Of tortoises and kings

Apparently Senator Obama has opted for the rule of men -- he hopes that means him -- above the rule of law. Trusting soul, he. The FISA law he will not work to impede entrusts unchecked power to the executive to decide who is dangerous and who has rights.

As Senator Russ Feingold, a less trusting soul, immediately explained about the Bush approved bill, this is "not a compromise but a capitulation."

Trusting souls we if we look to Democrats to safeguard liberties. They won't. At root, they don't believe that any significant number of their base cares enough to make them uncomfortable when they go along to get along. They trust their white skins and their money ensure their privilege. This seems rather stupid, but one of the features of privilege long-enjoyed is stupidity. An animal without predators ceases to be wary like those poor Galapagos tortoises that stick their necks out to meet humans.

But this is not new. What's new is the number of aroused people who raised almost $300,000 over the internet in a few days to run ads in our "leaders" home districts. At the moment, we're just flapping in the wind. But there's the possibility in that sort of outrage to get organized if people will dig in for a long slog.


Ad to be published in Democratic Constitution Shredder's Steny Hoyer's district tomorrow.

A lesson in accountability:Apology from Obama

They were attracted to his message of diversity and unity, but two Muslim women who went to Barack Obama's rally at Joe Louis Arena on Monday went home feeling left out.

They were barred from prime seats behind the stage because of their traditional Muslim head scarves, after campaign volunteers had invited their non-Muslim friends to the seats.

Detroit Free Press,
June 19, 2008

But then...

Barack Obama personally apologized over the phone today to the two Muslim women from Michigan who were barred from sitting next to him during a campaign rally because they wore Islamic headscarves.

Obama spoke over the phone to Shimaa Abdelfadeel and apologized to her...Obama left a voicemail for the other woman, Hebba Aref, 25, a Bloomfield Hills resident...

Detroit Free Press,
June 19, 2008

That's getting action from a politician when he needs you. Got to stay on top of these guys when they run for office.

The local chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations publicized the insult to the two women.

Imperial pretensions

Don't you get the feeling that some of our authoritarians wish they could still pull off this routine? So much more impressive than riding a mountain bike...


So butch...


accompanied by his nearly naked Black servant ...


along with his captive Indian chief ...


who seems to be wearing a skirt.


Oh for the days of President Teddy Roosevelt, 1901-09, and yet another imperial pinnacle.

Early 20th century statuary is embarrassing. This sits in front of the Museum of Natural History (planetarium and dinosaurs) on Central Park West in New York.

Raw racism, Republican style

This button apparently was a hot item at the Texas Republican convention.

Most of us work hard at constructing lives where we don't meet unreconstructed racists, unless perhaps they are family. Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone talked with some of the sparse McCain crowd on the night Obama clinched the nomination. He got an earful.

Immediately after his speech in New Orleans, a pair of sweet-looking old ladies put down their McCain signs long enough to fill me in on why they're here. "I tell you," says one, "if Michelle Obama really doesn't like it here in America, I'd be very pleased to raise the money to send her back to Africa."

The diminutive and smiling old lady's friend leans over. "That's going a little too far, dear."

"Too far?" says the first. "Farrakhan is saying they were brought here against their will, and their bodies are still feeding the sharks at the bottom of the sea! I mean, really!"

"OK, sharks still eating bodies," I say, writing it all down. "Could I have your name, ma'am?"

"Janice Berg," says the first old lady. "And lest you think I'm Jewish, the name comes from Norway. Berg is 'mountain' in Norwegian. I'm part German, part French myself."

A few paces away, I catch up with a man named Ron Saucier and a woman who would only identify herself as Mary. Ron says his problem with Obama is the integrity thing. "He exaggerates too much," Ron says. "He's not honest."

"OK," I say. "What does he exaggerate about?"

"Well, like that time he was saying he had a white mother and a white grandmother," he says.

I ask him how this is an exaggeration.

"Well, he was saying . . ." he begins. "As if that qualifies him to . . ."

Despite my repeated prodding, Ron seems unable or unwilling to say aloud exactly what he means. Finally, his friend Mary, a grave-looking blonde with fierce anger lines around her eyes, jumps in, points a finger and blurts out one of the all-time man-on-the-street quotes.

"Look, you either are or you aren't," she says.

"And he aren't," Ron says, nodding with relief.

This election will certainly reveal how many of this sort there still are -- and how much of the country has moved on. We may still condone systemic racism, but we sure don't, mostly, let it all hang out there like that.

