying out "due process" when some of the most basic elements of American jurisprudence, e.g. attorney-client privilege, are warped or absent entirely.

Posted to Inside the Secret Facility

It's always been hard for me to reconcile the contradictions that come out of this issue. What's gained by thoroughly objectifying an unborn, as though it were nothing more than a tumor? Does human dignity and worth get a leg up by that way of thinking? But as well, what's served by sanctifying it to the point where it has a higher value than any born-person will ever have, once out here breathing air? If it's "life" at stake, where's the devotion to taking care of born-people, for whom there's no debate about being alive? If it's the right to control …

Posted to An Unholy Alliance

By the way, as for outright criminalization, come on out here to the Phils and do a little investigating on the abortion picture here, where it's outlawed. F'n horrifying!

Posted to An Unholy Alliance

Prohibition doesn't work, won't ever work, can't work. It doesn't matter if it's forbidden literature, drugs, or arms, it's the forbiddance itself that is unrealistic. There are illegal drugs and firearms in Saudi Arabia and Singapore, for example, despite the finality of the remedies each state uses to deter such. You have to deal with the *real* criminal elements to get them, but there you go, that's part of the point. I do favor having to qualify for gun ownership, no differently from having to qualify to drive a car, fly a plane, dive scuba, etc. That takes time, and leaves …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

The thing is, unless they're hobbyists, people arm themselves for reasons that are for them more immediate, more directly at issue, than lofty and admirable ideals such as neighborliness, assertive peacefulness, and overcoming xenophobic out-grouping. I am not being sarcastic with the citing of the ideals, either, I think in fact that they're about the only things that counterflow against more primitive, irrational trends in the human mind. But in a given terrain, urban or out in the sticks or wherever, it's only sensible to "arm" oneself with knowledge and the determination to prevail against the dangers and risks within that …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

waypast, do you really fancy the idea of shooting "liberals"? Is all that "good/dead Liberal" stuff just hype?

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

Save the unimaginative insults, waypast. I'm not vulnerable to you. I did like the Penn & Teller bit, though. They amuse me. My question really is, Are you sincere in thinking that shooting a person like, say, Hillary Clinton, will actually serve the cause of freedom in America? And if you do, do you have the sand to actually draw down, get her or someone like her in your sights, and squeeze the trigger? To really assassinate a US Senator? Or the Speaker of the House? Do you authentically believe America will be a freer nation, if you or anyone carries …

Posted to Let's Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

Surely the manufacturers don't intend it (if they're faith-minded, at least), but they're contributing to the demystification/demythification of Yeshua. Like Jon B points out, there will be little Jesus-doll parts all around the yard, toyland-deathmatches between Jesus and, say, Beast of X-Men fame, in the hands of kids. I hope their parents don't freak out when the toys are treated like toys, i.e. with "irreverence". It would be miserable to know a kid got spanked or shouted at for playing with her toys like a kid does. An interesting new twist on graven images. We definitely, definitely need toys of the …

Posted to Holy Toyland

When does the Charles Darwin action figure come out? Can I get the HMS Beagle display case with that? Merry Christmas, all. Don't get trampled!

Posted to Holy Toyland

I honestly wonder whether the broad electorate wants bold departures at all. Here are five bold departures. 1. Publicly fund campaigns and mandate TV, cable, and radio time in equal proportions for all candidates. Not "both candidates", all! Eminent domain law will be the basis, except that air time will be paid for. 2. Open up the televised debates once the various parties (all of them!) have made their nominations. Make them more like symposia, every candidate allowed to tell his or her party's position on the issues that face the nation. No more presuppositions about who has a "chance to …

Posted to Obama's in the Eye of the Beholder

Casting about desperately for any piece of good news, however uncontextual. It's like being grateful that the wind storm has knocked the whole peach crop out of the trees, because now we won't have to bring ladders to harvest them. (..."Surely this big f'n dark cloud has a silver lining somewhere... we just gotta find it...")

Posted to Crocker's Kooky Economics

Hello whattheheck, I think our military personnel have been set up for a fall since it was decided to invade Iraq in the first place. So hopelessly unrealistic! They were in the midst of the challenge of Afghanistan, nowhere near the finish of that confrontation, and then the course was taken that divided human and material resources, leaving both venues lacking. Militant medievalism ends up with a shot in the arm and a growing constituency, the US ends up looking either idiotic or evil, depending on the week, with those in uniform being let down, used up and having to take …

Posted to Crocker's Kooky Economics

And I'd clean-sweep the Congress too, if they worked for me. Bounce their sorry asses straight out the door, both sides of the aisle. They say they work for us, but there's little I can think of that bears out such platitudes. If I did my job so poorly I'd be panhandling for a living.

Posted to Crocker's Kooky Economics

This is a tough one because pumping large amounts of any valuable resource into a local economy (including food) is sure to distort its market mechanisms, and yet so often in those localities war, corruption, or climate problems may already be distorting those mechanisms so badly that you can trace chronic hunger in large part directly to them. As for cash rather than in-kind donations, we've all heard many times that donated cash very often goes astray, much of it never actually helping the ones who need it. I've had direct experience working to raise donations for various charities, particularly to …

Posted to Who Does U.S. Food Aid Benefit?

The men act ruthlessly because they hold a value that tells them they own the unquestionable, cosmic truth, part of which says that women are subordinate and questioners are apostate, aren't worthy to live. Ruthlessness is called for if you have all the truth for all time. But of course in real life no one ever will. Secular government may not be perfect, but at least no one thinks they speak for the cosmos. When faith is the basis of law it's bound to be a nightmare.

Posted to Unveiling Muslim Feminism

I've been in the classroom for 22 years. Public, private, rich kids, broke kids, dozens of cultures and demographics, schools with gang-violence issues, racial conflict issues, issues of substandard educational practices, labor-district issues, budgetary shortfall issues, religio-cultural issues, you name it, I've seen it. Rephrasing what has been said (but that is apparently lost upon legions of parents) into the form of a pointed charge, I ask: If you all don't teach your kids the limits of decent behavior at home, how in the bloody hell do you expect us in the classroom to do anything with them, other than crowd …

Posted to Restoring Classroom Justice

This is the sort of thing that feeds reincarnations of Tim McVeigh. PTSD isn't the only psychological issue to be concerned with. I also have concerns about the mental states of those soldiers and marines who come back alienated, disillusioned, bearing feelings of betrayal, perhaps looking for paybacks. Not those who go to hospital and get ill-served by the VA or whomever, but those who never even seek treatment though they may need it. It will be only a few at most, but the small size of the conspiracy to blast the Murrah Fed Building in OK City didn't affect the …

Posted to Extending Tours, Stressing Troops

Hm, seems unreasonable to expect the president's wife to openly challenge his policies, even (especially?) a policy of war. Her influence would be better felt, perhaps, in behind-the-scenes conversations, rather than feeding the public relations storm that would surely ensue if she came out and vocally denounced the Iraq war, for example. She might reasonably conclude that George's political currency would be greatly damaged if she were to have opposed the invasion of Iraq, and as we recall, back in early 2003 and before, he had a great deal more of that currency than at present. Hadn't had time to fuck …

Posted to How Does Laura Bush Sleep at Night?

I'm not so sure that a guarantee of "equality" is democratic at all, but it depends on what sort of equality you have in mind. If all citizens were regarded as equally valuable members of the society, and could count on equal protection from the law (and yes, I realize that these measures already fall short for too many), that's one thing. But to say that guaranteeing economic or "lifestyle" equality is democratic, that's going too far. I recall a remark from Jefferson in which the best government is said to be the one that "governs least". How do you guarantee …

Posted to The Kids Aren't Alright

"On July 31, the authorities announced that Freeman admitted to killing at least one live infant that she delivered in secret several years ago." "After questioning Freeman at the hospital, police searched her home and found the recently stillborn infant and three older sets of fetal remains in and around her property." I'm about ready to call into question Freeman's full-fledged personhood!

Posted to Equating Stillbirths with Murders

And less horrible but still a question I have, wasn't one unwanted pregnancy enough? How 'bout get your tubes tied, Christy! Maybe the prison doctors can help you out.

Posted to Equating Stillbirths with Murders

Yup, a criminal waste of police time, taxpayers' money, prison space (put the violent ones in, let the stoners out!). And it's based on a foolish premise, that I have the right to command what shall go on within the privacy of your own skull. Plus, it makes bad guys filthy stinkin' rich, and more dangerous than they already are. Black market profits, the sky's the limit. You know who doesn't want decrim? The contraband cartels! "Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of …

Posted to The Drug War's Collateral Damage

True or not true? Real or not real? "..the Supreme Court has told us Guant�namo attorneys that we must work within the framework of the Act before the Court will determine whether it is constitutional.." Abdication of responsibility, refs judicial review? "..[the Court] also eliminated habeas corpus (the right to challenge unlawful imprisonment in a court of law) for those who were not going to be charged (98 percent of the detainees)." Hm, continuing to be held, but will not be charged. I can hear the echo of self-righteousness from back in my youth during the Cold War days, the verbal …

Posted to Locking Attorneys out of Guantánamo

"Thus, when Imus� defenders blamed hip-hop for providing their man the vocabulary for his insult, many agreed. Oprah Winfrey�s entire response to the Imus affair was a two-segment �town hall� meeting on the state of hip-hop." The state of hip-hop? Because Don Imus used a near-equivalent of "nigger" on his show? Usually I admire Oprah, but I think she's mistaken here. Imus is offensively rude all the time; his shot at the Rutgers players was entirely in-character and not at all due to 3 6 Mafia, 50 Cent, Eminem, or any other explicit lyricists' work. Imus' defenders were also way out …

Posted to Blaming Hip-Hop for Imus

You gotta hand it to Bush & Co., they're f'n geniuses at avoiding limits on their actions. If as alleged almost half of the personnel in Iraq are mercenaries rather than sworn troops (reflecting off the exchange between wintermute and wolf above), then that's 1000s of operatives who basically don't have to concern themselves at all with congressional oversight, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, or even what little independent journalism still remains that might have a prayer of scrutinizing them. Well, they've obviously always wanted a free hand, unencumbered by pesky checks and balances; this is another facet.

Posted to These Guns for Hire

A relevant story... Private Guards Weak Link in Security Forbes online: 15.29.07, 7:13 PM ET http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/05/29/ap3767693.html .............................................................................. And even if it is entirely late in the day for this reminder, there were many, many of us who thought and said way back in 2003 that they were entering a quagmire. This was predicted because we thought Bush and Co. were being unrealistic. In fact, they have engaged in what amounts to magical thinking, such as 1) prediction that their loftily phrased goals would be enough to captivate the locals' imaginations despite the disconnection of those goals from facts on the ground: …

Posted to These Guns for Hire

First of all, use of reclaimed water is bound to expand in the future, in arid regions like Arizona and elsewhere. It would be wise to test all such water for anything that might impact the health of humans and animals using it. I have no idea how much more expensive it is to take processed water from "A-plus" unpotable to "potable", but my supposition is that the expanded ability to use the resulting water for all purposes, drinking and otherwise, might make the added cost worthwhile. It may not be cost effective to make all sewage water into drinking water …

Posted to Sacred Lands, Sewer Snow

I'm sure I'll get slashed for "not caring about" native Americans, which is crap. I simply say, in this world today, here and now, the ski resort owners have a case to make too, even if it's not a sentimental/spiritual one. If it comes to relieving human suffering, which I do care about, I think there are more direct ways to accomplish that than arguing over whether a ski resort ought to be scraped off a mountain or not. How about taking care of people as though they were actually worth something more than sewage themselves? I suppose that's not elegant …

Posted to Sacred Lands, Sewer Snow

Keeping children and their mothers behind bars for no crime is heinous, and exactly how their continued imprisonment serves national security is beyond me. However, presuming they were illegal immigrants, what if they were to be sent back to their country/s of origin? There would certainly be a huge outcry on the grounds that it would be an inhumane decision. And I'm afraid this is because some, though they may not be willing to say so out loud, do apparently think the solution most conducive to peace and justice is to have a truly open US border. In other words, they …

Posted to Rebelde for the Cause

Hello luminous beauty, Thanks for that information, I see Sra. Huerta's position as a union activist trying to prevent wages from plummeting on the heels of a flood of undocumented laborers. However, that seems to bring more of a muddle to the immigration situation, as also implied by gbenacci's post of May 15. It very much calls into question exactly how the US ought to respond to the thousands every week who try to enter illegally, in the sense that it's apparently in the interest of some within US borders to let them come in easily, while at the very same …

Posted to Rebelde for the Cause

There's the job we think the media ought to be doing, and then there's the job they're actually doing... http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2664529389359423152&q=orwell+rolls+in+his+grave It's a few years old, but maybe y'all will find it worth your time (1:45:00) Food for thought, if nothing else.

Posted to Defining Hate in the United States

"...the city health department has decided to encourage male circumcision as an HIV-prevention method among at-risk populations, particularly gay and African-American men..." African-American men are more "at risk"? Why would that be? If this is true (which I'm questioning), what makes it so? This statement just sort of hangs there, as though it's obvious to anyone when in fact it is far from obvious. And as for gay men, I've read several times in the last few years that the US gay male population has actually experienced a flattening of HIV infection rates, relative to the past, because of active efforts …

Posted to Circumcision Promotion Divides AIDS Activists

Also, I notice that the little "edit" thingy doesn't appear on my posts any more... ...too many posters "editing" in posts of a million characters, I suppose.

Posted to Circumcision Promotion Divides AIDS Activists

Thanks wolf, I didn't catch the fact that the discussion has to go to 6 posts before editing is possible. The remark in the article above about Af-Am men and gay men still hits me funny, seems to rest upon a lot of unclarified assumptions. The "studies" cited aren't really cited at all, just the word "studies", as though the reader ought to accept that word like it's actually meaningful. We circumcised my boy after long conversations and not a few misgivings. I told him that if he ever wants to get reconstructed I'll pay for it. He doesn't seem too …

Posted to Circumcision Promotion Divides AIDS Activists

'�S�nchez de Lozada has a fortune estimated at $50 million, largely garnered through the privatization of the country�s state-owned mines.� Now this is the real story. It is a shame that the rich can steal from the poorest of the poor and then leave the country behind. I would rather we give the ex prez clemency but require that the bulk of the money he took from Bolivia be returned, somehow...' In fact, Lozada should be stripped of all his ill-gotten assets, I mean cleaned out. And the banks, etc that allow looting heads of state (Marcos comes to mind, among …

Posted to Gone, But Not Forgotten

Force fed why? Is it to keep them alive for a set of yet-unannounced trials?? Wait, there'd have to be charges first... Too much to expect, obviously. It's as much as to say, "You're ours, mfr's! No charges, no trials, no escape." No legal standards... No constitutional limitations... No idea what to do with their sad, sorry asses, except to keep them breathing. For some reason. Probably so "we" won't be responsible for their suicides. Musn't have that, wouldn't be proper, don't you know. That's another fine mess you've gotten us into, Mr Bush

Posted to The Guantánamo Hunger Strike

Hillary is not a feminist, she's a power-player, no different than so many of the men who have entered politics, going back to antiquity. No different than a number of female leaders, e.g. Catherine II of Russia to name only one. Now that access to power is a bit more open to women, it isn't a surprise that a female power-player appears among the front-runners in US politics. Won't be the last time, either. People want to understand her as a function of her pelvic plumbing and the images they have in their mind about "how women are". Check out her …

Posted to Why Women Hate Hillary

Hello Tiger2, "Plumbing" meant anatomy. ;-) I think you're right about Slick Willy, also. (my Brit friends still chuckle about that moniker). Definitely what you'd call a flexible moral compass. Actually I think he's a cad, although in '96 I went ahead and voted to retain him, seemed at the time to be a good choice for the country.

Posted to Why Women Hate Hillary

I'd also like to see a series of televised symposia on major national issues, to which ANY presidential candidate is invited, regardless of some presumption of winability, which is now an artificial filter favoring those few who are allowed to join debates among presidential candidates. That nonsense back in 1992, where Bush the Elder, Clinton the Convex, and the loudmouthed billionaire took part in the debates, was just ludicrous. Why did we need to hear from Ross Perot and not any other contenders? Because he was bucks-up? That was the basis of his presumption of winability, wasn't it? Whether they have …

Posted to Power to the Public Financing

Ya know, I have no worries about immigrants per se, don't really care which ethnicity they identify with, and I do have pointed questions about ICE doing orifice searches during a raid. But... ...is it really too much to ask, really a so-called "racist" position, to expect people to come in the front door, legally? Obviously some sort of well-regulated guest worker program is called for. Fences and The Minutemen don't appear to work too well. But still, would any householder just throw open their gate and say "Come on in, whoever you are, there's plenty for all" to the world? …

Posted to Abuses Alleged During Immigration Raid

"It�s an extremely stressful situation for a newly returned vet,� says Howard. �The check is late, the university is breathing down his throat. This is the first dealing with VA that most vets have, and when they come up against shit like this, it discourages them from claiming other benefits, including medical disability, treatments, etc.� Maybe this is by design. You young brothers and little sisters who are thinking about signing up, y'all better be doing it because you're true believers in "the cause", because if you're trusting that you'll be taken care of afterward, signing up because you imagine that …

Posted to GI Bill Fails Vets

Yup, whattheheck, "...the whole country is so different now..."; you said a mouthful alright! I'm repeatedly dismayed. Seems to me that getting involved with the military these days ought to be likened to getting involved with hard drugs. You sure better know all the facts before you drop, because you'll be done with IT a hell of a lot quicker than it'll be done with YOU!

Posted to GI Bill Fails Vets

"This emphasis on voter fraud has convinced eight states to pass laws requiring voters to present official photo identification in order to cast a ballot�laws that studies have shown suppress Democratic turnout among voters who are poor, black, Latino, Asian-American or disabled." It sounds like a non-sequiter to say that requiring presentation of ID prior to voting inhibits poor, black, Latino, Asian, or disabled voters from casting a ballot. It suggests that those people are somehow singled out by the requirement, or are somehow less able to follow through on it than other people not listed. Why would that be? They're …

Posted to The Fraudulence of Voter Fraud

Odd, I have the capital punishment piece on this page, with an article on independent-label music right beneath. Well, I always knew info tech was flawed; even a hyper-sophisticated gadget can't count a billion bits of info every single second without making a mistake once in a while. Speaking of flaws, TI, I have questions about capital punishment. Do you have any concern that, even with DNA testing and processes of appeal, sometimes the wrong person will be executed? No system is flawless, and we can't exactly let a wrongly convicted person out of the grave the way we can let …

Posted to Inside the Death Chamber

Related news... Study: Lethal Injection Method Flawed http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/04/24/ap3643247.html Many will say they don't care, but there's no doubt it's part of the debate.

Posted to Inside the Death Chamber

I loved Slaughterhouse Five (refs Dresden), both the book and the film. Wouldn't mind becoming unstuck in time as a personal fate. The idea fairly captivated me when I was a boy. (Spending the rest of my life as a zoo exhibit for extraterrestrials with Valerie Perrine/Montana Wildhack as co-beast wouldn't be such a bad destiny either) The other of his books that I found quite powerful was Player Piano, which has a distinctly different tone from his more whimsical stuff, more serious while still preserving the imaginitive quality I enjoy in his work. A quick read, but thought-provoking. I did …

Posted to Thank You Mr. Vonnegut

As an alternative source of bio-fuel, particularly vegetable-derived diesel, industrial cannabis would be a good contribution. If anyone is worried about THC content, industrial hemp has almost none, so you could smoke a brick of it and the only "high" you'd get would be from the carbon monoxide... (...although why anyone would get worked up about a free, peaceable person like myself lighting up a doob in my private space is quite beyond me, any more than they should freak out if I indulge in a nice single-malt scotch!) There's no such thing as a cure-all, as industrial cannabis has sometimes …

Posted to Biofuels: Promise or Peril?

Couldn't resist.

Posted to Biofuels: Promise or Peril?

"If someone is in the mood to listen to Modest Mouse, they no longer have to hear the new Red Hot Chili Peppers hit five times before they can." Much as I like the Chili Peppers, the repetition of radio programming is truly irritating. Last summer I took two car trips into Central California to visit my brother and his wife. First time, I had only the radio (tape deck too, but no tapes), and spent most of the trip switching about to find something interesting to hear, or in frustrated silence. Second time, I brought my iPod mini and RoadTrip …

Posted to Digital Revives the Indie Pop Star

If it's "sustainability" the military is looking for, the civilian government could have helped with that by not stupidly initiating two wars in less than two years, dividing the forces and making it impossible to adequately accomplish even one of the original missions.

Posted to Uncle Sam Wants Sustainability

A buddy of mine (a chemistry teacher) recently brought up another question related to this that I had never heard of. It has to do with methane in deep ocean trenches which, he said, could be liberated into the atmosphere if oceanic temperatures were to elevate beyond some small amount. I have not yet taken the time to look up much about his concern, but one thing I'll also have to check out is his assertion that methane holds much more heat per volume than carbon dioxide. Any chemists out there who can shed some light?

Posted to Resisting the War on Science

It really just seems to make obvious sense to reduce consumption of petrofuels, even if you think GW is nonsense. For example, I become quite disturbed when people say things like "we have enough oil for another --- years", usually citing an arbitrary 3-digit number, 200 or 300 or the like. Is that supposed to be the duration of human history, as though there will be no need for huge amounts of energy in that era? Or are we so fixated on our own indulgences that we can't give a damn about future generations? Even if global warming were somehow to …

Posted to Resisting the War on Science

Jon B, I had heard of the "peak oil" concept before, though your explanation was clear and easy to understand, gracias. It makes sense as far as it goes, but others have also pointed out that there's a lack of information available to determine whether the "peak" has been reached in particular localities. But actually, even if globally speaking the peak has yet to be reached (realizing the simplistic nature of that characterization, as though all oil-nations work in concert and all oil fields' capacities are known), the value of decreasing waste seems quite obvious to me, i.e. to extend the …

Posted to Resisting the War on Science

Thanks Jon B, I had heard of peak oil already but your explanation was clear and understandable. I don't know how such a thing can be confirmed; the debate is so charged with political side-taking, any evidence presented gets lost in the shouting. I have to admit, I don't know who to listen to and who to ignore. There certainly do seem to be more and more people claiming to have credentials who are sounding the alarm, however. Are all of them just misled, mystified by a "green hippie fad"? That seems far-fetched. Maybe I'll invest a little coin in some …

Posted to Resisting the War on Science

Cool Dave, see you "up nawth". I'll help plant the orange trees if you help tend the snares. By God, it'll be downright neighborly.

Posted to Resisting the War on Science

I don't care about race. If I did, I'd carry a lot of bitterness around with me. My grandmother was raped at knifepoint by a black man. It was when my mom was a child, but the ingrained bitterness I grew up hearing was stark and uncompromising. I also spent most of my youth in a SoCal town with an absolutely poisonous relationship between most whites and blacks (I got my ass beat by black guys more than once for nothing more than being white... and had it threatened to be beat by white guys much more often than that because …

Posted to Slavery and the State of Denial

mike, I wouldn't ever trivialize the rape, or the robbery, certainly not the panic and horror the women felt. It's not that I don't understand fear and anger, resentment, feeling pissed and afraid because of being denigrated and attacked for nothing. Of course not, mike. I'm not standing in judgement. If the tone came across like that, it's clumsy phrasing. But I am still going to dig away at that mountain with my little spoon. I truly think it's the right direction to go. If it's tiresome to read then OK, maybe I'll be more calculating with the frequency of timing …

Posted to Slavery and the State of Denial

I would have been more content if the article had given a bit more detail regarding the specifics of Kissling's philosophical points in favor of legal abortion rights. Maybe the article's scope didn't include what I would've liked to read, but if she's "the philosopher of the pro-choice movement", I'd expect to get more than just an admission that that the status of fetal life is rightfully part of the debate. When, actually, it's the heart of the debate. I raised a point a few months ago about this topic, in response to another article in which abortion rights was the …

Posted to A Pain, and Proud of It

Thanks cabdriver and mike, both for your responses and also for the surprising convergence of your views. It's very interesting and even a bit entertaining to find two people with such fundamentally different philosophical orientations (and who also smack heads routinely) coming to a similar conclusion, at least in this one specific instance. Oh yes, and in regards to capital punishment as well. As you implied, cabdriver, it is an intriguing aspect of politics that a Libertarian-Objectivist and a Democratic Socialist can both nod "yes" to the same question. It seems your points of agreement emphasize the primacy of the woman's …

Posted to A Pain, and Proud of It

Maybe one factor that comes up in all this is my own penchant for focusing on ways that people think about things, their "philosophy" for lack of a better word, as opposed to focusing primarily on social institutions like law, which I think of as being downstream from values and philosophies. It's not that law is trivial, just that I tend to think that the way people behave and the decisions they make on a day-to-day basis come more directly from their own understandings, rather than on how the law reads, even if in the end they decide to go along …

Posted to A Pain, and Proud of It

But he really has done the job "to the best of [his] ability". The fact that his "best" is so lame is another question.

Posted to What's Bush's biggest lie so far?

If you really want to see something striking, compare CNN International, broadcast outside of US timezones, to the "domestic" version. Not to say that CNNI is above criticism (pah! hardly!), but it is much more characterized by a "hard news" focus compared to homestyle CNN. I've seen this for years, and it gets worse and worse every time I return home to visit family and click on CNN. Homestyle CNN includes a much larger proportion of so-called "human interest" stories (if anyone is really so "interested" in the disposition of Anna Nicole's remains) and emphasis upon the doings of celebrity reporters …

Posted to Why Does CNN Suck?

mike, I'm sure you won't be surprised when I mention how pronounced these differences have seemed since Sep. 2001, and even more so (dude!!) since March 2003. I will admit my own "radar" for evaluating news has been more sensitive since these dates, but my question to CNN (not rhetorical!) is, why the huge difference? Hoping to foster docility, perhaps? I can't think of a single other motivation that would adequately explain. Personally, I go to Google's online news page for most of my news. It can be a little time consuming to dig around among all the sources that contribute, …

Posted to Why Does CNN Suck?

Hmf. Here I was hoping for a rousing conversation about the exploration of sexuality and I end up with a bitter debate about Germany under Hitler. There ain't no justice.

Posted to Bisexual Healing

One big part of the problem here is the engrained political habit of permitting someone else to draw the line in the rhetorical sand to force a false dichotomy, such that anyone who makes a pointed criticism of Israel can be unjustly tagged as a racist when they're most likely nothing of the sort. The same kind of thing can be observed in discussions of illegal immigration, affirmative action, etc. The instant these and other issues arise, unsubstantiated charges of "Racism!" are tossed about with really chilling frequency, whether they're well-founded (rarely) or not. The point of doing so, of course, …

Posted to For Israel's Sake

Yes Maria, I'm particularly disgusted when, for example, a person who is not at all anti-American but who energetically disagrees with a government's policies, risks being called a supporter of terrorism just because they avoid the bandwagon. This is exactly the kind of false dichotomy I'm referring to in my post above. I've mentioned many times on these threads that I considered the division of our fighting forces in 2003 in order to invade Iraq to be tactically and strategically foolish, more likely to delay or negate accomplishing the prior mission in Afghanistan and very likely also to earn us enemies …

Posted to For Israel's Sake

"...the growing size of human societies [can't] explain the long hostility of elites to their people’s festivities and ecstatic rituals—a hostility that goes back at least to the city-states of ancient Greece, which contained only a few tens of thousands of people each. No, the repression of festivities and ecstatic rituals over the centuries was the conscious work of men, and occasionally women, who saw in them a real and urgent threat. The aspect of 'civilization' that is most hostile to festivity is not capitalism or industrialism—both of which are fairly recent innovations—but social hierarchy, which is far more ancient. When …

Posted to Reclaiming What Makes Us Human

...a joyless Christian... way sad... Some folks want to Critique more than they want to Enjoy. I can't relate.

Posted to Reclaiming What Makes Us Human

God is the anthropomorphized, projected interpretation of that which is the source of all that is, was, or can be. It is derived from the human cerebrum's attempt to understand the cosmic grounding of its existence and ability to be conscious. It is not limited to the constraints that bind the living, nor is it dead. It does not have a single form of consciousness but is the foundation of all incarnations that can be conscious, as well as being the foundation of everything else that cannot wake into consciousness. It has no gender but makes possible the sexual polarity that …

Posted to Reclaiming What Makes Us Human

Hi again gang, been incommunicado a while. Looks like I missed a lot of cool blab. I wonder, when you dig right down to the core (which ain't easy, with all the history and culture accreting over the centuries, all the translating and intellectualizing and editing we obsess over), are you not left with the spotlight focused upon how your life is lived as the central issue? I mean by that, the real-life thoughts, words, and actions that come forth from you, as well as their effects upon other people? I can't help but feel that that's what Yeshua was really …

Posted to Reclaiming What Makes Us Human

For TI: Where was I, Lord, when the foundations of the world were laid? I was a disparate clutch of molecular dust, scattered and unaware, until by machinations so marvelous and arcane that I may never fully grasp them, I am incarnated through a power wholly beyond me. In my groping, halting fashion, I attempt to understand. And although history is unclear and scripture is edited, although religion is by turns inspirational and drenched in the blood of the innocent, I remain humbly thankful for, indeed in awe of, the fact of my minimally significant life and the mysteries I have …

Posted to Reclaiming What Makes Us Human

Just reclaiming what makes me human, miguel.

Posted to Reclaiming What Makes Us Human

Hello bostonblackie, "Atlas Shrugged" is the best intro to Ayn Rand, but it can be a slow read at points. If you want to get to the heart of her ideas, skip ahead and find the place at which the character John Galt commandeers the scheduled presidential radio broadcast and details "his" (actually, her) philosophy. It's in the latter 1/3 of the book somewhere, you might have to dig around to locate it, but it goes on at length and comprehensively. If you have time and inclination to read the whole novel it will make more sense in context, but it's …

Posted to Reclaiming What Makes Us Human

Hey, I want an alter-ego too! ("Kuya" isn't one, it's just a nickname) I'll have to work up some kind of interesting character, see who can find the "real" one beneath. Hm, the little Pinoy flag might be a tip-off... Durn it, skunked again!

Posted to Reclaiming What Makes Us Human

Let me register my disgust with the term "people of color", which essentially means everyone but palefaces. To single us out, and I do mean "out" as in separating us from the rest of the human species, is racist. Or maybe it's just stupid and offensive, which is a broader category that racism falls into as a specific example. It's not as if there's a single human tribe who's "collective hands" aren't tainted with the blood of countless people, in innumerable events from their (our... ALL of our) cultural histories (and the term "collective hands" is itself a fallacy, since each …

Posted to A Politically Correct Lexicon

Racial groupings aren�t exactly artificial, I mean, you can see with your own eyes that people look like they�re grouped somehow by physical characteristics, but there�s a long-standing set of presumptions that the visible differences indicate more than they really do, especially in regards to who we�re kin with and who we�re not. And modern genetic science has undercut those presumptions, blessedly. It has to do with degree of genetic variation between people. We have evidence that wasn't available in the past, due to limitations upon research techniques associated with particular times in history. We've learned things we could not know …

Posted to A Politically Correct Lexicon

You know, Charles Manson pushed the idea that racial hatred and warfare will ebb and flow, but will definitely escalate, until our civilization basically exhausts itself and falls to pieces through continued fighting. Seems like, if we had half a brain, we'd do whatever we had to socially and psychologically, to avoid fulfilling the prophecy of a mass-murdering freakazoid motherfucker like him.

Posted to A Politically Correct Lexicon

It's a broad-based habit of thought I'm planting seeds to erode, mike, the "us-and-not-them" habit that's visible everywhere and that's so very often triggered by physical features like skin color (and others, but that's a biggie), the habit of excessive caution, avoidance, disaffection, suspicion. And, what if I was able to plant that seed in the mind of a reader of this site, such that the webs in his mind actually began to rearrange over time, to take a new shape? What if my few words got someone to thinking in a way that led him to eventually change away from …

Posted to A Politically Correct Lexicon

Hello again mike, I've been outa range for a while, Yes indeed, objective reality is very much what I'm talking about (refs your response to me on Mar 2 above). The hurdle that I'm saying we need to clear is that of acknowledging the truly close genetic relationship all humans have, to bring it into our worldview as a central realization of what we are in our most basic nature. It's not about pretending that we can't tell the difference between dark and pale, but it is about incorporating new evidence into our understanding of racial distinctions. So to clarify, it's …

Posted to A Politically Correct Lexicon

Hi there Canadian Dave, peace be with ya. It's no difficulty to get along with mike, he's straight-up and provocative, but so are others in the ITT cast of characters and it's part of what brings me back even with long periods between. But we don't initiate insults toward each other, and we've figured out a pattern of respectful conversation even when we disagree. And when we do disagree, we say our piece, try to get the point the other is making, and keep things civil. I like to converse and exchange ideas, to learn from other people's thinking, it's the …

Posted to A Politically Correct Lexicon

Leftover hubris from Manifest Destiny, industrial and commercial economic "miracles", as well as fighting fascistic and socialistic militants to a stand-still (most of the pivotal events taking place within only a little more than a century), could be argued to have helped the US overreach itself recently, to the extent that it has actually done so (which is arguable). The author implies that this includes the overselling of secular democratic republicanism. It may be so. Many civilizations have fallen into the trap of thinking themselves to be eternal, incapable of failure, destined to lead the world, etc. No reason (at all!) …

Posted to Eyes Off the Prize

"Who’s to blame for America’s new torture techniques?" (If they ARE really new, which is itself debatable) The perpetrators, of course, and I don't mean the functionaries who receive and implement orders to "interrogate." They're bad enough, Thoreau's "men of wood or straw", for whom turning off the Conscience Subroutine in their CPU is little strain. But when, not if, instances of torture come to light, the place to go to find those really responsible is up the chain of command. And the buck stops at 1600 Pennsylvania Av., Washington DC. Big white place right across from Lafayette Park, you can't …

Posted to Interrogations Behind Barbed Wire

So much for the "new American century". Hasn't gotten off to what you'd call a brilliant start.

Posted to Interrogations Behind Barbed Wire

#9 - It sets an ill precedent for the next commander-in-chief who wants to circumvent constitutional limits on his or her power, which will further undermine any claim the US might ever have had as a bastion of democracy. "We're at war" just ain't good enough a reason for that kind of degradation to continue. The country still has to go on, after the war is over. If it's ever allowed to be over...

Posted to 8 Reasons to Close Guantnamo Now

*sigh* This isn't what I check in here for.

Posted to 8 Reasons to Close Guantnamo Now

Gotta say, I think the veterans are owed, big-time. Even if I disagree vehemently with a particular war they may be engaged in (rhymes with "Iraq"), I surely wouldn't mind seeing some bennies cut, but not theirs. They didn't place themselves there, after all, though they did arguably take the risk of an unsavory mission once having signed their contract. "Unsavory", there's your understatement du jour. How about we cut benefits, pensions, and any other tax-payer supplied goodies to the politicos and intell operatives who jointly misinterpreted/trumped up the "evidence" of WMDs that was the primary case made to the people …

Posted to Getting Vets Their Benefits Back

Hello again mike, we seem to be having a multi-thread conversation. You may have answered this question in another discussion, sorry for the redundancy if so, but what was your view on the invasion of Afghanistan, back in 2001? I thought it was correct to throw down with al-Qaeda/the Taliban government. Part of this is because I lived in Pakistan when the Taliban took power, and they are truly some scary, medieval-minded mfr's. The other, main part of my mind thought that to not strike back would suggest that America is an easy, flaccid target. I ask this because I feel …

Posted to Getting Vets Their Benefits Back

Hm, that's some pretty heady stuff, mike. Because it would mean, in terms of 9/11, for instance, that we had it coming. Chickens coming home to roost, to borrow Malcolm X's statement about the JFK killing. That it was the predictable outcome of conditions we ourselves had a hand in creating. I do think of myself as a critical thinker, but you can see why I'd find that to be a deeply disturbing conclusion.

Posted to Getting Vets Their Benefits Back

But I should clarify. I'd never say we had it coming, even if I do know that America's actions in the world have led to the shedding of innocent blood. I'd prefer taking it to the personal-responsibility level, e.g. a president being brought up on war crimes charges for the actions carried out during his or her tenure. Not that any US president will face a charge like that, but that's a factor of the world's preferential treatment for the strong and rich, as we see all the time, everywhere, disgustingly. (i think i mistook what you were agreeing with, mike...) …

Posted to Getting Vets Their Benefits Back

The problem is the willingness to justify killing the innocent and to wreck the lives of their survivors, in the deluded belief that the end being pursued is exalted enough to overlook the villainous means used to reach it. No matter who carries that sort of thing out, individually or en masse, their agenda becomes tainted by evil. There's no escape from that. They can talk til doomsday, and not a grain of the burden of their crimes will be lifted from them unless they halt the destruction, make amends, and begin again on a more righteous path. Doesn't matter who …

Posted to Getting Vets Their Benefits Back

Here are a few thoughts on improving schools from one who's been in the biz for 20+ years. I've worked in public and private schools, had all different types of kids from dead-broke migrants to the nieces and nephews of ruling class oligarchs, both in the US and abroad. There's barely a skin color or accent on Earth that hasn't had a representative in one class of mine or the other. Yeah, maybe that doesn't get me any street-cred, but I'm just saying, I'm no outsider to this question. 1. Push public education. That means you have to be willing to …

Posted to Education Reform: Pass or Fail?

...continued 5. Parents should hold their children accountable for good behavior in the classroom, rather than threatening lawsuits against the school or the teacher when their little darling gets pissed off at being corrected. This really seems axiomatic. How on Earth can we conduct class when we know some attitude-case teenager is allowed to tell us to fuck off, and that neither his parents nor our administrators will back us up when we try to gain control? 6. Teacher tenure should be earned, and should not be a mere function of years served. In the interest of fairness (i.e. not relying …

Posted to Education Reform: Pass or Fail?

Hello mike, Really, you're out on public schooling? I'm curious to know why. I'm in favor of it because I see so much fragmentation of US society already, I fear that cancelling public schooling would only accelerate the disintegration of the country into little localized tribelets (your mention of "balkanization" fits the idea). Not to say that public schools all by themselves will automatically bring America into the state of a conflict-free utopia, but they could be used (after some serious reforms) as part of a broader approach to national culture that aims to counter the fragmentation. Also, I think living …

Posted to Education Reform: Pass or Fail?

I wonder sometimes about how well people of disparate communities would get along in the absence of an authority above them to essentially punish fighting or discrimination between them. I'm not fond of overweaning authority, and in the past I was a pretty vocal proponent of libertarianism. Some parts of it still appeal to me intellectually, but I became disaffected when too many people in the LP I spoke with said things like, "The Libertarian Party wants people to be allowed to discriminate." Considering US history, I found that to be a gravely problematic statement. (aside: I do discriminate in a …

Posted to Education Reform: Pass or Fail?

This was an interesting exchange, mike, gracias. I will consider what you've said.

Posted to Education Reform: Pass or Fail?