Torture day at the U.S. Senate

This picture from a U.S. court martial file, drawn by military polygraph examiner George Chigi III, shows how Afghan detainee Dilawar was shackled by his wrists to the ceiling of an isolation cell at Bagram Air Base before being beaten to death in December 2002

The Senate Armed Services Committee today delved into the topic: How Did the Department of Defense Decide to Authorize Torture, Cruel Treatment, and Violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice? The linked article by Marty Lederman gives a good summary of what documents released by the committee revealed. It seems clear that, despite much wrangling by military and government lawyers -- some principled, some whoring to please the powerful -- the guys at the top, the Preznit, Cheney, Addington, Rumsfeld, Feith, Wolfowitz, Cambone and so forth, all really thought that the executive could dispense with law in time of war. After all, another small potatoes whoring lawyer, John Yoo, had written a rationale for such overthrow of the rule of law. Who cared about a bunch of JAGs and bureaucrats?

The hearing was actually interesting, despite frequent stone walling. C-Span offers it here. Spencer Ackerman provided ongoing highlights at The Washington Independent. Emptywheel live blogged the testimony. Here's a snippet from low level military lawyer Diane Beaver who observed (and approved) the torture program at Guantanamo:

[Beaver:] ... If you had these reviews, these safeguards, I believed in my colleagues from the intelligence community. That's why I believe there was no violation of the law at Gitmo. Detainees were beaten to death at Bagram.

[Senator Claire McCaskill, D-MO:] It's a sad day in this hearing room when we say at least they weren't beaten to death.

Ready to vomit yet?

But seriously, why were U.S, authorities so very eager to torture their prisoners? Sure, there were probably some sickos in the military and clandestine intelligence ranks who got off on slamming around "enemies." And I don't think there is any doubt that ordinary soldiers thought they were getting revenge for 9/11. A recent McClatchy news report quotes former guards at the U.S. prison facility at Bagram in Afghanistan as saying just that: "they routinely beat their prisoners to retaliate for al Qaida's 9-11 attacks."

But what about the comfortable men in suits in their Washington offices who were so enthusiastic about ordering torture? Lederman, in the article cited above, says

In late 2002, interrogators at GTMO were growing increasingly frustrated ...

They wanted "actionable intelligence" and they weren't getting it.

But again, why did they think that even the tiny fraction of the unfortunate Afghans and other Muslims they had swept up across the Middle East who actually had any connection with terrorism could supply them any useful information? Al-Qaida was obviously dangerously competent; they'd have compartmentalized any information they had and, if a member of their network was captured, made sure to change their plans and behavior. Any serious reflection made it obvious that there was not likely to be much that any captive knew that would be helpful to the U.S.

So why did our rulers need to trash U.S. law and our treaty commitments to encourage, even order, their underlings to torture? I can't make out any motive except a kind of primitive racist incredulity. I think, behind the civilized veneer, our rulers' musings must have worked something like this: A bunch of uncivilized rag heads have pulled off an unimaginably successful attack on a symbol of U.S. world power. This was just not possible. They must have some secret organizational formula, some magic. They won't tell us. Maybe we can beat it out of them....

Who are the primitives?

WWKIP in Central Park

I'm not a knitter myself, but I'm partnered with an avid one, so I got a close look at World Wide Knit in Public (WWKIP) Day in Central Park in New York on Saturday. What's that, you ask? Perhaps a karass, the fingers of a Cat's Cradle.

But I should let a knitter explain:

World Wide Knit in Public Day was started in 2005 by Danielle Landes. It began as a way for knitters to come together and enjoy each other's company. Knitting is such a solitary act that it's easy to knit alone somewhere and sink into your work without thinking about all the other knitters out there. Neighbors could spend all their lives never knowing that the other knits. This a specific day to get out of your house and go to a local event (with your knitting in tow) just for you and people like you. Who knows you might even bump into your neighbor! Consider this a spark, to ignite a fire; getting all of the closeted knitters out into fresh air. About WWKIP

Yes -- they sit there and knit.




And converse with each other.


Some wisely brought chairs.


Most seemed to be having a great time.


Host Anne-Marie of Sit'n'Knit raffled off knitting goodies. I'm told that's a scale for weighing yarn.


The winner was thrilled.

WWKIP comes around annually. Look out for it in your neighborhood.

Of religious voters and Bishop Robinson's Storm

The U.S. electorate is an awful lot of people -- 130 million or maybe even more will vote in November 2008. Changes in the shape and behavior of such a large group don't occur easily. When I cite the news that the average age of a Democratic primary voter has decreased for about 52 in 2004 to 49 in 2008, it doesn't seem like a huge movement. But the change is large -- we're looking a different people voting, and, given what we know about generational opinions, people voting differently.