I'm glad Obama has taken such a prominent place on the political stage for several reasons. One, although he's descended from a black African and a white American, he's not really "African-American" in the usual sense of the phrase. Maybe it'll help a few encrusted minds to break out of the racialist paradigm the country is endlessly stuck in. Like it or not, we're all in one boat. He comes across as understanding that. Two, he may actually be intelligent/educated enough to get the sense of his possibly iconic role in modern politics, and (I hope) smart enough to not allow …

Posted to Baracks Black Dilemma

But crossing lines is more interesting, more fun, more intellectually and emotionally stimulating. Luckily for me, if I want to get the multiracial experience, all I have to do is hang with the family. We got more than a double-handful of ethnicities among the various branches, and I'm proud and blessed that my kids grew up in a family like that. The secret is giving a damn about each other. No matter who's running for what office, or what big plan they might have to bring about "racial" harmony, in the absence of the caring that comes from identifying that different-looking …

Posted to Baracks Black Dilemma

Hello Texas Indie, Beyond the probability that some of the inmates at Guantanamo were scooped up and transferred there by mistake, i.e. they really haven't done anything but were in the wrong place in the wrong time, I have another direct concern as an American. I do find it a disturbing precedent to place criminal/enemy suspects beyond the reach of legal due process. I'm deeply unhappy with the concept that Constitutional limitations upon government power can be seen as an impediment to that government's policy agenda, and that all that's necessary to avoid that impediment is to build a prison facility …

Posted to Love the Warrior, Hate the War

I got pulled over at the airport not long ago and was questioned for over half an hour about past travel into Dubai, based on immigration stamps in my passport. I made my flight, but it was a near thing. The explanation? "Westerners don't travel to Dubai." Except for all the palefaced caucasoidal tourist-types I saw there, they must have meant... You'll all be on a list pretty soon, whether you "deserve" it or not. Maybe you are right now. I'd bet $100 that there's a database somewhere with all of our nommes de web on it, whether we're rightish or …

Posted to Kiko Martinez: Watch Listed for Life

Yes, it was confusing and intimidating at the time. I kept wondering to myself, what is it they think I've done? I was afraid I'd have to endure an orifice search! (ick!) Then after all the questions about why I was there, what were my activities, etc etc, they let me go and that was that. Ordinarily I don't get bugged about security checks in airports, digging through my bags and the like. I actually do want them to pay attention to detail and not be lackadaisical about what's going onto the aircraft, so if I were to give them the …

Posted to Kiko Martinez: Watch Listed for Life

My cousin has been inside for years. Sold cannabis, then broke probation. He says it's crowded, dangerous, and that it fucks with his head. Doesn't matter if anyone feels sympathy for him or not, just saying, it's no picnic in there. The problem with permitting exploitation of felons is little different from permitting exploitation of anyone else. If people are allowed to be dehumanized, it degrades the entire society, whether the neighborhood or the bureaucracy think they deserve it or not. No need to give them cake and ice cream every day, but also there's no need to fuck with them …

Posted to Americas Slave Labor

Ouch, Mike!

Posted to Spoils of War

Mr Bush, I'm glad to say I told you so! I fuckin' told you so, man. A lot of people tried to tell you. I told you that if you divided the forces before the mission in Afghanistan was finished, it would delay and complicate its accomplishment. The Taliban could have been thoroughly crippled and very nearly finished off by now, but instead they're emboldened. I told you that if the WMD claims turned out to be exaggerated or trumped up, America would look like a liar. If the war was about spreading democracy, or getting rid of a monstrous regime, …

Posted to I Hate to Say We Told You So, But

I have been glad to read Dawkins' writings in the past, for instance The Blind Watchmaker and The Selfish Gene. His conceptualization of memes as mental objects that "survive" or "become extinct" through processes not unlike natural selection is also a worthwhile offering. As for the root of all evil, however, how about a doctrinaire attachment to one's own understandings, to the exclusion of even giving a respectful hearing to those of another? It's that attachment to one's own "rightness", and by implication, the other's irredeemable "wrongness", that leads to truly harmful ideas like heresy as a criminal offense, Inquisition-style thought …

Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist

I would agree, blondemike, that the Nazis owed much more to romanticism than rationalism in the bases of their ideology, and Hitler was mystical in so many of his thought processes (thank God, or he might have rationally decided to consolidate his gains in Europe made before June 1941, rather than invading the USSR so quickly, which was his major "overreach"... or made other more logical military decisions instead of the ones he did make, like using astrological "data" in planning military actions) but the systematic and efficient approach the Nazis used in culling undesireables reminds me more of a scientific …

Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist

"The anti-gay agenda currently at the foundation of the Republican Party may well be the last major swing of the pendulum in that direction." Well, we can wish, but don't underestimate the dedication of the anti-gay faction to creating a society that is in harmony with the Bible. They're true-believers. Now mind you, if someone wants to govern their own personal lives according to what they see in the Bible, I have no complaint. But a legal/political agenda based on it, that's a vastly different thing. The law is a bludgeon, a coercion, even when it's beneficial to all. Maybe the …

Posted to Outing is In Again

I have often wondered if it's kindness and camaraderie that are the things that need to be taught, i.e. because they don't appear to form in the absence of specific efforts to inculcate them (hell, even then!). The bits about hardwired primate-style hierarchical thinking resonate with me, considering my own educational background and the things I've observed in a variety of social, cultural, and subcultural settings. It's especially apparent when you see the habit of forming pecking orders that show up in so many divergent facets of human society, not least among groups who have been shoved down as societal "nobodies". …

Posted to The Power of Mean

That must be pretty cool, that "stronger and younger" along with that "older and wiser". A trick worth learning! :-) My kingdom for whatever magic pill you dropped, barkless.

Posted to The Power of Mean

Hmm, "equals" I'll buy for a ten-dollar gold piece; however "ignoring physicality" I'm not so sure of. Seems to me that most people are still hung up on physical differences such as color of skin, although inshallah we might be gradually, ever-so-slowly crawling toward the point where such illusory divisions (genetically speaking) can be left behind. Long journey, time to begin. Peace be with ya, barkless, gracias.

Posted to The Power of Mean

When are we going to STOP... and reflect... upon questions like... -what are the implications of referring to your country as 'the only remaining superpower'? -what makes it acceptable for 6% of the world's population to consume 25% of the world's energy resources, each and every year? -what will be the lifestyle choices our grandchildren's generation will have, if we continue to consume energy as we are now? -what can be done to make people of different ethnicities able to see each other as countrymen and fellow citizens? -what are we really accomplishing with all this arms trafficking? We always seem …

Posted to All Praises to the Pause

Beyonce is damn hot, and pop music (whether with a rock, RnB, hip-hop, punk, or whatever accent) has a lot to do with having a good time. Not expanding consciousness, not creating an atmosphere for intellectual discourse, not upping the revolution... having a good time! And that means partying, getting a buzz on, revelling in your oh-so-transient beauty and energy, and shakin' what you have to shake while it's worth shakin'. C'mon y'all, didn't ya ever just want to dance around, flaunt it a bit, and drink deeply of the narcotic called "fun"? I mean, I like cerebral too, but sometimes …

Posted to Beyonce's Bootyful B'Day

De nada, blondemike. Sometimes the tone around here gets a little too much with the "furrowed-brow gravity", as though something awful has happened because the talented Ms Knowles made a hot video. Seems a bit of a reach...

Posted to Beyonce's Bootyful B'Day

Putin clearly feels his back is against a wall. He's trying to get some irrational energy going that will somehow bolster his position. And unfortunately, drawing the xenophobe card (whether phrased in nationalist or racist terms, or both) is a sure-fire way to garner more local support for the leadership's agenda, not just in Russia but nearly everywhere. Dismaying that it works so easily and consistently around the world, but there ya go. Perhaps Putin thinks he can somehow control the more radical elements he has activated to help him achieve some important agenda, like feeding Russian antipathy against Chechens and …

Posted to Ethnic Cleansing in Russia

The Dems may have "thumped" the Reps, but whoever won the Nov 7 election and whoever will win any future election, it doesn't change the drawbacks to computerized voting machines. Their inherent weaknesses and the risks of their use haven't evaporated in the week-and-a-half since the midterms. Print the ballots, slow down the vote-counts to favor accuracy over speed of reporting, and invite representatives from all contesting parties as well as other non-partisan observers to the counts. If there's a close result or a reason to suspect erroneous results, do it over. The people and the networks can wait, and should …

Posted to Voting Security Issues Plague Maryland

Reading the posts above brings something to the front of my mind that I�ve been reflecting about quite a lot. The abortion issue is one I have wrestled with for some time, and I admit I have not reached resolution with it. And so... Is it not philosophically consistent with a humanistic and/or socialistic perspective to reject abortion, both as a personal choice and as a near-unlimited legal right? Yes, I am aware of the horrors of black-market abortions, and I know the difference between a blastocyst and a baby. Patience! I only ask you to ponder a few points. I …

Posted to Virginity or Death!: A Conversation With Katha Pollitt

continuing... ...is there not an ethic of caretaking built right into socialist political philosophy? Those of you who are socialist, I ask you, is that a correct statement? Isn’t the insistence that no one be left uncared for, that no one be made to face destitution regardless of circumstances or personal characteristics, isn’t that the basis for advocating that one should minimize the focus upon personal gain, in favor of the legally mandated sharing of the wealth of the society? The “just” society described by socialist values is one that is deliberately crafted so as to ensure some basic level of …

Posted to Virginity or Death!: A Conversation With Katha Pollitt

Hi chopper, Thanks for responding. My questions had to do with the very strong association between "leftish" approaches to political philosophy and a tendency to promote a pro-legal abortion agenda (acknowledging that there's a range of attitudes that exist "on the left"). I want to know the thinking behind the position from a regular citizen rather than a partisan leader or pundit, so I thought it worth questioning the premises that lead up to that policy stance. The "right" (by the way, I get a little weary of the borrowed political spectrum from the French Rev days, but I guess I'm …

Posted to Virginity or Death!: A Conversation With Katha Pollitt

Just for the (historical) record, I offer a few references that at least support the assertion that there really was a living person upon whom the figure of Jesus is based. He probably wasn’t called by the Latinized name “Jesus”, but more likely “Yeshua”, considering the naming styles among Aramaic-speaking Hebrews. Writings by the historians Flavius Josephus, Cornelius Tacitus, Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, Pliny the Younger, and another writer named Thallus, seem to bear out the historicity of Jesus to a fair extent. All of these are easy to look up, if you’re interested. To be sure, none of those sources are …

Posted to The Role of the Religious Right in the Foley Affair

I will look at the sources you mention, Redhorse. I tend to prefer as de-mythologized an approach to the Great Influentials of history as I can get, but of course there�s a limited supply of available information that doesn�t aggrandize or underestimate them. That means I generally miss out on some of the inspirations that others feel when they read of the prophets. But I find myself feeling uncomfortable with stories like virgin birth, or (in the case of Muhammad) traversing from Mecca to Jerusalem in a single night on a winged horse, or (in the case of Gautama/Buddha) being able …

Posted to The Role of the Religious Right in the Foley Affair

Definitely gotta read Michaels’ book. This is one of the best articles I’ve read in ITT in a long time, I can only hope that Michaels’ views are able to stimulate some critical discussion in the academic and political arenas. It would be even better if they could trigger some level of national soul-searching where it really counts, out of the ivory towers and marble domes, in the living rooms and workplaces of the country, but that’s a further stretch. Anyone who has the merest shred of acquaintance with my views knows I promote the abandonment of racial-ism as a basic …

Posted to Is Diversity Enough?

The party that wins doesn't matter, when it comes to voting machines. All electoral victories that are associated with voting machines can (and ought to) be called into question. My prediction is, they will be, either in revenge for past accusations by rival parties or by sincere reluctance to entrust the granting of political power to the functioning of fallible, manipulable vote recorders. Whether we'll wise up and decouple elections from the cult of IT remains to be seen. All computerized devices have the weakness of being hackable, all software is vulnerable to viruses. It's not hypothetical, it's inherent to computerized …

Posted to The Importance of Not Getting Over It

Jesus is tragic? Maybe, but his teachings and example inspire hope and foster compassion between people... to the extent that they're ever put into practice, that is. I distinguish here between Yeshua ben Yosef the Nazarene artisan and rabbi, and the "Jesus" of historical Christianity. There may be overlaps between the two, but there are also some pretty glaring distinctions. As Neater implied above, the idea of the real Jesus being a "Christian soldier, marching as to war" just doesn't fit. But as a secular-minded man with a wish that more of people's thinking was "cerebral" in orientation, I'm unhappy about …

Posted to Jesus Is Tragic

I think it will have little overall effect, if strengthening the Democratic Party is the agenda. The Republicans are still led primarily by their arch-conservative wing, and the Democrats get a few ex-adversaries who suddenly think they fit better within the party they had earlier opposed. The Reps still have a clearer stance as a party for voters to either accept or reject. The Dems are as ill-defined as ever. It's hard to see how the Reps lose much of anything in this scenario.

Posted to Wave of Party Switchers Hits Republicans

It would actually be a rare healthy development in partisan politics if dissenters in one party could make an easy switch to the "other" (as though there are only two). Or, ideally, "another", if there's ever a prayer that a yet-underestimated party successfully challenges the Biggies. I will be interested to see how the former Reps fare as the midterms take place and then pass. If their political futures fizzle, it will mean that publicly abandoning one's party is generally a career-killer, as per the conventional wisdom. If they're able to rally and are not too badly hurt by their choices, …

Posted to Wave of Party Switchers Hits Republicans

dduck, the place where the response to the 9/11 attacks had begun was Afghanistan, but that effort was undermined when the front was opened in Iraq. Now, 5 years later, NATO is trying to finish what was left undone, and having no easy time of it. Because of the errors, falsehoods, scandals and incompetencies associated with Iraq, the electorates in countries that might have had a share in trouncing al-Qaeda and stabilizing Afghanistan back in 2001 now raise hell when their politicians want to send troops there. The entire mission became muddled and its accomplishment delayed God-knows how long, because of …

Posted to Fighting the Larger War

Physical punishments upon kids also tend to escalate in severity, if they are part of a parent's ongoing repertoire of guidance techniques. As the child gets bigger, punishments that formerly got their attention can be more easily ignored, which puts the parent in the position of either cranking up the intensity of the blow or making no impression on the desensitized child. And if big people have the "right" to hit little people in the home, it shouldn't be surprising if kids themselves take that dynamic with them to the schoolyard or to the streets where they live. I would be …

Posted to Corporal Punishments Hidden Costs

Beyond any incestuous relationship between state governments and private prison companies, I think the article would have benefited from addressing other issues that can be measured almost as easily as money changing hands. For instance, the living conditions found in state v. private prisons, recidivism rates for convicts housed in each, rates of reported abuse of prisoners by correctional officers for each, rates of inmate abuse of each other, etc. Florida Corrections Secretary McDonough said he thinks "the state is better at running prisons", but the reader is left with only that quote, with no indication of what he was referring …

Posted to Follow the Prison Money Trail

Sen. Clinton may want to be president, but she won't be. In fact, I think that HC getting the Democratic nom would serve no one more than the Republicans, because she will split the Dems, even encouraging some who might have voted Dem to vote Rep or to abstain.

Posted to Bird-Dogging Hillary Clinton

An official apology from the government, acknowledging the evil effects of the slave trade upon millions of African-descended people as well as the whole of American culture, might be entirely appropriate, but how meaningful is an apology, really? The risk is that it would stand by itself and become little more than a gesture, i.e. possessing little substance beyond the words themselves. Admittedly, many might find such a gesture highly meaningful in a way that I do not. For that reason alone, it is worth doing. But reparations are another matter. I’ve expressed my misgivings about reparations before. Who, exactly, would …

Posted to The Reparations Bandwagon

My pasty white wonder bread ass doesn't much care for racial slurs. They suck when directed toward my darker skinned cousins, or my lighter skinned ones, or me. They suck in general.

Posted to The Reparations Bandwagon

Actually, MM, I was responding to the slurs in trippin's post. I'll identify by name next time.

Posted to The Reparations Bandwagon

Having said that, trippin, your last paragraph makes good sense to me. It's a pity if you will not see "white" people as anything other than alien. Understandable it may be, but a sore pity it still is.

Posted to The Reparations Bandwagon

Do you disagree with me, MM or trippin or whoever, that reparations with a specific "race" as the recipients is an unworkable plan? I say it is because, over and above the practical problems I noted in my earlier post, I think that nothing we do will truly make up for slavery or its quasi-extension via Jim Crow laws. What erases the suffering and indignity endured by millions? Doesn't everything really fall short? Everything does. Except. Speaking with people as though they were worthy of respect. Instilling a sense of potential and capability in kids� minds. Working to erode habits of …

Posted to The Reparations Bandwagon

No problema refs "slurs", MM. I still have a difficult time seeing how reparations could be implemented in actuality, other than the broad unlinked-to-specific-"race" approach I've described, which of course wouldn't be reparations at all. The overvaluation of palefaces relative to the rest (most) of humanity is something I can't dispute.

Posted to The Reparations Bandwagon

Can countries be narcissistic? I'm pretty certain my own country would hit the 5/9 mark straight away. How would yours measure up?

Posted to Narcissists Rђ Us?

The Israelis aren�t going anywhere. They�re there to stay. No argument about how and why the state was founded or whether it was historically legitimate will make any difference. It�s all wasted breath. The Jews have a homeland, and considering the misery they endured for centuries at the hands (mostly) of Christians in Europe, not to mention the attacks they withstood for decades as the neighboring Arab states repeatedly ganged up on them, it should not surprise anyone if they defend their patch and their people as if their continued existence depended on it. This doesn�t change the fact that Israel�s …

Posted to Israel's September 11 Effect

Thanks for the response, echecache. It is true my turn of phrase can sometimes have an impassioned tone, although certainly I had no thought of a panacea; in fact I don't believe such things exist. I do think that one's take on Israel's founding is not the most important focus, though I suppose it would give one a context from which the meaning of today's events might be understood. In the meantime, trying to figure out what might be done to lower the tensions was my main thrust, with the emphasis upon the powerful countries' role being based on what I …

Posted to Israel's September 11 Effect

At the risk of giving too much the benefit of the doubt (which, actually, I believe is more civilized and reasonable than giving too much the detriment of the doubt), I would point out that the August issue of ITT was slated for distribution on July 16 (as per the cover image). It would have had to go to press well before that, hence well before the opening moments of the current violent episode in Israel and Lebanon when Hezbollah shot Katyusha rockets into Israel on July 12 (according to Wikipedia). The articles will have been finished and edited some time …

Posted to In Politics, Comedy is Central

As for the article, which my post above doesn't respond to (I'm mainly responding to y'all above), all I can say is Thank God there are satirists like Stewart and Colbert. They're some of the few media personalities dealing with current events who try to promote something other than reflexively obedient thinking or mindless partisan-ism (and I include the reflexively partisan lefties in this criticism along with the mindless righties -- but of course the righties are ascendant at this moment in American history and so deserve a greater share of scrutiny). I'm just glad they can make me laugh along …

Posted to In Politics, Comedy is Central

Well, they needed to keep everyone's sensibilities provoked, feeling vulnerable, worrying about the "enemies within" that we're endlessly told are hiding in plain sight throughout America, just waiting to strike. If the enemies are so numerous, and if the ever-growing law enforcement/security sectors are so effective, why were 7 trumped-up wannabes (instead of actual criminals who had an actual prayer of doing anyone harm) paraded through the media, even getting grave, concerned notice by the Attorney General's office? 'Cause it's in their interest to keep you nervous! Even when there's not all that much in reality for you to be nervous …

Posted to A Terrifying Distraction

Wow, almost 1300 posts. That's gotta be some kind of record, even for ITT's cast of recurring characters. There's gotta be a betting pool in their office, "how many posts will the 9/11 Faith Movement article generate?" The highest number in the pool has probably already been passed. There is such a long chain of events that would have to have taken place, beginning far in advance of 9/11 itself, for it to have feasibly come from within the government. I'm no fan of the current administration, in fact I'm deeply troubled by this government's actions. That's no secret, but it's …

Posted to The 9/11 Faith Movement

I cannot live with this shame. On p. 9 of this long thread, years ago, I said the evidence was circumstantial. It is concrete. I brushed off the controversy because I couldn't stand the cognitive dissonance of knowing that a criminal faction in the government of the country I love helped chop one foot off of Liberty on this planet by fostering a spectacular event of mass murder, and tricking millions into accepting their fascist agenda thereby. I make no claim to grasp enough physics to know why exactly the Towers fell as they did, and "experts" on both sides of …

Posted to The 9/11 Faith Movement

...continued from above... But don't let minutia and elaborate attempts to distract you by way of tricky use of language mislead you. Just the facts, the ugly, sad, infuriating, cold mf'n facts, as best you can extract them after 7 stinking, police-state, Constitution-destroying, pre-emptive war-crime years. Go research. Search "9/11 Truth" via Google, MSN, Firefox, whatever, and follow things up. Be skeptical. Force them to convince you with something other than appeals to your patriotism, your horror and aversion to the idea of blindingly cynical mass murder, your support of or opposition to the Iraq War (a prior agenda of the …

Posted to The 9/11 Faith Movement

Regardless of your leftish or rightish leanings, you should be against computerized voting machines. It doesn't matter who manufactures them, doesn't matter if the companies' governing boards are dominated by Reps, Dems, or Commies. Computers cannot be made hack-proof. It's an impossibility. And even in the absence of a desire to steal an election, electronic data is too easy to permanently lose in the event of a system failure. Elections are too important to entrust to highly fallible machines, whether you think deliberate fraud is the agenda, or if you are simply concerned that electoral data ought to be safeguarded. Ballots …

Posted to Was the Presidential Election Stolen?

This is not at all surprising, considering the context of abuse and misuse of psych meds within the broad culture. It seems as though the "end" of achieving a smooth emotional profile as fast as possible, justifies the "means" of dropping head-pills almost indiscriminately. Damn dangerous. And just as short-sighted misuse of drugs among troops in Iraq must lead eventually to even worse psychological problems, the same risk applies to people stateside. This stuff doesn't just rinse out of you overnight. It sure belies the usefulness of all the anti-drug educational programs out there. Technically, we know more than ever about …

Posted to The Iraq War--On Drugs

It's idiotic to spend so much of limited resources on trying to prohibit people from getting a buzz on, presuming they don't do it at the wheel or some other place where others are put at risk. And if rationality was the guiding principle, we would have had real clarity on the medical facts about therapeutic as well as recreational use of cannabis (or coca, or psylocibin, or...) long before now. But unhappily, not only is rationality not particularly prized by enough people (Americans and also much of the human species), neither is the discipline of science. The latter of these …

Posted to Science: The Drug Wars Latest Victim

A few opinions: -In order to abolish the Electoral College, you'd have to erase state boundaries first. Neither will happen, short of a (fantasy) revolution that would negate the current form of government based on Constitutional structures. You'd never get a Constitutional Convention organized for such a thing, and trying to initiate the amendment process state-by-state for that agenda would be an exercise in expensive wheel-spinning; lots of energy expended without forward movement. -One of the most pointed charges brought against Bush & Co from "progressives" or "the left" or whatever it can be called, focuses on the perception that they've …

Posted to Saving Secular Society

...more... -If you want to get the backing of Americans in an effort to stop extremist theological influence upon the law, stop ignoring the fact that the great majority of Americans are believers. At least, they believe they're believers, although some of the values they're encouraged to hold are out of harmony with the teachings of Jesus and other prophets (more on that below). This means ending the sanctimonious habit of ascribing delusional thinking, nazi values, or stupidity to people who have no confidence in materialistic/atheistic (i.e. anti-spiritual) philosophies. If you're personally atheist, that's your own bag to carry, but to …

Posted to Saving Secular Society

Posted to Saving Secular Society

Johnnyincentx, I recall a conversation we had several months ago in which you and Luminous Beauty were correcting my vehemence about a heartfelt issue of my own, and emphasized the importance of remembering tactics and strategy in regards to pushing too hard for gay marriage rights, which I uphold without reservation but which you both described as a wrong tactical approach in the context of the 2004 general election. I've thought about that a lot. I think there was something to it, and this article and discussion thread brought it to mind. I still think and always will that you should …

Posted to Saving Secular Society

I would be curious to know statistics linking distant transfer of prisoners to those same prisoners' rates of recidivism and reincarceration. A cousin of mine who has been inside for 8 years has made it repeatedly clear that the only thing keeping him going has been the regular visits of his family members, who live about 2 hours from the prison he is in. I don't want to imagine how things might change for him psychologically if he should be transferred to a distant location, especially since he will one day be released and will have to mix once again with …

Posted to No Room in Prison? Ship Em Off

Let's see... More people month by month have a harder time making ends meet, e.g. fuel costs, health insurance costs, etc. The middle class is shrinking. Sectarian and insurgent violence have been escalating in Iraq, making a sick joke out of the words, "Mission Accomplished". The main justification pushed by the administration for even entering Iraq is pretty much a dead letter. The "mission" in Afghanistan is still far from "accomplished", and doesn't look accomplishable to any but the most optimistic. People are still reeling from the Katrina storm on the Gulf Coast... even if they're not from the region, the …

Posted to What Ails Us?

That sounds less like Outrage Fatigue and more like depression.

Posted to What Ails Us?

I've had almost every kind of kid in my classroom, migrants and hometowners, super-rich and super-broke, all skin colors and a raft of language/culture orientations. In identifying what separated those who managed to be successful in high school from those who could not, I observe a few main factors: 1) Articulated expectations and follow-through by parents. Sometimes this is unfortunately focused on punishments or threats by some parents, but when the child is given respectful encouragement as well as meaningful incentives for performance (e.g. privileges that depend strictly upon the child carrying out his duties at school), the positive results are …

Posted to Black Men: The Crisis Continues

When kids are encouraged to accept or glorify mediocrity as a gesture of loyalty to the group, or when their misbehavior is tolerated or even (mind-bogglingly) reinforced by parental neglect or misdirected hostility toward the authority facet of the school, or when they are given the message that they really aren't worth much or that their own efforts are less significant than factors outside themselves, it's no surprise if that kid gives his attention to mindless fun and self-indulgent wanderings, or becomes prone to blaming others for his misfortunes and to looking to others to prop him up. Again, the racial …

Posted to Black Men: The Crisis Continues

Hello Baraka, I thank you for your response to my post way above, as usual it takes me forever to check back in, such that my replies might come off as non sequiters. It's not that I can't understand why African Americans would have a visceral hesitation to trust us palefaces, considering the extraordinary amount and duration of shit your race has had to put up with from mine. (By the way, I look forward to the day when that particular paradigm, that humans being divided into "racial" groups, wears out, may I live to see that day!) However, here and …

Posted to Black Men: The Crisis Continues

Like the lyric says, what's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding?

Posted to Black Men: The Crisis Continues

Thanks for the response, Baraka. "All in it together," no doubt about that! I'm still pretty focused on promoting the idea of dealing with people as individuals and holding them to account more on the basis of their personal statements and actions, rather than as racial representatives. Can't think of a single positive contribution to human betterment that has stemmed from the race schema. And though at first blush that individual focus might seem like a paradoxical statement coming right after the "in it together" point, I think in fact they're more complimentary sentiments than is the case if skin-tone identity …

Posted to Black Men: The Crisis Continues

"Adults observing 40,000 students in Southern California spilling into the streets expressed skepticism. �These kids don�t know anything,� NPR�s Juan Williams told Bill O�Reilly on a March 29 episode of �The O�Reilly Factor.� Other commentators dismissed their actions as truancy." After a couple of decades working with youth, following years in the private business sector dealing only with adults, I say with confidence that the habitual underestimation of young adults' grasp of complex issues, moral fiber, and perseverence at important tasks is as prejudicial as it is frequent. There is no counting the number of adults I've worked with (in business …

Posted to Walking Out and Standing Up

Well, it sounds like an enjoyable visit, I would certainly have liked to go along, just to check out the viejo wordsmith and hear him out. But when Terkel decries "pragmatists", what does he mean? Is he referring to those who he believes have capitulated with the Right? Those whose values focus upon reaching goals they believe are realistically attainable, whether they go along with former ideals of the American Left or not? Does the American Left have defined set of ideals? Did they formerly? I'm sincerely asking. It's a tough choice, I think. Is the pragmatist more to be respected, …

Posted to A Sit-Down with Studs

Good luck, Steve, I hope everything plays out in your favor. It just seems axiomatic to me that every consenting adult has the right to choose who they will love and who they will legally unite with, even if their union doesn't fit the religious model that others hold dear. Of course they can choose to live within the limitations of those values if they wish, but to compel obedience by others is an unwarranted invasion. And when we're talking about law, compulsion is exactly what's in hand. I'll be happy to read of your success in the near future. …

Posted to Broke Cowboy

Clear as day. The guy was dis'd because of who he loved. Even his loved one's notarized will was ignored by the court, because of who HE loved. A still-fashionable irrational prejudice. High time the world outgrew that shit.

Posted to Broke Cowboy

I'd like to believe that there could be an effective challenge to the DemRep duopoly, but I've pretty much given up on that thought. It seems so unlikely as to almost qualify as a fantasy. Years ago I briefly registered as Libertarian as a gesture of helping to erode the duopoly, but eventually went back to the "no party" designation (never been a reg'd Dem nor Rep). In order for another party to have any real clout at the national level, they have to have broad support at the precinct level in a relatively large number of states. I don't see …

Posted to The Seinfeld Strategy

Maybe if a popular movement rooted in discontent with the Dumbos and Asses promoted themselves as an alternative party with a longer time frame for their presidential ambitions, not 2008 or 2012, but perhaps 2016 or 2020, they'd have a chance. But the efforts and sacrifices that Steven W mentions above, in addition to truly relentless use of mass media (and I don't mean just the blogosphere!) to keep them in the public eye, would have to be endured and withstood. As would the ridicule the Biggies and their adherents would heap upon them. The real work would be in the …

Posted to The Seinfeld Strategy

The point is, in so many cases we have no idea whether Guantanamo detainees are "the worst of the worst" or mere "woodworkers and farmers." Why? Because they're beyond due process. They're beyond either military or civilian justice because the administration apparently cannot live with being bound by Constitutional limits upon power, making the case that America is essentially undefended unless the president has unlimited freedom of action. This apparently includes the freedom to hold suspects without a trial or even a charge. Gather evidence. Charge. Try. Convict and punish, or acquit and release. Is there some other course of action …

Posted to A Legal Limbo

I can't help but ask... When today's plutocrats are dispossessed and their wealth used for this generation's social benefits, from where will come the wealth for the next generation's benefits? Is confiscation/expropriation really a strategy with a future? At what point will there be no more "excess" profit to scrape up, because no one is willing to invest their time, energy, or wealth in a productive enterprise for fear of having it taken away? There is ample criticism to made against capitalism when it is practiced without ethical restraint, but that's more a critique of non-existent ethics than it is the …

Posted to The Liberal Communists of Porto Davos

Thanks, Theo and Phaedrus, for your responses. Phaedrus' point (if I may rephrase it a little) is perfectly correct that unless we act out our values in a way that actually relieves suffering and deprivation, we really are nothing but hypocrites. When I say "we", of course, I could be talking about either capitalists or socialists. Both lay claim to a mechanism that, they each say, has the best chance to defeat poverty if it is implemented properly. There's the rub, yes? IF they're implemented properly. How and under what conditions proper implementation takes place is rarely answered. In my more …

Posted to The Liberal Communists of Porto Davos

(to continue) It's pretty un-glamorous, not much inspiring, surely not heroic. It's drawn from my experiences in a lot of different jobs, in which ordinary, semi-educated (or semi-uneducated) people work because they need to in order to survive and who, in some few cases, take chances and apply added efforts because they envision something better that they think is worth taking a shot at. There is a level of elitism in that idea, I suppose, or at least an acceptance of inequality. But the concept that a harder worker, with more imagination, fortitude, and discipline than his neighbor, should actually get …

Posted to The Liberal Communists of Porto Davos

Ooopsy... I should have said, "It�s a measure of just how MUCH a system-in-practice departs from the vaunted ideals that system�s proponents trumpet." Thanks for your indulgence. K

Posted to The Liberal Communists of Porto Davos

Hello again to all, I like this thread. Always interesting to read all of your ideas. Here's a revolt I think won't work at all: an armed struggle. I've come to believe that this actually strengthens the more beastly aspects of the state, rather than weakening it. Talk about expropriation! Shoot a uniform, and three more uniforms will spring up in its place. A failing strategy, and besides, it only enhances the likelihood that the rebels will become what they themselves hate, ending up as beastly or more so than the ones they're supposedly saving us from. If you want to …

Posted to The Liberal Communists of Porto Davos

I for one am with ya, WingFlanagan! Undermine, erode, challenge, pointedly ignore, laugh at, mock, trivialize, confound, rage against, and otherwise dampen the influence of race-based thinking. "Biological fact", es verdad! Fuck history. It's 3/4 mythology and cooked data anyway. Ya don't have to like me, but we're still cousins. We're in the same bloody lifeboat no matter how you slice it.

Posted to Acting Your Race

Besides, how the hell do you "act white"? Or "act black"? Does a dark-skinned Punjabi act the same as a dark-skinned Sudanese, though their melanin levels might be similar? Blah. Delusions within illusions. Time to transcend like a mofo. Pass the mayo.

Posted to Acting Your Race

Although the pharmacists are within their rights to decide they don't want to sell a particular (legal) item, this also means they have to be selective about where they'll seek work. For example, I don't intend to sell or otherwise profit from the sale of arms, so for me to seek a job with a retailer that sells guns, expecting that I should be allowed to refuse to sell them on grounds of conscience, is a bit silly. Next thing you know, we'll have pro-abortion rights businesses only catering to pro-abortion rights customers, who will refuse to do business with anti-abortion …

Posted to Contraception in the Crosshairs

One thing I'd add is to find another approach to dealing with drugs (read: something that actually improves society). Prohibition so obviously does not work, basically serving to intrigue teens and to make bad guys rich off their black market profits. Some combination of decriminalization (for adults only, including a selection of decrim'd drugs), education, and jail time for those who traffic to kids, might be a more effective approach. Also, it would mitigate the drug-related profits that fuel so much gang-related crime. This would also include their ability to get ahold of truly scary firepower, with all that black market …

Posted to Race Riot?

What we need to do is wake up out of our Post 9/11 Stress Disorder, which makes us look to a protector figure for safety and mutes our collective rational faculties. Ah, rational faculties! If only they were considered as admirable as having augmented tits or a fat bank account! If throwing down with al Qaeda had been the primary agenda, that fight was in Afghanistan. Whatever other justifications might be cited in regards to the Iraq War, beating up on al Qaeda isn't one of them. And dougshaeffer, in response to your question, "what has happened to us", the answer …

Posted to Strangers to the Truth

Give me convenience or give me death (I borrow from the Dead Kennedys). Looks like you can have both. As for the distraction of conflicting "expert" opinions, shouldn't rapid weight gain as the result of making treat-food your staple diet and spending hours every day sitting on your ass (esp. obsessed with TV and/or PC) be enough of a wake-up call? Symbols of new affluence: all the rich-kid diseases replacing the maladies of deprivation. Super-size me!

Posted to Globesity en Español

The important thing isn't to evaluate the justification for the war, to analyze its outcomes, or to pussyfoot around with debates on staying-the-course v. pulling-out-today. The point is to fight the war and win it. The point is to choose a side, the side you were actually born on when you were born American. Does it matter what we thought we knew back in 2003, or whether we were correct or not? No. What matters is that our Commander in Chief needs our support as he prosecutes this war to a victorious finish, to the benefit of Iraq and the world …

Posted to The Logic of Withdrawal

Do I dare mention that a way of seeing humans as being intimately related to one another has become a possibility now that genetic science has demonstrated beyond doubt that all humans are close-kindred..? I ask because of the angry responses this proposal tends to bring. Perhaps it's just too soon for this idea to take hold; maybe not enough time has passed for it to catch on. A handful of centuries ago, there were serious debates in Europe about whether the indigenous populations of the Western Hemisphere qualified as "human", a debate that today seems almost deliberately stupid. The entire …

Posted to Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome

One does what one can, given a complex, hazardous historical and ideological terrain... And the handicap of being a paleface while speaking in these terms is not inconsiderable! Very difficult to get a respectful hearing.

Posted to Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome

Hello zperry, Though I'm bummed to think about it, and intend to help erode it wherever I can, I fear the future of racism in America will include its increase and intensification, at least for a few generations to come. Unfortunately, racial identity (or really, racial exclusion) seems too difficult a concept to let go of in a society that has color-coded people for hundreds of years. It will become worse before it gets better, in large part because of (a prediction) the continued widening of the gap between haves and have-nots, which in America also correlates with skin hue to …

Posted to Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome

"Ill Communication"... killer disk. Adrenaline music. Always had more of a taste for metal, myself (more adrenalin music), but hip hop is jam, it's here to stay. No acquaintance with Coval, have to give him a listen. An accessory benefit of having teenage children around the house and in the classroom, keeping up with the changes in music. Can't get enough of that funk, funk, funk! ;-)

Posted to Louder Than a Bomb: an Interview with Chicago Hip-Hopper Kevin Coval

Can't help but repeat earlier misgivings I've expressed about China as a rising economic power. Others of you have responded with the advice that I don't hastily assume they'll be able to sustain the pervasive controls they wield, now that they've decided to hook up with market economics. Too much control equals too little wealth growing, and so they'll lighten up, to paraphrase what I've been advised. But what keeps coming to mind is my usual severe suspicion about the attractiveness of power and its use. Add to that the increased wealth and regional/global clout that is on the rise in …

Posted to China Dissidents Disappeared

Aggressive Christianity and aggressive Islam are equally threatening to the model of society in which government power is limited by constitutional provisions and guarantee of citizen rights. They're as much a destructive influence against democratic ways of living as was revolutionary Lenin/Stalin/Mao-style socialism, and for similar reasons. Yes, I'm aware that those giants of communism weren't clones of each other, exactly. However, they all (including today's theocratic zealots) share a willingness to use brutality, a level of zeal that blinds them to the flaws in the systems they seek to impose, and a habit of associating themselves with a transcendant power …

Posted to The Crescent Menace

All aspects of weapons trade, whether conventional or non-conventional, would be suitable to forbid from a government or rebel group that is a threat to its neighbors and/or fellow citizens. I mean, not a single thing connected to any aspect of killing technology. Spare parts for aircraft, military vehicle tires, ammunition, cartridge belts, gun oil, etc etc, absolutely anything in that vein. Even aside from questions of sanctions against offensive powers, the trade in weapons, most especially the run-of-the-mill conventional arms that no one seems concerned about any more (but that are the main tools used by murderous and internationally dangerous …

Posted to Were Sanctions Worth the Price?

I quite agree with the above comments pointing out that the broad condemnation of religion as an unequivocally bad influence are wrong. It defies the evidence of people's gains in wisdom and compassion once they've been inspired by religion; even "organized" religion. It ignores the role of religion in a host of social and legal advances that are too numerous to list here. However, I would not include with these generous statements the codification of a particular religion's doctrines into law. Regardless of majority or minority status. Unless we're talking about a perfectly homogenous society in which everyone holds the same …

Posted to Organizing the Religious Left

If people want to combat "Satan", they should look within more, and work on their own moral weaknesses. Such as gratuitous hostility, self-righteousness, and the willingness to leverage innocents as a way of attacking others to whom those innocents are dear. A new example of collateral damage... Sometimes I wonder if anyone believes in innocence any more, aside from its connotation of ignorance, of being unacquainted with the "real" world. The "real" world, in which some loving people who are good parents, are also homosexual. Like the song says, they will know we are Christians by our love...

Posted to An Anti-Gay Easter

And yes, wiley-my-dear, there is something sacred to those demonizers. That would be their vision of a society created in their own image, forced into the shape their dogma dictates regardless of who gets stepped on. That's what they worship above all, what they're commited to above all. Certainly above their commitment to exerting lovingkindness, as a gesture of spiritual realization, in this benighted and confused world.