There's also been a fascinating shift in the political affiliation of at least some religious people. According to a study by the Paul B. Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics at Calvin College available for download here, changes are afoot in the political behavior of mainline Protestants. Everybody knows that (white) Evangelical Protestants have become the grassroots of the Republican Party over the last generation. Roman Catholics have tended to vote Democratic and still do, though less solidly.

Mainline Protestants -- those traditional denominations including Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians and others that were the home of "respectable" U.S. religiosity throughout the 19th and the first half of the 20th century -- have made a major move in their affiliation in the last decade. Despite declining prominence, their adherents are still 25 percent of the electorate. These churches used be where solid bourgeois Republicans worshiped. As recently as 1992, 50 percent of these people identified as Republican as opposed to 32 percent Democratic. Not this year:

But, in 2008, Mainline Protestants are for the first time since at least the beginning of the New Deal more Democratic than Republican in their partisan identifications (46 percent to 37 percent, respectively).

Like the declining age of the electorate, apparently a small shift, but involving many voters.

The study goes on to pull out just who these mainliners are that are moving to a new party inclination. It uses the categories "traditionalists," "modernists" (I interpret that as ecclesiastical liberals) and "centrists" (all those movable moderates who usually avoid church controversies.)

... traditionalists remain almost as heavily Republican in 2008 as they did in 2004, while modernist Mainline Protestants continue to be heavily Democratic in their partisan identifications. However, there has been a large shift to the Democratic Party among centrist Mainline Protestants, as centrist mainliners went from being Republican in their partisan identifications in 2004 (46 percent Republican to 33 Democratic) to being Democratic in 2008 (28 percent Republican to 52 percent Democratic).

Good news for Democrats; what does it mean in their internal church politics, I wonder?
***
I was thinking about this while reading Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson's new book, In the Eye of the Storm: Swept to the Center by God. This is not an earthshaking volume, though Robinson has undoubtedly been much shaken about on the ecclesiastical roller coaster ride he's endured since becoming Anglican-land's first openly gay Bishop. I'd call the book more sensible, calming, thoughtful and love-filled. You gotta like the guy (full disclosure, I have met him.)

Robinson was an early endorser of Senator Obama; he's from New Hampshire, so he got an early look. He has this to say about Christians and political participation:

I believe all Christians should get involved in politics. Just as "liturgy" is the worshipful work of the people, so is "politics" the work of the polis, the people, the body politic. As people in the world, Christians must assume their rightful role in helping shape the choices we make as a nation, as citizens of the world. ...We'll disagree of course on which candidates and approaches best speak to [our] issues; there's nothing wrong or fearful about that. We'll prefer different economic and diplomatic strategies, and the candidates who propose them; nothing wrong with that either. And then, as good citizens, we'll support and respect the will of the majority. That is what is great -- even miraculous -- about democracy.

I am drawn to the part about supporting and respecting the will of the majority. We don't trust each other to do that. We have reason to fear we'll be manipulated, our passions stirred, by politicians of every stamp. Granting respect to well-meaning folks with whom I disagree is hard; for example, I know I can't give respect to the result of the election of 2000. And I'm not over it. I cannot concede that the court-determined outcome was well-meaning or democratic.

But in a larger frame, Robinson is right -- unless most of us can find a way to agree to disagree without throwing out the other side, in our churches or in our democracy, our communities won't work. That's a tough message, so quietly stated as to sound simply clichéd. But can we do it?

A 1950s Father's Day

Thanks to my deceased father, I have no trouble with being a Father's Day skeptic. Mine suspected that the day was designed to sell something and he wanted none of it!

I suspect he had a point. A friend remembers celebrating the day in the 1950s by giving this item to her dad:


What's this?


Oh, a stand for reading the morning paper...


or shutting out the little wife, perhaps?

Some humor doesn't wear well.

Of candidates and computers

Months ago, Yahoo News asked Republican presidential hopefuls, "Mac or PC?" Huckabee, Paul, and Romney answered the question (though Romney straddled the computer divide as he was wont to do on contentious issues, suggesting he might switch from PC to Mac.)

John McCain demanded his own category. When it comes to using a computer, McCain said: "I'm an illiterate. I have to rely on my wife for all the assistance I can get."

You can see him explain this here.

Aside from highlighting in yet another arena McCain's dependence on his young, rich wife, the Republican's answer tells me he hasn't had a real job in some 25 years. Or rather, instead of a more ordinary job, his employment has been playing the role of "McCain." The part has had shifting themes and sometimes he ad-libs rather badly. But constructing an electable persona for himself -- part-hero, part kindly grand-dad -- has been his job so long he's out of touch with how people not playing a part all the time live.