Posted to An Anti-Gay Easter

The cart has been harnessed in front of the horse! The question is not, "Why should gay men and lesbians be allowed to have the same financial, taxation, and child-rearing benefits of married heterosexuals?" The real question is (or should be), "Upon what basis should a broad, diverse class of people who share a single characteristic - sexual attraction to people of their same gender - be forced into a special legal status that does not include the rights enjoyed by those who are attracted to the other gender?" And an accessory question, "What is the justification for continuing this policy?" …

Posted to An Anti-Gay Easter

I should also say that a hedonistic approach to sex is not a valid reason to abridge one's rights. I submit that a married couple (hetero) who like swapping, fisting, toys or whatever exotica they enjoy should not have their parental rights cancelled or their legally recognized union dissolved. The kids aren't in any way involved in their parents' explorations (which would constitute a grave and sickening form of child abuse), so they should not be considered victims in any respect, either actual or potential. The bedroom door would be locked, yes? It might even make their parents' relationship more secure …

Posted to An Anti-Gay Easter

Yes, wiley, you're quite right on both counts. My kids have no place in that aspect of my life, nor will I accept for even a microsecond the government's interference there either. Even when I was a kid myself, I was flabbergasted that certain sexual acts were actually criminalized. It sort of begged the question, "How would the police even find out?" to my youthful mind. Thankfully the Supreme Court cut the legs out from under that nonsense. Ah, but those intrusive laws were based on "community values", yes? That's why the door gets locked. The "community" isn't invited. If there …

Posted to An Anti-Gay Easter

As for my view on relationships, homo or hetero, I guess there's not much doubt in anyone's mind. Love and mutual respect don't have to ask the question, "What's your plumbing?"

Posted to An Anti-Gay Easter

Gotta bail, y'all carry on. Peace be with you.

Posted to An Anti-Gay Easter

Hello Johnnyincentx, I understand the dynamic of majoritarian politics, however I submit that any society that claims itself to be an upholder of ideals such as freedom or equality ought to walk the walk as well as talk the talk. And who, of all societies that have ever existed, claims to be the living embodiment of those ideals in the form of a nation-state? No one more so than my beloved USA. What you've classed as a foolish idealization, I see as comprising central questions. What kind of society is the United States? Not in its self-comforting propaganda, but in fact? …

Posted to An Anti-Gay Easter

Hello again Johnny, If I mistook your actual views or expressed an unwarranted assumption, sorry about that. It's often the case that I'm only able to check in here with days of time between, and I may have slipped into the trap of skimming posts for the gist, responding to that instead of the actual detail of content. Regrettable sloppiness, perhaps, on my part. Better next time. Continuing... I've wondered a number of times whether it might not be the proper role of government to disregard the majority when determining policy. Yup, that is one hazardous road! I'm not at all …

Posted to An Anti-Gay Easter

I suppose it's true that gay partners can get most of what hetero married couples get, by roundabout means. Still, I can't for a minute pretend that I'd be satisfied with the situation if I was gay. The constant and strident public debates, the at-a-distance vilifications and generalizations, all the scrutiny of everything from why exactly I would have turned out gay to how exactly I would be having sex in the midst of being gay, speculation about what would have been my motives for wanting to be married (my belief: the same ones I actually did have when my wife …

Posted to An Anti-Gay Easter

Zero time to write, but thanks for responses. I will think about the pragmatic approach, how it might look. K

Posted to An Anti-Gay Easter

At this point of life while I'm facing continued middle-age spread, I find that I really feel better when I keep moving around and don't indulge my tongue's attraction for sweets too often. I can't say that I've dropped any interest in being attractive, but mobility and feeling energetic are fine compensations for sticking more closely to healthier fare, and luckily I like fruits and veggies so it's no sacrifice. Having been with the same girl since age 18 the sexual marketplace is pretty much an alien nation. Having said all that, it's cool when your mate (long-term or met-recently) is …

Posted to Sex and the Septuagenarians

No one wants poverty stats to elevate during their watch. But no one wants accurate data, either, to know whether they have actually elevated or declined. That tells me that it's the perceptions about poverty, it's the nature of the media spin that can be mustered in regards to economic well-being or distress, that has them disturbed. More so than actual poverty levels, which they seem not to want to know (or at least to have publicized). They're less discomfited by the substance than they are by the distorted image, even when they're aware of the distortion. They feel this even …

Posted to Lies, Damn Lies and Poverty Statistics

I've spent only a little time in New Orleans, but since the storms and floods I've carried with me a feeling of malaise in a small place in the back of my mind whenever I think about the city. It's not crippling depression, just a tone of sadness in my thoughts when I imaginatively place my feet back on the streets there. Haven't been there since 2003, but I have rich memories. I could easily write too much about my time in NO, but I'll cut to the chase and say merely that the place left an impression. For those who …

Posted to Masking New Orleans

Hi wiley, About 2 hours after writing my post above, I caught a report on BBC World in which a woman from the Lower 9th Ward was interviewed next to her wracked up house. She said she didn't have the heart to attend any parades, she was just too disheartened. It's understandable, just as much so as the wish of others to invest their energies into the parades that did take place. The part that galled me is that in the distance behind her was a tour bus - yup, a f'n tour bus! - which she (the interviewee) said was …

Posted to Masking New Orleans

"We must fight on our path in our time and find our own ways of doing battle. The revolution is not a rerun, and civil rights were not won with folk songs and tie-die." Beautifully phrased, wiley, gracias. One year after Friedan published her book, my mother became "single" when my dad left the house, and she suddenly had to raise me and my brother alone. I think it's safe to say about her, now 12 years after her own death, that my mother's thinking processes in 1965 were about as far away from "feminist" as could be imagined. She and …

Posted to Friedan and King: Super Models

It's pretty far-fetched to suggest that anyone who has set foot within the Beltway is truly "oblivious to the system's current flaws." One would have to be raised in a cave to have avoided knowing about this controversy and the scandals associated with it. It's much more plausible to suggest that too many Dems AND Reps have benefited from the system's weaknesses for them to really want it changed. Had there been enough motivation in previous Congresses for stricter ethics guidelines to control big money's effects on politics, the changes would have been made by now. As it is, there's been …

Posted to Dems on Ethics: A Day Late and a Dollar Short

Sometimes push really does come to shove. I guess that's how the demonstrators feel too. However, if it comes to a choice between enforced respect for the gestures of piety others observe or upholding the freedom to express oneself in objectionable ways, I'll go with the latter. When it comes to the proper role of a journalist (imo), these include informing, stimulating debate, and in op-ed pieces including cartoons, representing an opinion clearly and perhaps provocatively. Unless these standards endure a journalist is nothing but an apologist for a powerful agency. As we all know, no one campaigns for free expressions …

Posted to Islam vs. the West: Clashing Sensibilities

Not being of African ancestry, the AP/AOL poll would not have included me. If it had, though, I also would have been at a loss to name anyone I considered worthy of the name "leader", regardless of race or ethnicity. There is not one single public figure that I can name who I consider worthy of my outright loyalty. It's obvious that individualists like me have muted voices in the public sphere; it's parties, movements, organizations, and their front-men who have the influence, short of some billionaire maverick who gets the spotlight just for her uniqueness. Still, who out there is …

Posted to Black Leadership Wanted

I'm not hopeful. From what I see, the extreme majority of people just can't be bothered to worry about where their cheese wrappers or beer cans end up, much less concern themselves with the mess being made for the grandchildren to inherit. In a way, for whatever real environmental benefits are associated with it, curbside recycling contributes to a psychological blank-out. It encourages people to believe that they can preserve their luxurious lifestyle while still "doing something" for the environment, i.e. it encourages us to believe in easy, no-thinking-required solutions to highly complex problems. Yes, I do think that a life …

Posted to Talking Trash

Until someone can effectively challenge the Dem/Rep two-headed monster, until big-money's political power is mitigated, until more than the traditional 50-or-so percent of registered voters get off their ass on election day, until the electorate care to do more than imbibe sound-bites when choosing candidates... ...then no, progressive politics will not be revolutionized. Politics at large will drag on in much the ordinary way, with insipid or haranguing mainstreamers dominating the scene and "progressives" (fill in your own definition of this term) at the fringe like before. Same old story, same old song and dance. Technological advances don't really change things …

Posted to Can Blogs Revolutionize Progressive Politics?

There's no way $27.1B should ever have been considered trivial, even if the context is a $2.6T budget. Dat's a lotta gumballs, y'all. While we're at it, the $493.3B military budget just requested by the President is worthy of examination in this same light. Culture of overspending?

Posted to The Republicans Democracy Disorder

Guanatanamo should be made visible to the US public. Or, more properly phrased, they should not be allowed to forget it (which many I've heard from have a real talent for doing!). "We don't want to be held back by the law. What we need to do is more important than that we act within it." When the extra-legal prison at Gitmo was created, this was what I could imagine them saying. If they were ever to be truly candid, that is. Charge them, try them, get the mf'n due process in gear, or release them.

Posted to Walking to Guantnamo

Recognizing the incredible brutality and degradation visited upon people of African descent in the history of America, I submit that focusing upon differences in complexion as a representation of human identity (or its lack, in the case of those who were legally defined as chattel) is an outmoded paradigm that was not only the source of those injustices, but perpetuates ongoing antipathy in the name of making up for historical crimes. I honestly don't think it is possible to make up for those crimes, they can only be gotten past. People transcend them when they treat others with decency, as they …

Posted to Black History Month Matters

Hello anonymous lala, It's not only people of African descent I'm advising to "get over" the complexion-obsessed way of evaluating people, it's to all. Ancestors of yours (and likely you yourself) were victimized on the heels of this mode of categorizing people, and the same xenophobic trend continues to this day WITH THE EXCEPTION of those people who have seen that "race" is an outdated, ill-supported, victimization-promoting paradigm that has failed, failed, failed us all. It has failed you, by "typing" you and those who resemble you in demeaning ways, with the historical and cultural record quite clear in regards to …

Posted to Black History Month Matters

Hello again anon lala, I read your reply. I see that you have little respect for my view of these matters. What can one do? Instead of writing a long rebuttal, I simply repeat that I have decided to lend my energies toward undermining race-based thinking. Obviously it’s an uphill battle in this age of identity-wars and post-imperial settling of scores, but I’m gambling that in time to come the newer, better view of humanity will gain ground. It’s an investment I’ve chosen to make, and I think the potential payoff is worthy of the investment. Even for you, cousin. Our …

Posted to Black History Month Matters

cabdriverinchicago makes excellent points. The presumption that all rational players in this game really want peace is not only unfounded, it conflicts with observable events. It serves someone's interests to keep emotions flaring and the quotient of irrationality high. Is sending a young person strapped with explosives into a commuter bus supposed to achieve a military goal? Is an airstrike into a neighborhood really a tactic designed to kill off the enemies numbers? Seems to me that both tactics perpetuate the conflict, they don't lead to the victorious resolution of it. Religious fervor mixed with nationalistic passions, with a nice fat …

Posted to Hamas: Sharon's Legacy?

If nothing else, Chavez' ability to take Venezuela into his new direction should pretty much make clear whether or not socialist principles have a chance of success in practice, independently of the Soviet model. He's got a resource that actually carries some clout in the world economy, no empire to spend fortunes controlling, and his most hostile adversary is preoccupied with two wars and a raft of domestic distractions. So, being well-off, confident, popular and relatively unthreatened, he's now got the chance to show whether what he's got in mind for his society is worthwhile for-real, or that, in fact, it …

Posted to No Discounted Transit for Oil

Hi wiley, This is a delayed answer, but I don't remember feeding tina1. She's yours, dearie. Actually, when I've written to her she doesn't reply, so apparently I'm persona non grata with her. o my aching heart... ...kidding. ;-) peace be witcha.

Posted to No Discounted Transit for Oil

I'm against capital punishment because it is impossible for the state to ensure that the felon they're killing is the actual perpetrator of the crime. Yes, I'm aware of the advances in collection of forensic evidence. As far as I'm concerned, this is one decision that requires 100% accuracy. 99.9% is not good enough; when the state kills an innocent, the price becomes too high. What do you do then, say "oops, sorry" to their families and pay them off with blood money? Beyond that, if we're going to make a show out of executions, we feed impulses and attitudes in …

Posted to Reflections on Tookie's Execution

Hello rocco, It's interesting that you would make reference to the drug war and the packing of America's jails because of it. I had been writing more about that aspect for inclusion in the post above, but deleted that bit because the post was getting long already. I personally think that de-crim'ing cannabis is the only sane option, and I'd be quite willing to look at doing the same with other party chemicals/herbs/fungi. To incarcerate someone just because they want to get high presumes that your mind and body do not belong to you. Something in me wants to classify that …

Posted to Reflections on Tookie's Execution

OK, tina1, I'll take the bait. Since the whole deal is about winning, about being winners, about attaining the prize, and since the Reps were able to edge out the blathering-and-flaccid Dems and the tiny-minority Naderites... ...congrats! Y'all have the gold cup, the White House, the majority share in Congress. And since then? As I've done before, I borrow from GOP hero Ronald Reagan. "Are you better off now than you were four years ago" he said while on the campaign trail. So I paraphrase to you, "Are you better off since George Bush took office?" Who exactly can say "Yes!" …

Posted to Postcards From the Front

Hello think4yourself, It's good that your life is better now than in 1999. From what you wrote, I'm not sure Bush or his group get much credit, sounds like you made some personal and professional decisions that played out well for you. However, if you'd like to give his administration some credit for part of that (maybe thinking they stayed out of your way more than another administration would have), it is up to you. You're perfectly correct about females in Afghanistan having all kinds of ways better now that the Taliban are out of power, educationally and otherwise. My phrasing …

Posted to Postcards From the Front

Hello whattheheck, I belatedly reply to: "There is only one war. It is not against other nations, but is against a bunch of religious wackos (or at least religious people incited by wackos). Iraq and Afghanistan, like the whole middle east were arbitrarily divided into �countries� by the west in 1921-1922." No doubt, the creation of mandates after WW1, which were judged as unable to self-govern and so were governed by countries among the Allies, have helped lead to the current state of affairs by grouping disaffected peoples together into nation-states that were kept unified largely by those Allies' troops. I'm …

Posted to Postcards From the Front

(continuing) Can it all be laid at the feet of "crap intel"? If so, it effectively meant that the Bush team chose to throw punches while blind. That seems to me to be a horrifyingly regretable condition, not a condition that makes the Iraq war more justifiable. scorp (if he still visits here) will remind me that the Iraq Liberation Act came down during the Clinton admin, codifying the intent to depose Saddam. True, but that fact doesn't change the chain of decisions made by the Bush team, nor the "facts" used to support those decisions, nor the content of the …

Posted to Postcards From the Front

Actually, it's a bit of a moot point; maybe not needing two posts' worth of address by me. Certainly most minds have long been made up in relation to the issue. The milk is spilt, and at this point the best America can do is try to apply its energies toward cleaning up the mess. If it's possible at all for them to clean up a damn thing rather than make it worse, which is itself highly debatable.

Posted to Postcards From the Front

Character education is a big issue in schooling (my field). I was talking with friends about how a conception of good character might be formulated that most anyone could respect, whether atheist or devout, in pretty much any cultural setting. A tall order, I know. A few things we came up with included the following: 1. Truthfulness in speech and honesty in business and personal interactions. 2. Regarding one's own stated commitments to be truly binding. 3. Unlikely to blame others for one's own screw ups, including a determination to do better next time and make amends right away. 4. Tending …

Posted to Cult of Character

Hello there wileywitch, that's a cool list. Can't say every one of the 20 applies perfectly well to me personally even if I think of myself as an educated (or at least semi-educated) man, but hey, it's always good to have something worth aspiring to, eh? Maybe that's the prime ingredient of good character, the aspiration to be the best person one can be. Seems like when people say to themselves, "I'm cool enough, I'm smart enough, I'm all finished developing my character.", all of those qualities begin to erode in them immediately. Some see these concerns has hopelessly "boyscout", I …

Posted to Cult of Character

Wow, I'm stoked at the intelligent and interesting responses to my post! I should remind that my list of 13 was a set of summarizations, paraphrasing a beer-laden conversation into the wee hours. When I was writing in preparation for the post, I tried to phrase it out as a set of tendencies of thought and action that might be observed in a person of "good character". Getting an unassailable definition of "good character" was beyond us, I suppose, and I can't remember us even trying to do so. Actually, it was a pretty lively and fun discussion, which my list …

Posted to Cult of Character

When other minorities have had to battle against the use of law as a bludgeon by activist pluralities... (I won't be saying "majorities" any more on this issue; the majority don't get off their asses to vote for anything except on the rarest occasion, and even then it'll be a very small "majority" as a function of total registered voters. Never a true majority, when compared to total eligible voters, registered or not) ...activist pluralities who wanted to keep them down, there was generally a push-and-pull as the more just and humane viewpoint grew, albeit with painful slowness. Nov 2004 was …

Posted to Gay Rights Win in Maine Heralds Progress in 2006

"Homosexual acts have been considered a capital crime in Iran since the 1979 revolution that brought the Ayatollah Khomeini to power. Iranians found guilty of gay lovemaking are given a choice of four death styles: being hanged, stoned, halved by a sword or dropped from the highest perch." I read stuff like this, right next to a photo of two young guys who are young enough to be in my class getting strung up. Because they got off with each other. Because they made love. That's what can happen when sectarian zealots and fundi dogmatists get ahold of the law. Beware! …

Posted to Irans Anti-Gay Pogrom

Who are the criminals, really?

Posted to Irans Anti-Gay Pogrom

Yup Rabbit, there's plenty of victimization and dogmatic bloodletting to go around. It's a mf'n growth industry, planetwide. I was provoked by the photo and also (mostly) by the insane headtripping that was the foundation of the execution. To me, that's not Iranian or American, Muslim or Christian. It's any of those and possible from all of them. It can just as easily come from an atheist, e.g. some of the more heinous characters out of the Soviet/Maoist drama. It's the belief that one owns the entire cosmic truth between the covers of their scripture, between their ears. And it really …

Posted to Irans Anti-Gay Pogrom

"Trust but verify." Wasn't that Reagan's oft-quoted Russian proverb, back in the Gorbachev/IMF reduction days. I've forgotten the Russian phrase itself, too much time passed. Doesn't matter. Verify. Check. Cross-check. Easy. Necessary. And when it comes to computers, leave the "trust" part out! To truly trust an inherently imperfect electronic machine, whose data is not backed up, that cannot possibly be made hack-proof (whether by Reps or Dems or bloody Anarcho-Whigs, who gives a damn who it could be?), that can be infected with viruse, that can be fucked up with something as simple as a refrigerator magnet, built and maintained …

Posted to Ghosts in the Voting Machines

Hello to you, wileywitch. :-) Your point above regarding the limitation or effective denial of voting rights is an important related issue. Of course, even verifiable ballots are not enough. Every time there's even an allegation that voters' ballots have been lost, altered, prevented from getting into their hands, ruled out of the total tabulation, etc etc, those who believe in participatory democracy should be alarmed. And any candidate of integrity should push for the controversy to be investigated and resolved. If I was an elected official, and the veracity of my victory was called into question, I'd be highly distressed. …

Posted to Ghosts in the Voting Machines

Yup, I hope so too kiddo. If only there was a real opposition party with some popular steam behind it, or some kind of antithetical movement that had a prayer of inspiring more than a few people. But I see nothing of the kind. Pathological, indeed. So is the junkfood-addicted, Prozac-gargling, TV-hypnotized, porn-fixated, fuel-guzzling, race-warring, short-sighted society getting the "democracy" it deserves? I almost erased that question before I posted it. It scared me.

Posted to Ghosts in the Voting Machines

Ola, lapine comrade, been a while... Please send any evo stuff to my email, always interested. You make a good point about limited ability to access mass media equaling limited influence in the public sphere. If you aint on the tube, you aint shit, politically. I've come to semi-believe that what's needed is someone with huge money resources in their own name who will bulldog their way into the public eye, pushing a progressive line through their own snazzy, upbeat, impossible-to-ignore program. Someone with charisma, integrity, photogenic qualities, and who actually believes that the value of benefitting people at large across …

Posted to Ghosts in the Voting Machines

Hi wiley, "So is the junkfood-addicted, Prozac-gargling, TV-hypnotized, porn-fixated, fuel-guzzling, race-warring, short-sighted society getting the �democracy� it deserves?" This was the question I devised and almost erased before posting because I had spooked myself. I was afraid the answer to the question might be "yes". Actually, I can't say "might be". The answer IS "yes".

Posted to Ghosts in the Voting Machines

Hmm, so Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Methodists embody the spirit of Antichrist, do they...? Who knew? Unfortunately anything Prez Carter might say, no matter what it is, will always be interpreted in light of his presidency, and the fact that his successes (e.g. brokering the end of hostilities between Israel and Egypt) will never get the sort of attention his failures will always continue to get (e.g. the hostage crisis in Iran, including the deaths of those in the rescue mission). It's because the successes mean less to most Americans than the failures, whether the failures were directly due to his leadership …

Posted to The Georgia Preach

Lapham has a way with words, no doubt. Although I personally think the most pressing issue for America is not how to define "national security", but how to use our incredible power and influence in a way that benefits ourselves and also helps/refrains from hurting other societies. Which is to say, how to use hyperpower properly. If, that is, you accept the idea that people and nations are responsible for the harm they do, no matter whether it's a main effect or a side effect of their intentional actions. Some people don't buy that, ya know... Personally, I'm not too disturbed …

Posted to Lapham's Way

Hi wileywitch, No doubt, getting a handle on "national security" as a function of informed citizens' feelings of connectedness and confidence would be great, I just have had a lot of thoughts about America's inordinate economic and cultural influence (hyperpowerful influence that's out of proportion to our numbers on the planet, also out of proportion to our apparent wisdom as a society... if societies can be wise, as individuals sometimes are), and so my phrasing. Lapham's musings triggered me sharing a few of my own, not much more. I wasn't particularly slamming him, maybe just altering the emphasis a bit. Your …

Posted to Lapham's Way

"I think we�re less likely to do stupid stuff with science when we accept ourselves as sensuous and fickle humans, instead of minds in a vat of meat that only need to be properly engineered---socially and/or genetically---to some measurable level of �perfection�. " You said a mouthful, compan~ero! I read "Tao of Physics" years ago, pretty cool stuff although there were points where it was either too esoteric for my ADHD head or (what I felt at the time), tried too hard to fit together conceptual frameworks that weren't really harmonious. But I did think it was an interesting approach, whether …

Posted to Lapham's Way

Yeah OK, so what to do? Rebel. Raise your kids to believe that knowledge is better than popularity. Never say "follow your heart, not your head", and dispute those who do say that nonsense. Boycott all fortune-tellers, psychic "friends", and faith-healing hucksters, and chide those who employ these charlatans. Cultivate a BS-detector in your mind, and speak up when it's triggered. Read more than you watch TV. Cancel subscriptions for those publications that you know are admixing too much BS into the info they deliver. Question your own presumptions and loyalties. Check other people's opinions and see whether they offer data …

Posted to Your Guess Is as Good as Mine

Oh crap, I almost forgot to subscribe to... hehehehehehe, sorry gang, you'll have to fill in that blank yourselves...

Posted to Your Guess Is as Good as Mine

It's articles and debates like these that point up the absolute necessity for dispassionate, hard data when trying to evaluate health policy and determining how to protect your own health. To the extent that any influential person or agency is able to push their ideological agenda in advance of simple transmission of information from the world's scientific researchers, no one will be able to draw sensible conclusions about the nature of AIDS or any other controversial disease. This endless attachment to point-of-view as the standard of truth really must be gotten past. It doesn't matter if one is African or not …

Posted to Beatrice Were: Fighting a Deadly U.S. AIDS Policy in Uganda

Hello Rethinkit, You're certainly right that the scientific establishment is not immune from the same kind of orthodoxy-obsessions or factionalizing that can be found in so many human enterprises. The points I described above apply to them as well. Modern scientific research is generally done with a focus on small, tightly confined areas of study, in hopes that by incremental steps we can gain a gradually clearer picture of how the world works (including the way diseases work, the way we work physiologically and mentally, etc etc). When scientists are being true to the spirit of science, they concentrate on empirical …

Posted to Beatrice Were: Fighting a Deadly U.S. AIDS Policy in Uganda

Perhaps where we disagree is in the view that anti-orthodoxy MUST be closer to the truth than an established understanding. By the way, speaking of "understanding", if I am misunderstanding your own views, please correct me. Anyway, my post from Dec 13 was trying to express my own view that there are such things as knowable truths about the world, including the way that diseases work. In my view these are not altered by the fact that some factions, companies, agencies, churches, and ambitious characters within the scientific community have their own agendas ahead of learning and disseminating knowledge. The benefit …

Posted to Beatrice Were: Fighting a Deadly U.S. AIDS Policy in Uganda

Well, that was a pretty blabby post, I guess I sort of got on a roll. But you get my drift, eh?

Posted to Beatrice Were: Fighting a Deadly U.S. AIDS Policy in Uganda

Hello Canadian Dave, Thanks for all those links, mucho apreciado. Actually, even though I took issue a bit with Rethinkit's post, he (or she, as the case may be) isn't totally off-base by expressing skepticism in relation to the medical/scientific establishment, even if I do think that automatic anti-orthodoxy as a basic approach to truth isn't any more reliable than knee-jerk orthodoxy. For example, I've never had a flu shot in my life, and haven't caught the flu for more than 20 years. And I'm a teacher! Let me tell you, schools are absolute germ-buckets, with clouds of micro-snot laden air …

Posted to Beatrice Were: Fighting a Deadly U.S. AIDS Policy in Uganda

I'd be curious to know the ratings of "Bad Girls" compared to "Snapped", as a function of market share. How does BBC determine its programming line-up and its renewal or cancellation of shows per season? I imagine there's some sort of Nielsen-like rating process in the UK, although I couldn't say for sure, but it would be interesting to know how much actual viewership each show gets as a function of straight-up appeal to the market. Does BBC govern its programming choices in a similar way as US networks, or is there some other kind of vetting process? Anyone out there …

Posted to Bad Girls

Gracias Liz, a clearer picture is always appreciated.

Posted to Bad Girls

Look into my eyes, what do you see? Cult of personality I know your anger, I know your dreams I�ve been everything you want to be I�m the cult of personality Like Mussolini and Kennedy I�m the cult of personality Cult of personality Cult of personality Neon lights, Nobel prize The mirror speaks, the reflection lies You don�t have to follow me Only you can set me free I sell the things you need to be I�m the smiling face on your t.v. I�m the cult of personality I exploit you still you love me I tell you one and one …

Posted to Cult of Ideology

Hello NaderRaider, To be honest, I don't think it's possible to blend the US system with that of NK. We have a hard enough time upholding ideals like liberty, personal initiative, and "republican values" (nothing much to do with a political party, but a mindset that connects personal efforts with community betterment; a value that was spoken of in 19th century America). Freedom and privacy are fragile enough, without incorporating unfree, anti-private ideals into our cultural mix. When the national premise is unconditional obedience to a ruling cadre, who see enemies everywhere and who "governs" the economy for the benefit of …

Posted to Cult of Ideology

Hello again NaderRaider, I certainly agree that education is pivotal in its influence over any nation's culture. Being a high school teacher myself and having taught rich kids, broke kids, kids of virtually every human tribe, public school and private, my biggest personal agenda is to get them accustomed to thinking critically, being able to search out information and to evaluate it for quality and possible biases, and to always keep active their appetite for learning new things. Sadly, a substantial part of my public school career has made me see how little intellectual development most kids actually experience. The emphasis …

Posted to Cult of Ideology

(continues) I still think the cultural and historical differences between a democratic republic (even if I might think that some of its democratic institutions are currently in crisis) and an autocratic one-party police state can't be feasibly integrated because the premises they begin from and the values that stem from them are so intensely different. The values driving their schooling model will also be unharmonious, I think. My agenda is to help kids develop intellectual power, skilled approaches to finding and understanding information, inquisitiveness, attitudes conducive to questioning, and a belief in excellence (as opposed to equality, actually), as well as …

Posted to Cult of Ideology

I think in my post with the 3:12 time signature I may have implied that I have a socialistic, anti-global value system. That's not the case, sorry to be unclear.

Posted to Cult of Ideology

Hello Anarcho-Sozi, What a trippin' handle you use, I've always found it intriguing. Anyway, reflecting on your entry about the two Koreas, I've had some extremely interesting conversations with students and parents from the South as a teacher in international schools in Asia. As you mention, the great majority of those I spoke with were intensely anxious that the division between the two be eroded and eventually done away with. Most of those who talked to me focused on the divided families who had so few opportunities to see each other, or even to communicate in any way at all. This …

Posted to Cult of Ideology

The more researchers and pharmaceutical companies are dispossessed of their incentive to produce new medicines, the less new research will be done and therefore the fewer new medicines we'll be able to count on. Ignoring or circumventing patents will offer a short-term solution in that pirated drugs of those formulae can be produced without paying for them, but that dampens the efforts to create the new drugs that will certainly be necessary when bird flu (or some other virus) mutates again and as super-bacteria that resist current antibiotics continue to evolve. Same goes for anti-HIV or anti-malarial drugs. They didn't just …

Posted to Their Patents or Your Life

"...this spring�s �Opiniongate,� which pitted Los Angeles Times contributing editor, Susan Estrich against the editorial page editor Michael Kinsley. Estrich raised a stink after documenting that on average only 20 percent of the editorials were written by women." I would be curious to know a few more numbers. What percentage of qualified editorial writers who submit to LATimes (or any media organ you want to choose) are women? What percentage of total articles submitted to the Op-Ed page are written by women? If, say, exactly 50% of the pieces submitted for publication were authored by women, with only 20% of the …

Posted to She-said/She-said

Perhaps the Reps don't consider an investment in education, whether public or college, to be good business. We invest in enterprises that we think are a) likely to bring us a profit, and b) judged to be acceptable risks. If the agenda is to elevate the average level of education in the country, the strategy of cutting funding makes no sense. Let me differentiate, by the way, between funding that would go to teachers' salaries as opposed to money for textbooks and other educational materiel. Paying teachers more, per se, won't increase the attainments of the youth, and I say that …

Posted to The War on our Children

Any Darwinian approach to human society would have to focus upon 1) genocide against competitor nationalities or, if one is too moral to be a genocider, 2) propagation of memes (the idea equivalents of genes) and strengthening them by behavioral example. Of course I think pushing ideas is more the point when dealing with human beings. For instance, if we rhetorically support protection of rights, a society of fair laws that don't play favorites among classes or races, personal responsibility for behavior, etc etc, the proper Darwinian approach would be to "plant seeds" verbally and in media and then to nourish …

Posted to The War on our Children

Hi minerva, As for wisdom, I can't claim any. Hell, I have a hard enough time trying to juggle the complexities of all the stuff that draws my interest. A shade of ADHD in the genetic mix, ya know... And as for "behavioral examples" from my country, well, some things I'm proud of America doing, and some I aint. Recently, "aint" is the more frequent sentiment, and in spite of a fairly optimistic habit of thought, I've resigned myself to having to wait for the next administration at the soonest for some kind of behavioral examples to show up that would …

Posted to The War on our Children

Any use of deadly or violent force has more than the intent and the justification used, as the definition of its moral level. It's not just what you mean to do and the reasons you give for doing it that make you accountable. It's also, or perhaps mainly, the results. Intended or unintended. We meant to destroy an enemy's ability to fight, we unintentionally blew up and burned innocent civilians in the process, because the enemy was hiding among them. We didn't mean to, and our reasons for attacking the enemy where he was are not spurious in the context of …

Posted to White Phosphorous Lies

Wow, Canadian David, when I read that you're burnt out on sex I felt terribly chagrined. So life-enhancing and joyful a thing should be enjoyed often and intensely. Inshallah it really is just a phase, soon passed. And nothing like a little intelligence before the fact (before the act?) to reduce the likelihood that later you'll have to say, "Oh no, what have I done?" Fill in the sex-related crisis that would make you say that yourself. As the dad of two teens who have passed the age of consent, I'm thankful every day that they've made intelligent decisions about sex. …

Posted to Mo Money for Monogamy

Kuya's results: Spiritualism Your ideals are mostly spiritual, but in an individualistic way. While spirituality is very important in your life, organized religion itself may not be for you. It is best for you to seek these things on your own terms. 60% spiritual. 80% reason-oriented Yup, that's pretty much dead-on.

Posted to Islam Needs Radicals

Responding to the article, if I could see something truly radical in any ideology, religious or secular, it would be a determination to treat all people and the world as if they had an inherent value that makes them worth taking care of. I sure as hell don't see much of that now, not in politics, religion (organized or individual), or in the way economic or personal relationships are conducted, with a few exceptions. That would be about the most radical departure from the way people typically treat each other as I can imagine. Usually we just under- or de-value each …

Posted to Islam Needs Radicals

Hello Canadian David, I get much more of a spiritual rush and a worshipful feeling from what I learn in science than I ever did in church. For me, that stuff IS the juice! A pity that worship/spiritual emphases are so often seen as being opposite to the practice of systematically learning the subtle mechanisms of nature. For me they go hand-in-glove.

Posted to Islam Needs Radicals

Yes, luminous, nice. And cool cascade of classy concepts. Glowy gorgeous. Got a little alliteration thang goin' on, better reset... Gotta say, David, I'm not too big a fan of suffering, seems like there's enough of that going around all by itself, don't much want to mystify/glorify it. I'm more a happiness headtripper. Damn, gotta reset again...

Posted to Islam Needs Radicals

Excellent article title, Mr. Muwakkil! Hard to imagine how it could be better. Get it straight, you who are drug warriors, you hubristic controllers of other peoples' minds, you bullies seeking command of my consciousness. I will not allow you to seize control of my thinking processes any more than I would allow you to dictate any other aspect of my life as a free man. You will not dictate how I pray, nor to whom I offer love, nor whether I tattoo, pierce, scar up, or paint this body of mine. You will not legislate what I eat, how much …

Posted to Give Me Cognitive Liberty

Gee, do you get the impression I have a passionate attachment to the issue?

Posted to Give Me Cognitive Liberty

Hello Dr. D, don't blame yourself, it's the bloody machine. My standard joke is that the role of computers in the modern world is evidence in favor of the Satan Hypothesis. What is the Satan Hypothesis, you ask, on the edge of your seat with anticipation...? That there's a being in the universe with the powers of an angel and the ability to trick us into thinking we really, really need things that, in fact, we don't need at all. Distracting us from pursuing the things we do in fact need, in favor of the illusory necessity. It's the damnable machine, …

Posted to Give Me Cognitive Liberty

Naturalmente, compan~ero D of C. No harm no foul no forgiveness needed. Also a small advice to Dr. D, you might want to un-check (or un-tick, if that's your phrasing) the little box that says "Notify me of follow-up comments". I neglected to do that recently and my emailbox got flash-flooded with more than three dozen notifications in less than 48 hours! Ayyyy! Not as offensive as all the damn spam I get offering me everything from Viagra to fake Rolexes to home re-fi to Brazilian porn sites, but life's too short to wade through all that crap, no need to …

Posted to Give Me Cognitive Liberty

Hello again Dr. D, I was a registered Libertarian Party member some years back (never been a reg'd Dem or Rep), but eventually abandoned any official party affiliation. Too many times I was hearing "our party upholds the right to discriminate", and although I do "discriminate" every time I judge someone worthy of my love or friendship, and even when I award a student a letter grade on a piece of assigned work, I shied back from that repeated formulation. I don't believe in forced equality, it's based on illusions, but I still felt alienated and so went back to "no …

Posted to Give Me Cognitive Liberty

Hi minerva and Dave in Canada, Indeed, moderation. Dose, not overdose, and clarity of mind is always to be cherished. But the law is a bludgeon, and it's freedom I glorify, sober or stoned. As for the mindset that underlies the laws of drug warriors... more destructive than herbs or distillations, any day. (btw, there's every reason to be hinky about synthesized compounds like E, the research isn't encouraging, but hey it's your own risk so be damn careful). Still, all in all, prohibition just makes evil men rich. The evidence is overwhelming.

Posted to Give Me Cognitive Liberty

Bah!!! Prohibition laws are nonsense, they just make thugs rich! But I have to agree with whattheheck when he says that no one's listening when we protest. No one's listening to reason, no one's attending to the relevant data, no one is willing to question the premise of prohibition laws, which is that you really do not own your body and mind as they belong to "society" or "god". By "god" I don't mean That Which Really brought you about, but the cranky autocrat we've anthropomorphized in substitution. All of the prohibitionists would defecate gold bricks if anyone questioned their right …

Posted to A Foul Tragedy

Before drug use and professionalized sex can be legalized and, maybe one day, de-stigmatized, there will have to be an acknowledgment that Privacy really is a right. I recall the confirmation hearings of R. Bork when he was nominated for the Supreme Court, and at one point when he was responding to a question from the committee, he pointed out that there was no clear "right to privacy" delineated in the Constitution. That point he raised has stayed with me all these years. It will be remembered by many that the issue of legalized abortion via Roe v. Wade had a …

Posted to Breaking Rank

Hello Jay C, Tried to respond to your post of 11.11.05, but my in-house gremlin wasn't talking to the ITT gremlin, no electron flow. I also think that democracy-backed-by-strength has the potential to inspire people who have had the boot on their neck for generations. Eastern Europe in the late '80s comes to my mind. But when it comes to the use of military force, judicious and even reluctant application should be the rule. As I said back at the Cosby thread, it can so easily lead to the creation of more harmful outcomes than beneficial ones. This isn't a pacifistic …

Posted to Democrats: It's the War

I shrug and chuckle in semi-resigned frustration. Believe me, it aint amusement. Let's see... The Iraqi civilian death toll is as low as 10,000 and as high as 300,000, based on body counts that are simultaneously not done at all and carefully recorded. US military deaths range from 2000 to 9000, depending on who's doing the counting and how they do it, depending as well upon the margin of error they simultaneously acknowledge and deny. You can see what I'm getting at. It ends up all being based on partisan choice of sources, because, it seems, no one is honest enough …

Posted to Democrats: It's the War

Yup, Rabbit, you can say that again. Simple accurate info on anything at all is not everyone's highest priority, whether they swing lefty or righty. It's not the 'net, it's the polluters thereof. Some of whom kiss the administration, some of whom kick it. Fortunately, though I break away from the virtual world to get blessedly outside (which is where I really belong), away from screens of all descriptions, I also have a stubborn streak. It will take some diligence and time, but I'll dig around some of the sources that you, luminous, scorp, Jay C and others provide, see if …

Posted to Democrats: It's the War

Gotta chime in with David in Canada, though. War is a mf'r, better take place for a damn good reason. I'd like to believe that there's never ever reason enough, but that doesn't square with what my eyes see.

Posted to Democrats: It's the War

Hello again Jay C, Since I'm stuck with indeterminate data on death counts and all, I'm mired in moralistic generalities. Bummer. Maybe you can tell from my emphasis on the moralistically general but also inescapable duty America has shouldered vis a vis our two war venues, that I fear my country's notoriously short attention span may well lead to the failure to meet that obligation. Afghanistan left our radar screen after the Soviets were driven out, and the chaos that resulted from that neglect helped bring about the malignancy of the Taliban. What's done is done, and there's little I can …

Posted to Democrats: It's the War

Hello Rabbit, The main reason I think a precipitous departure from Iraq would do more harm than good is because of the numerous armed factions large and small that, I believe, will immediately set upon each other as soon as the occupation forces leave. This might seem like a distinction without a difference from the view that "favors" the occupation continuing, but the distinction I'm really making (speaking only for myself, mind you) is from the view that the US needs to choose the Iraqi leadership. Like the old Yugoslavia, Iraqi is a multi-ethnic nation with little love among the ethnicities, …

Posted to Democrats: It's the War

Hello Jay C, Here are four reasons why I don't want the US government to legally sanction torture, why I think Cheney et al are wrong to wish to keep it as a legal ace in the hole. 1. Because of what it would do to us as a civilization. I think it would add to the erosion of moral sense in America. I think one of the few very clear lessons of history is that means and ends are inseparable. You can't achieve dignified goals by using demeaned methods of reaching them. There are scenarios that can be devised that …

Posted to Democrats: It's the War

(to continue) 3. It won't help us win a war, not the war on terror nor any other. I wouldn't say it would make much difference in terms of triggering worse shit from al Qaeda; it's clear they have no sense of restraint whatsoever (blasting wedding parties in Amman, now there's a way to bring the kingdom of "god" closer to fruition; fuckin wack as ever... i hope the tide of Jordanian opinion is well and truly turned, but what a vicious reality check!). I don't think terrorism will go away until a) the rich and powerful countries of the world …

Posted to Democrats: It's the War

You can see I'm not too good with the lingo of proper argumentation, but you get my drift. Gotta sign off for now, peace be with all y'all.

Posted to Democrats: It's the War

Hi again Jay C, Maybe all I've expressed is my own angst. I hate what 9/11 and the War on Terror have done to my country. I hate the security obsession, the hunker-down mentality. I detest the openness with which unconstitutional detention centers formed and the relatively easy acceptance of them by the public, who seem by and large to go along uncritically with whatever the administration or the 24-hour news channel shovel out, turning back to their reality shows as a narcotic. Perhaps I should have just listed my fourth reason as the one that carries the day with me. …

Posted to Democrats: It's the War

As for warheads going off downtown, some concerted international efforts to account for the radioactive material would help, with strict and multiply-redundant accounting systems. It's not like the stuff grows on trees. But we know, don't we, that none of that will take place, and even if it did, some corrupt mf'r would sell a warhead or some radioactive waste in order to get the downpayment for a home in Malibu.

Posted to Democrats: It's the War

"There�s much talk these days about Democrats needing to come up with �new ideas� to slow the Republican juggernaut. Perhaps first they should dust off some old ones, like solidarity." No, not "new ideas", nor even "solidarity" first, which doesn't mean much unless the Dems can show (not just say) that they have something to offer that's likely to be an improvement on what the Reps are carrying out. But a few old ideas will do. For example, 1) increasing tax breaks for small businesses, 2) energetically enforcing ethics rules in the legislature (there's some of this now, but not enough, …

Posted to How the Right Has Won

Responding to Big Daddy's mention of rigged games, indeed they are so often rigged, or at least favorites are played and choices made between people from very subjective bases. Now don't take this as a cynical stance (it isn't) or that I�m complaining (I�m not) but having had to compete for jobs, financial aid for college, and leadership roles in social and employment venues, I have often observed that there's one or another level or rigging in a broad range of competitive situations. Sometimes the best qualified doesn't get the goodies. Not necessarily the sort of dishonest and frankly racist stuff …

Posted to Katrina, Cosby and Class Divisions

It is true that you can work your ass off and in the end not approach the goals you set for yourself at the outset. It's also true that undeserving people often get far more than their share of whatever makes a satisfying life due to their connections, luck, benefits from halo effects, etc. You can work for a lifetime and watch it all crash to Earth due to a natural or personal disaster. Hard work, energetic creativity, and mental discipline aren't magic, there's no guarantee that they'll give you a cake-and-ice cream life. Anyone who looks for guarantees beyond the …

Posted to Katrina, Cosby and Class Divisions

Hello jruss, Please give me your take on how African Americans of your acquaintance see the Rep Party and its quotient of evangelical religious control. I can see the appeal for those who have a do-for-yourself attitude, especially since the Dem party is pretty lame at the moment. But the evangelical-political tip is what I'm asking about. I know you can't speak for millions, your perceptions will do. It's known to everyone who reads or listens to what I say that I consider the Reps to be the party of big money and big religion, with the latter being an even …

Posted to Katrina, Cosby and Class Divisions

Hello again, jruss, and also hello to Jay Cline. jruss, thanks for your views. My response is appallingly tardy, but I'm glad you took a moment to write. I was intrigued by your earlier posts way up-thread, and they triggered my questions. It's pretty clear why Af-Ams would feel repeatedly let down by party organizations, Dems not least. I recall a conversation with a former student, a young black man who was highly articulate. I suggested to him that, as an individual, it would have to be him and him alone who decided to invest energy in his own success, and …

Posted to Katrina, Cosby and Class Divisions

This is interesting, Jay C, I'm glad you cruised back. As you read above, I've never felt much connected to the Reps or Dems. On the hawk/dove scale, I generally tend to feel that warfare creates as many or more problems as it solves, however I've read enough history and understand the appetite for power well enough to know that true pacifism is to simply surrender to those with the balls to use a gun to have their way. Plenty of those types in head-of-state roles the world over. The very thought of that sort of thing having any remote connection …

Posted to Katrina, Cosby and Class Divisions

gracias, I will look

Posted to Katrina, Cosby and Class Divisions

(Strangely, the comment box says I'll be identified as "David Sirota". I am not, I am Kuya.) I think this is a very valuable article, really a breath of fresh air. I appreciated the author's willingness to look at the "progressive" movement not so much as an opponent, but as something of an insider, and to characterize some of its pretty severe limitations. Yes, I know we can debate the semantics of the term "progressive", but for brevity's sake I'll conveniently use it as stated. 4000 characters, ya know. Conservative/libertarian posters at this site often say that self-described progressives suffer from …

Posted to Partisan War Syndrome

Hmmm, well, I guess the ITT server got my name right after all. Computers. Crazy machines!

Posted to Partisan War Syndrome

Hello Rabbit, I don't justify the Iraq war, they can keep the oil. But security and law/order don't exist (and yes, I know how they were broken, and how they behaved before they were broken). There's no safety there. Violence has been unleashed that won't (I believe) subside even if foreigners bail. Believe me, I'm aware of how we got to the present situation. I've argued against the US being in Iraq since before the invasion. But we're at the fucked up present moment now, and my indignation about how it all so bitterly took place doesn't change what's in hand …

Posted to Partisan War Syndrome

Economic Left/Right: -2.38 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.77 That's about where I would have guessed. Not a flame-on capitalist but distrustful of many collectivist forms, wanting many areas of life to be beyond authority or others' votes. Not a bad estimate. Some of the questions were loaded as hell... so many assumed correlations of meaning and values. Several were quite irritating. For what it's worth...

Posted to Partisan War Syndrome

This modern mingling of particular sectarian agendas with politics points up one of the weakness of democracy, at least as most people conceive it. "Majority rule" is a central tenet of democracy, and as is well known was expressed as a political value to oppose minority rule (by royals and their noble allies, or by imperial rulers and the colonizers who supported them). As an ethic guiding the decisions of who should hold political power, its a vast improvement over what it sought to replace. But the hazard is, of course, suppression of minority rights by an aggressive majority. It doesn't …

Posted to A Fundamental History Lesson

sorry for all the typos in that last bit, but you get my point...

Posted to A Fundamental History Lesson

Wow, I wish I had been able to participate in the exchange between Jay Cline and Neruda following my earlier post. Alas, work duties had to take precedence. I would certainly never advocate any suppression of religious practice per se, as long as it wasn't crime or victimization in religious guise. And as long as the people involved freely consented and participated as a free-will decision. I actually do think that the Constitution and Bill of Rights as written could provide sufficient protection if the principles they advocate (require, actually) were implemented in the spirit that the writers seemed to have …

Posted to A Fundamental History Lesson

(continuing from the previous post) As for Creationism (or any of its euphemistic synonyms) becoming required curriculum in biology class, I have equally little patience. The fact that some teachers and textbooks give a simplistic or outdated take on evolution, natural selection, speciation, and the origins of life and humanity (which is a justification I've heard for allowing "equal time" to the Book of Genesis) should be the basis for improvement of schooling practices. It does not warrant pretending that a millennia-old creation story (read: myth) has the same value as a scientific principle compared the realizations that have come to …

Posted to A Fundamental History Lesson

Reflecting upon Jay Cline's point way upthread about abortion rights having a central place in the religion/state debate, plus other posts about condom hand-outs at school... I actually do have misgivings about schools handing out condoms. The thing is, my own teens know that I'll help them get condoms if by some bizarre circumstance they couldn't get them, and I won't throw them out of the family if they become sexually active (presuming their not at the moment, which I do believe they'd feel reasonably comfortable sharing, considering the status of our relationship). Not all teens have this security at home. …

Posted to A Fundamental History Lesson

(to continue) One thing I will say, though. I believe I own this body. If I can own anything at all, land or gold or my toothbrush, then I surely own this body as sole possessor. I think that the consciousness within it has sole charge of the meat-and-bone it rides in, whatever the true nature of that consciousness. I don't ask permission of anyone about what I eat, drink, smoke, or do for sexual pleasure. If I decide it's time for this body to die because it's in chronic, unendurable pain, I'll find a way to check out. And since …

Posted to A Fundamental History Lesson

Yes, I know I also don't own the body of a fetus that might be within me. A further conundrum. I also don't own the bodies of the parasites I'd unhesitatingly kill if they were within me. Christ, who seriously thinks of a baby-within as a parasite, that just fucking sick! You can see this bit confuses and distresses me.

Posted to A Fundamental History Lesson

Thanks Neruda and Rabbit for your responses to my post above, I always end up adding my own responses at big intervals within the threads because I have to fit in my visits to ITT among many other tasks. I also prize rights, and certainly believe that any society worthy of a half-grain of loyalty from anybody must be one in which a number of pre-assumed rights ought to be part of its cultural and legal fabric. Sexual rights are always a big subject of debate when religion is being addressed, perhaps because it's so vitally bound up in life itself …

Posted to A Fundamental History Lesson

that's "family, morality, art, and sublime joy" typo, typo, typo...

Posted to A Fundamental History Lesson

The sooner we outgrow the cult of race, which modern genomic science has debunked beyond redemption, the better. History, sociology, past crimes and modern-day dehumanizations, all evaporate as soon as you realize that in the most fundamental particles of your being you're cousins with the other-colored chap you're worried your sister will date. Not. A. Shred. Of. Reality. Beyond. Hypnotic. Historical. Hysteria. People probably used "redskin" names originally because they wanted a bad-ass connotation for their team, and the "native Americans" (insert their tribal names for themselves here for greater accuracy) have a reputation for being some pure-D bad-asses, in combat …

Posted to Accepting the Slurs

I'll let PETA work on actual cruelty to animals, whattheheck. Your alphanumeric bit made me chuckle. There's a place for political correctness; racial slurs are at least less mainstream than they formerly were (I recall some of the cartoons I viewed as a youth in the 1960s, many of which were actually made in the 1940s! Yikes! Still, much of the bend-over-backwards-in-case-someone-gets-pissed energy pretty much leaves me behind. Rah rah rah for the Sacramento Sloths, the Redondo Beach Rheas, the Boston Boa Constrictors!

Posted to Accepting the Slurs

Wow, I purely LOVE this thread! This is the stuff that fascinates me, and the new science about mitochondrial DNA (which doesn't recombine during sex as chromosomal DNA does, and mutates at an approximately know rate) is way exciting! People can now even trace the migrations of their ancestors, as well as assess the degree of their relatedness, with all the new-fangled goodies. Shows beyond a doubt that Africa is the source of our earliest beginnings, even more vividly than fossil evidence already did. I mean really just DAMN cool. It's a big part of the basis for my denial of …

Posted to Accepting the Slurs

Hello wolf, Far be it from me to accept blindly any idea just because it's labelled "scientific". Quite true, as you say, that scientists can become dogmatic and blind to challenges of their theories (e.g. Freud, to the extent he was really scientific in his approach, and even Einstein). Dogmatically accepting statements from authorities is a singularly unscientific attitude. The self-correcting mechanism of science as a way of learning is indeed the rub, as you mention. That, and its philosophical refusal to state that learning about a given topic is ever finished, i.e. there's always more that can be learned. I …

Posted to Accepting the Slurs

Hello whattheheck, Yes, but how about mere EVIDENCE (never mind actual PROOF) that they (WMDs) did exist, and could be activated in less than 1 hour's time, as per the British and US governments' assertions? Those went a long way toward shaping US public opinion and congressional backing for the invasion. We heard then that there was real evidence that such weapons systems did exist, and as of this writing, the US government publically gave up even looking for any more evidence of Iraqi WMDs long ago, having apparently decided that to continue searching is a waste of time. This despite …

Posted to Standard Issues

I wrestle with this issue of "judicial legislating." Here are a few musings. I wonder, had Brown v. Board of Ed not ended the practice of racially segregating public schools, would democratic processes of legislation have resulted in that change by now? Or would official segregation still exist in 2005? What do you do if the majority really doesn't want to protect or offer equal rights to minorities (or to women, the majority that's been treated like a minority)? Perhaps those who wanted to keep non-whites held down (as well as those who might still want to) could come around in …

Posted to Judging Harriet Miers

So I guess judges effectively making law as opposed to just interpreting what the legislature and executive pass as law is cool, yes? Good, I'm glad that's settled. (?) Oh well... As for the God/Jesus reference, worshipping that which brought you about is wise, but there aint no end times unless humans poison themselves into oblivion, and even then it won't be true extinction for long eons, just millennia of savagery if we squander this period of relative knowledge and technological capability. Tangentially responding back to the article, Ms. Miers nom bringing ire from the hard right is illuminating. Clique Bush …

Posted to Judging Harriet Miers

Hello David in Canada, With respect, I point out that too few of those who would read your offerings here have an agenda of deliberate pursuit of enlightenment, as you clearly do. I'm glum to say it, but most are basically partisans, justifying their ideological stances and/or their views on policy as they begin to comment on the articles and then go off on a few well-worn tirades. Traditions of wisdom are less, crafty rhetorical fencing is more. Or, as often, telling those who disagree with them what low-lifes they are in singularly uncreative and tedious ways. Myself, I think that …

Posted to Witnesses to War

In response to the article, the angst and sense of being let-down expressed by these military families may not be universal among that demographic, but is surely worthy of respectful attention. It might be said that they "should have known the risks" (I'm quoting an acquaintance and colleague who speaks like that when Cindy Sheehan et al are in the news), but the small bright side in an otherwise vastly sad tale is that there's some level of attention being paid to people who don't automatically parrot a dictated line, whose experiences have an outside chance of educating others and showing …

Posted to Witnesses to War

Hello Rabbit, I guess I express annoyance with the venom because I'm weary of it. I've received a share of it here at ITT in other threads, and it bites (although not all that much lately; can't decide whether that means I'm being ignored or respected... I'll take either one, if the alternative is an insult). I used to respond to venomous barbs thrown my way, now I just leave them alone. Don't want to positively reinforce the behavior, ya dig. Even from those whose views I find incomprehensible, I still learn something. Sometimes what I learn, I don't like (as …

Posted to Witnesses to War

I'm a cat, you're a rabbit, wolf is a wolf... There's a kid's story in this somewhere...

Posted to Witnesses to War

Back to the main vein... I'd be curious to know how often families who have a tradition in the military are called "traitors" when they question or denounce the war and the leadership who have brought it to us. Of course I find the whole habit of throwing that epithet around to be appallingly simplistic, and revealing of a lack of acquaintance with the constitutional definition of treason. How dissention from policy can be directly equated with giving aid and comfort to the enemy is one of those incomprehensible but (somehow) educative instances I mentioned above. If someone justifies the war …

Posted to Witnesses to War

Hmmm, now I'm talking about parrots and monkeys. The animal kingdom invades ITT... Obviously my head is stuck. Until next time.

Posted to Witnesses to War

Back to the article, if Moyers generalizes too far by broad-brushing the Reps at large, it's only by a half-step. When I hear of activist Republicans vociferously denouncing the infiltration of biology classrooms by the Old Testament, when they publically abandon any sponsorship of a marriage-defining amendment to the Constitution, when TV preachers who advocate political assassination are shut down hard instead of their words being called (in a singularly mealy-mouthed fashion) "regrettable", I'll believe that the party isn't possessed by the spirit of aggressive reactionary Christianity. Moyers has it dead-on when he says we're too polite, to afraid to speak …

Posted to Reckoning with the God Squad

Hello Rabbit, Way back up-thread, you asked me how to reason with (so to speak) legislatively ambitious fundamentalists, or to phrase it better and more accurately, theocrats. The only way I can see it happening is to simply forbid sectarian domination over the law, to separate church and state and make it stick. For one thing, reasoning with them doesn't work, because their positions have little to do with reason except to logically pursue the conclusions based on their inviolable a priori assumption, e.g. that the Bible and every literal word in it is a direct transmission from the mind of …

Posted to Reckoning with the God Squad

By the way, you actively religious types, before you call me a hater or anti-religion, just hold your horses. If you want to push the line of devoted compassion, doing good works in the world, promoting a sense of worshipfulness toward the source of all being and consciousness, I'm there. Teach away. Push the compassion of Jesus, you've got an ally. But don't expect me to stand still while moves are made to make it law, either statutory or Constitutional. No cops, no courts, no law that compels worship or adherence to sectarian values not my own. Nope. I refuse. And …

Posted to Reckoning with the God Squad

Hello again Rabbit, My hesitancies about initiating violence against fundis are 1) it would be immoral and oppressive, and I don't want to become what I hate, and 2) it wouldn't do anything but galvanize counter-violence. Oppression doesn't make people go away, they just go underground and make plans for the future. Also, at least in America, I think too many people would see an assault on fundis as an assault upon religion per se and would rally to their sides, not just evangelical Christians but even lukewarm ones, as well as most of our citizens. So I see practical and …

Posted to Reckoning with the God Squad

Hello again Rabbit, As for guns, I favor strict regulation. For everyone, fundis, socialists, liberals, conservatives, hunters, and target shooters. Not total confiscation (except for illegal weapon holders), but careful, enforced regulation. The 2nd Amendment gets so much heated debate, it's an insoluble issue in America. Personally I don't get too worked up over it. I don't think firearms will protect citizens at large from oppression. A lot of my in-laws think that favoring gun regulation is a daft position, saying that we might need to fight off oppressive government troops. But as far as I can see, governments everywhere on …

Posted to Reckoning with the God Squad

Oh yes, and as for people who have an overzealous "afterlife" emphasis getting ahold of warheads and missile systems, well, I think those types are far more likely to us the things precipitously than secular-minded types. Not that I trust secularists who have nukes either. Still, if one believes that the "real" world is the one to come, on the other side of death, I can't help but suspect that they'd hesitate to nuke an enemy less and be more likely to go for it. The ITT article pondering Iranian nukes drew this same response from me. It's a quandry. The …

Posted to Reckoning with the God Squad

Dude! Formidable thread! You guys really are hardcore!

Posted to Reckoning with the God Squad

;-) God love the lot of ya

Posted to Reckoning with the God Squad

Are 90% of terrorists Arab men? Even if that group is over-represented, those who have violent designs can simply switch tactics if they detect a standing pattern of security checking that focuses on a particular demographic. Of course it's unwise to let Arab men into airports without a decent check. It's unwise to let anyone in without a check. The first rule of security is to make oneself or one's institution a difficult target, for anyone with evil intent. Airport security should simply be beefed up and more passengers frisked overall. More uniformed and plain-clothes personnel, more dogs trained to sniff …

Posted to Bad on the Basics

Ooops, got off-topic. Aint the first who posts here to do so. Roberts is a virtual shoe-in, he'd have to be struck by lightning to avoid confirmation. The question is, how to deal with the changing political and cultural climate in America? How to not get swallowed up by energetic arch-conservatism? I'm thinking that will be the next main challenge for those of us who don't swim well in the mainstream of American middle-class political culture: To figure out how to preserve our right to be who we really are and how to gain credibility among those who are mainstreamers. That'll …

Posted to Bad on the Basics

I actually feel some level of compassion for those who still cling to the 9/11-Iraq equation, despite a complete lack of evidence for it. I see the habit of clinging to the Saddam-9/11 fiction (which apparently needed refreshing even though the administration formerly gave up pushing that line) as clear evidence of severe emotional wounds. Like a version of PTSD, a "post 9/11 stress syndrome". They're still overwhelmingly sad and hurt and angry, a point implied in C. Hayes' article. I can dig it; watching the coverage of the second jet smashing in and both WTC towers fall felt like getting …

Posted to Operation Enduring Boredom

There's a history lesson in here somewhere about the hazards of forced amalgamation of disparate cultures into a nation-state, particularly when so many of those cultures had so little identification with an entity called "Indonesia", back in the day. It's no wonder TNI had to bust a hard move against the East Timorese before and as they devolved, and GAM today; those people's feel/felt imprisoned by an authority structure they neither chose nor felt compelled to accept. Nothing like a gun in your mouth to convince you to accept a "foreign" passport as your own. I imagine the US is getting …

Posted to Brothers in Arms

I do not feel relaxed at all about the likelihood of the Chinese Communist Party gaining great economic power, even if it will require decades. That timeframe does not comfort me. A basic cultural characteristic of many Asian societies, not least the Chinese, is to think of long-term plans as having the scope of generations. They certainly have an advantage over quick-gratification-loving cultures like that of America, in which "long-term" just about equates to the length of time a mortgage can be paid off. I don't feel relaxed because I consider it quite predictable that in a future time, if China …

Posted to Chinas Press Crackdown

Hello scorp and Rabbit, I think my major concerns have less to do with the Chinese people as a culture and more with a sense of forboding about how power and simultaneous economic success seem to affect national leaders across history and in so many regions of the world, all regions I would say. Also, it appears to be all to easy for any set of leaders to galvanize their citizens to action, even if the ends are ignoble or downright evil. scorp, your mentioning of Hitler and Stalin would be cases in point as only the most frequently cited examples, …

Posted to Chinas Press Crackdown

Belatedly added, my forbodings were also triggered by the grip that was tightened upon journalists, as per J. Pocha's article as well as Liberal's post above. What are they afraid of? On a tangent, I asked much the same question about the suppression of flag-draped-coffin images from Iraq and Afghanistan, and most recently the sanctions against photos of the dead of Hurricane Katrina. What are they afraid of? The fourth estate, perhaps.

Posted to Chinas Press Crackdown

You guys are really bizarre, you ideologue socialists and evangelistic capitalists. The purity of your ideologies, the selectivity of the evidence you cite. Selective. Biased. Preconceived. Prejudicial. Doctrinaire. No one can tell you guys a damn thing, because you already think you know. What you both have in common is a lack of connectedness to what takes place in real people's lives. You are both determined to see with only one eye, and you refuse to perceive what your other eye could show you. You capitalists say that all we need is a will to work and to get government off …

Posted to Will History Repeat Itself?

Hello WTH, I will look up your article and respond afterward. As for me being off-base, a closer reading of my tirade above will show that I was addressing TWO groups, socialistic types AND capitalistic types, i.e. ideologues of either stripe. Not lumping them together as one group, but expressing my frustration and annoyance, to both, at what appears to me to be selective attention and an overall refusal to admit the human costs (x2) of clinging to your ideologies and working toward their logical conclusions. Actually, forget all the high-falutin' talk. I'm pissed at the endless chatter of the American …

Posted to Will History Repeat Itself?

Hello yet again WTH, Yes that was an interesting article. I'm happy someone was able to get off their asses and make good things happen to assist the victims of Katrina. Against the scale of the destruction it may not look like much of a difference to some, but I will grant the point that in comparison to the official agencies charged with preparing for and responding to such emergencies, the private sector has done much more. Not being particularly socialist (I certainly don't think criticizing the decision to make massive tax cuts and then to engage in two wars, nor …

Posted to Will History Repeat Itself?

Before the midnight hour passes, may I offer my heartfelt condolence to those who lost loved ones 4 years ago in New York City, Washington, and Pennsylvania. And may I also offer a damnation to the medievalists who brought down the WTC towers and authored the other events of 9/11/2001, including any who helped them. And finally, I express my sad chagrin that those events have managed to push America around a psychological corner, toward generalized fear and an acceptance of abridged freedoms in pursuit of a mythical state of safety that didn't much exist before that bad day anyway. May …

Posted to Will History Repeat Itself?

Hmm, well I missed midnight by more than an hour, but it doesn't change the sentiment.

Posted to Will History Repeat Itself?

Reflecting upon Stephen Neitzke's post above, I personally hope that freelance photogs and as well a few gutsy media players simply disobey the order not to photograph. Damn their PR needs, Amendment 1 takes precedence. When flag-draped coffins from our wars were excluded from publication, I was livid. And though it seems tangential to bring that up, the whole concept of these people cooking the data for us, trying to limit our access to information for their own agenda of sanitizing the public's reactions in advance is appalling. True colors being revealed, as far as I'm concerned. They love that "freedom" …

Posted to Katrinas Racial Wake

OK here goes... I think the assertion that Bush is racist and doesn't care about African Americans is groundless. Kanye West, though he was in the midst of a very intense emotional reaction to the obvious suffering of New Orleans citizens (hopefully non-blacks as well as blacks), was off base. And even though it might be somehow "understandable", that doesn't make the assertion factual or supportable by evidence. Real evidence of racism, I mean, of which I've seen nothing convincing connected to Mr Bush. For that matter, the experience of being victimized by active racism, which plenty of AfAms have had, …

Posted to Katrinas Racial Wake

(to continue) The aspect of racism in these events that has me much more disturbed, and for which there's more evidence, is connected to media depictions of the victims. Blacks have been said "loot" food from flooded stores, whites "find" food in those stores. The automatic assumption that a dark complected man is "looting" when he desperately searches for something on which to survive (since no one did a damn thing for him for days after the storm!) says much more about mean-spirited popular assumptions and race-based jumping to conclusions than anything else. That's really more of an indictment of American …

Posted to Katrinas Racial Wake

If racism is observable in a person's speech or behavior, whether they're a regular citizen or a power-player, then they can fairly be called racist. Part of my point was that George Bush, for all of his flaws and although I think he's way more harm than good, just doesn't come off as a racist. The hurricane hit where it hit and many African Americans lived there (with all their different colored neighbors) and went through hell. If an earthquake swacked the San Fernando Valley, would they get better taken care of? I don't know that answer but if someone thinks …

Posted to Katrinas Racial Wake

There's not even a genetic basis for race as a concept, it's just a fucking suntan. It's a humiliation that we're still stuck on it.

Posted to Katrinas Racial Wake

If we've supposedly gotten past the "Vietnam Syndrome", I'm about ready for the country to get past the "Vietnam Protest Compensation Syndrome", i.e. the heartfelt need to back US military action, whatever the justification, as a way of making up for the insults and lack of welcome Vietnam vets experienced at the hands of some protestors. Sort of a psychological cancelling out of those embarrassing and ugly moments of history, to make one's patriotic stance vividly apparent even when the reasons a particular war is said to be necessary turn out to be bogus. Like now. Much better to get a …

Posted to Beyond the Vietnam Syndrome

'�I do not want to have to explain to my [6-year-old] daughter what it means to be questioning one�s sexuality � or what a transgender person is, or what a bisexual is or what a gay or lesbian is,� said Storms.' Try this, Commissioner Storms: When your daughter asks questions about being gay/lesbian/etc out of her God-blessed capacity for curiosity, phrase your answer in terms of love, rather than sex. Don't say, "men who have sex with men" or "women who have sex with women", say "men who love men", etc. This will spare you the discomfiture of having to discuss …

Posted to Official Bigotry

By the way, what if the law reflected my own values? Answer: you'd be able to marry whoever you want, presuming they're a consenting adult. When the "marriage protection" value holds sway? Answer: some are prohibited from marrying who they want. Permission v. restriction. Simple dichotomy, just plain true.

Posted to Official Bigotry

Hello wolf, In response to your questions, I would like to see the law begin to expand to accommodate non-"traditional" relationships, for want of a better term. The state's interest in regulating marriage (and promoting one certain form of it) should at the very least be called into sincere question at this point in history, because people whose lives and values don't fit that "one certain form" are increasingly demanding that the law give them equal protection. As I'm sure is clear from everything I say in this forum on the subject, I think they have a valid argument and I …

Posted to Official Bigotry

I'll have to be more attentive before I post, that last one sounded a little repetitive and blathery at points.

Posted to Official Bigotry

Hello theresabetterway, You hit the nail directly on the head with the reference to being a "fully equal citizen" in your post above. The question for rights-deniers is, upon what basis can a minority group be marginalized by law? If anyone is to be deprived of a right, there must be a sound basis for such a reduction. Liberal's reference to denial of rights on the basis of skin color is entirely apropos. For me, a sound basis most certainly does not include traditional understandings, offended responses from other citizens (even a majority), nor scriptural definitions based on a long-past culture's …

Posted to Official Bigotry

Thanks wwoods and wolf, for your responses. :-) Til next thread.

Posted to Official Bigotry

'�When we asked to be tested at Ft. Dix, they wrongly told us we didn�t have to worry unless we had DU fragments in our body,� says Matthew. His buddy, Sgt. Ramos, who exhibits symptoms resembling radiation sickness and heavy metal poisoning, adds that at Walter Reed Medical Center he was grilled for hours about why he wanted to be tested and was then branded a troublemaker by his own unit. Matthew says Walter Reed �lost� his sample.' Nothing like supporting our troops, is there? If this constitutes support, they'd be better off with the protestors.

Posted to Radioactive Wounds of War

Hello Dr. D, Answer to both questions 1 & 2: they're either afraid or complicitous. The mainstream networks and publications are afraid they'll get tagged as traitors by shrill pro-Bush pundits, or they're in agreement with the idea that criticism of the government's policies, even fair and reasonable criticism, is unpatriotic or anti-American. As for radioactivity v. metallic toxicity, when it comes to taking care of those who have risked their lives and health in war, it doesn't matter. The government and the entire country is morally obligated not to shirk, not to short-change on this issue. They owe medical care …

Posted to Radioactive Wounds of War

This whole episode of history ought to teach us (f'n finally!) that the tactic of sponsoring selected dictators, playing them off one another, is a loser. Even if we damage an enemy in the short term by arming his rival, the rival himself sooner or later becomes strong enough and headstrong enough that the next generation has to deal with him, just as soon as he takes a notion to defy US directives or run afoul of US interests. Starve them out, don't feed them. And I'm not talking food here, but the only thing that they really want, which is …

Posted to Exiting Iraq

A request for other perspectives... As I recall, the protests of the Vietnam era that left such bitter memories were those aimed at troops. Does anyone else recall it that way? As I remember, being rather young at the time, it was the insults, the charges of baby-killing, all of the epithets thrown at them and all the refusal to publically welcome them back that was so bitter. That's what not only infuriated broad sectors of the country, but also left a psychological scar. It brought about a cultural crisis of conscience that America is still trying to make up for. …

Posted to Exiting Iraq

A very meandering thread, it's pretty cool to see it evolve across the days, even though we're supposed to remain on-topic. Not the sniping, of course, which is truly boring. It's going to be difficult to leave Iraq in less of a mess than is currently the case, but the White House ought to prioritize a withdrawal plan. I continue to believe that conducting two wars at once was an idea that should never have been implemented. Conducting two wars in the context of two major tax cuts also beggars the imagination. But here we are, and a sudden pull-out would …

Posted to Exiting Iraq

Hello Jon B, To clarify, my plan represented something that I would like to see, a set of provisions that I believe ought to be implemented by the administration and, more to the point, ought to be an accepted priority by the American public. I believe all of my points could be put into effect if only the will to do so was there, e.g. border protection in Iraq. Just as here, it's a matter of deciding to invest the resources toward solving the problem. In other words, I see it as less an objective impossibility and more of a policy …

Posted to Exiting Iraq

Hello Rabbitvoz, I would certainly like to see the end of the Iraq debacle, but I think there must be some preparatory work done first. Sadly, this would extend the timeframe, no doubt. But I fear that a quick abandonment would lead to all those weapons caches being emptied and the death-tools used all over Iraq, much more than at present. It would compound the horror, I feel. Talk about a messed up set of choices! And as far as civilized people taking charge, wow, if only I could name someone who would be able to do so effectively. Actually, I …

Posted to Exiting Iraq

What an extraordinary mess! Iraq's history brings to mind various aspects of African history. When the European powers laid out the map of Africa in the 1880s to suit their own imperial/balance of power agendas, identity groups (tribes, religious communities) were suddenly separated by international borders, while blood enemies suddenly found themselves to be countrymen. Some of Africa's modern difficulties stem from that 100+ years-ago event. Iraq's case has its differences, but the international borders of that regions also hardly reflect the demongraphic groupings, with Iraq being a case-in-point. Little sense of community across demographic lines, to say the least. Shias …

Posted to Echoes of Oslo

Peaceful intelligent dissent IS patriotic, in the sense that it's true to the values that America has always said it upholds. It is the role of free citizens to become informed, to evaluate government policies, and to support or to speak out against those policies as their understandings best guide them. It's the insistence upon uncritical backing of government policy, most especially a policy of war, that violates American values. Cindy Sheehan has not only the right but the obligation to speak out and try to convince others that her position has merit. 1600 anti-war protests last week. Someone thinks her …

Posted to End it Already

That word "turn" in the last sentence is a typo.

Posted to End it Already

I'd like to believe that there is a solution to the endless rancor between Israel and the Palestinians, but I'm on the verge of giving up hope. Whether walls are built or Gaza is 100% Palestinian, the presence of Israelis in the West Bank settlements and the status of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital will still provoke hate and killing. The evacuation of Gaza, and any of the West Bank locales that are considered to have been set aside for Jews by God, will also serve as points of radicalization for Jewish extremists. And in reference to the author's point that …

Posted to Will Withdrawal Make Gaza a Frontier Ghetto?

As important as it may seem to evaluate the state of the environmentalist movement, I'm hoping that for most people the evolution of the movement over the years is less the focus and actually contributing to the slowing and stopping of environmental destruction is more so. If we want to do something concrete, maybe the movement could expand its use of mass media, internet, TV/cable, and radio to publish the examples of harm committed by this-or-that company or agency, and promote consumer boycotts in response. As I usually phrase it, be relentless. If Murdoch�s media division won�t publicize you, go abroad, …

Posted to Addressing the State of the Movement

It would make me glad to know that someone out of the Reps or Dems had an actual chance to be President, but to me it appears that any 3rd candidate would have an impossible time getting more than a few electoral votes, more likely none at all. Also, if s/he were somehow elected, virtually every federal legislator would be in the "opposition party" in effect, able to block any legislative agenda the occupant of the White House would promote. There would have to be enough broad-based support at the district level in favor of that candidate's party to weaken the …

Posted to Addressing the State of the Movement

The obvious difference between secular-minded, this-world-centered powers and other-world-oriented powers like religious revolutionaries is that those whose emphasis is upon this world are more willing to ponder the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons, both upon their victims, the natural environment, and in retaliation against themselves. If you think that's an unfair formulation, consider the readiness of suicide bombers motivated by religious zeal to kill themselves and dozens of innocents. Don't get me wrong, I don't fully trust reason to prevail even with the more secular-minded bunch, but I find it much more plausible to imagine that people whose focus …

Posted to Give Iranian Nukes a Chance

As for American hegemony, I think that will be mitigated better when other powers gain economic and cultural influence, rather than by way of a new incarnation of the nuclear arms race. Nightmarish.

Posted to Give Iranian Nukes a Chance

Wow, so many posts. So much ideology, I almost get high off it. Iran's mullahs having control of nukes is one scary proposition to me. I lived in Pakistan at the time when it and India were testing warheads in 1998. Pakistan is not nearly as controlled by religious wackos (nor even secular wackos) as most people believe, but knowing that I was living in perhaps the 2nd most likely target of a nuclear strike in the world at the time was truly frightening. I figured New Delhi was 1st most likely. After all, they have at least 5 times the …

Posted to Give Iranian Nukes a Chance

Wow again! Some active thread, I'm away for a couple days and it grows like bread dough. Hello scorp. Please don't insult. I'll read your words and figures with interest and respect, whether we conclude the same things about George Bush and the Iraq War or not. And yes, I'm related to Senator Boxer, about as much as I'm related to you, cousin. Saddam Hussein was a murderous megalomaniac. It sucks that he was our proxy warrior against Iran through most of the 80s. When he was in favor, we did enough business with him and offered him enough arms to …

Posted to Give Iranian Nukes a Chance

Oh and thanks for the backup, Susie Q.

Posted to Give Iranian Nukes a Chance

Hello again scorp, Sorry for the delayed replies all the time, exceedingly busy as usual, little time to check in. I�d be curious to know your characterization of the Iraq War insofar as the importance of its beginnings and also the outcomes you predict as stemming from it. I hasten to add, there�s no sarcastic tone in my question. I add this because posters here very often respond as though they�ve been spoken to in a snide manner. One hazard of internet postings is, there are no facial expressions or tones of voice (plus, there�s plenty of snide attitude to be …

Posted to Give Iranian Nukes a Chance

I read your several posts, scorp, gracias. If any evidence ever arises that Iraq had a WMD program that was in any state of potency much before the war, I will have a lot to take back. That was the primary stated threat to the public, Iraq's mission-capable WMDs. It was at the least a hasty and ill-supported justification for pushing on to war. Some say a lie. Even granting the benefit of the doubt, this was represented as a direct threat. There must be some evidence to back the claims that were made about the immediacy of that threat. That's …

Posted to Give Iranian Nukes a Chance

To clarify, I meant that the US ought to use its considerable power to block sales of weapons and parts to regimes that have a record of oppressing their citizens and threatening neighbors, rather than to choose those who are somehow less ideologically objectionable and then to sponsor them. This goes for rebel factions as well. The paradigm I want shifted is the one in which feeding our enemy's enemies (a demonstrably short-sighted strategy) is considered a useful approach to foreign policy. When Iran arms and endorses Hezbollah, the phrase "state sponsored terrorism" is applied. Rightfully. The US has armed dictators …

Posted to Give Iranian Nukes a Chance

Hello Rep. Schakowsky, As has been referenced by a few other contributors to this thread, I'd like to focus upon a detail that I consider pivotal. If you will, another DO for the Dem Party. DO vociferously and repeatedly speak out and legislate against privatized vote counting and, in fact, computerized vote tallies in general. Get rid of it, do away with it, forbid it, those of you in government who already have public faces and legislative powers. Please, make these practices non-existent. In my opinion (and really, I think this can be generalized beyond my mere opinion), it is impossible …

Posted to Democratic Dos and Donts

From Mr. Muwakkil's article: "This new thrust for retroactive racial justice is also, I suspect, a muted reaction to African Americans� increasing push for reparations. The logic of reparations�that historical wounds worsen unless repaired or redressed�is apparent in many of these contemporary efforts. But even supportive senators seem oblivious to the connection between our past of anti-black brutality and the racial disparities of today�s criminal justice system. And although the resolution wanly concedes Senate complicity in mob murders, it does little to compensate victims of a racist terrorism that was culture-deep." Perhaps the rhetoric in the resolution was less about actually …

Posted to So Very Sorry

Squandering wealth on a war begun with false justifications, making it easy to dump toxics on public lands, double-tap tax cuts that benefit those already well off, backing the proscribing of rights for a minority group whose lovestyles are considered objectionable... What the hell's moral about all that!?!

Posted to The Immoral Majority