I don't find the idea of putting someone in the Presidency who is out of touch with the most ordinary work and leisure experiences of most of us a very good idea. But mostly, I think the fact that a person so removed from conventional experience can get nominated points to one of the contradictions of our deformed democracy: the skills a candidate needs to run for office are nearly completely different than the skills an officeholder needs to govern.

Running for office is about putting across a convincing personal image and story that voters find attractive. That is, about acting, posturing, even if benignly. Governing, when successful, is about persuading the intractable parts of a huge, very unwieldy structure to work together to attain common ends that possibly benefit the common good or at least don't capsize the ship of state.

When I've served as a political consultant, I've been frustrated and infuriated by politicians who don't understand that, in campaign season, their policies matter a lot less than their role playing as The Candidate. Yes, they have to run around, and attend events, and shake hands, and pay attention to people that probably bore them -- that’s the job of a candidate.

McCain's ignorance of personal computers suggests he has been playing the "McCain" role non-stop for a long time. Apparently there weren't any breaks during which he acted like the rest of us -- perhaps researched something he needed to know or sent an email to his children. I find that slightly scary -- in a league with George Bush the Elder not ever having seen a scanner in a supermarket check out line in 1992.

One more reason to prefer Senator Obama; that guy has written books using computers, for goodness sakes.

H/t to Time Goes By.

Loitering with intent?

Empire slightly impeded by Constitution

Justice Antonin Scalia -- a smart guy who uses his brain in the service of empire

Today's Supreme Court decision, ruling that Guantanamo prisoners (after six years of incarceration and torture) have the right to demand that the government show some reason to hold them (that's what habeas corpus means roughly translated from the legalese) is unequivocally a Good Thing.

And some of what the 5-4 judgment (authoritarian partisans dissenting) said was satisfying:

Even though the two political branches -- the President and Congress -- had agreed to take away the detainees' habeas rights, Kennedy said those branches do not have "the power to switch the Constitution on or off at will."

SCOTUS Blog

... because the Government chose to detain these prisoners at GTMO for the very purpose of avoiding a judicial check on the legality of the detentions, the Court will ensure that the constitutional guarantee extends to the naval base. Or as Gerry Neuman and Harold Koh put it in their amicus brief in Rasul: "The U.S. government should not be permitted to evade judicial scrutiny by transporting [prisoners] to Guantanamo instead of Puerto Rico."

Marty Lederman
Balkinization

Dick Cheney's hunting buddy, Justice Scalia, predictably waved the bloody shirt in dissent, predicting that Americans would get killed if these prisoners were allowed minimal legal rights.

Scalia would have been more intellectually honest -- I know, I know -- had he simply stated what he undoubtedly thinks: that the rules need to be thrown out and all power given to the political-military branches because the rules don't work anymore. But perhaps what is most risible in his dissent is his undying solicitude for Cuban sovereignty, this from a man who no doubt still remembers the Maine and whose deepest sentiments align with Noam Chomsky's observation that the US government acts as if it owned the world.

From that perspective the thrust of today's ruling is crystal clear: Very well, but in that case the Constitution will dog the government to the ends of the earth if need be.

"Occasional Observer"
Comment at Balkinization

Though I am not a lawyer, this does seem to be the nub of it. Bush/Cheney/Addington/Yoo claim unhindered power to do anything they please, anywhere in the world. They assert world empire. They do their best to keep the U.S. population in a panic that "excuses" any little excesses like (losing) wars of conquest. They've run, at least momentarily, into a judicial determination that if empire extends throughout the world, they must contend with (some, minor) legal process throughout the world.

It's a step. A baby step.

An Iraqi view of Syria

Iraqi taxi entering Syria. "May God protect our country." Ulrike Putz photo. Der Spiegel

This report is from Ahmad Fadam, an Iraqi journalist working for the New York Times in Baghdad who recently passed through the neighboring country.

After spending three weeks in Syria with my family, I can say that it was a very strange feeling to be in that country. It is so similar to what Iraq used to be when Saddam was president -- the same order, the same political system and of course the same government and Baath party slogans, like to stand against the colonists and Zionism and liberating Palestine, which I used to hate. ...

A cab driver named Abu Zaki said to me: "We used to hate Bashar al-Assad, we used to hate having the son sitting on the chair and ruling after his father [Hafez al-Assad] but after what we saw happening in Iraq, we started thinking 'We don’t want to be in the same situation as you, and thank God we are not.'"

So what happened to Iraqi[s] was in the interest of the Arab rulers hated by their people.

This means that if what happened to Iraq had happened instead to some other Arab country, then maybe Saddam would still be alive. The Iraqis would have said that bad is better than worse, and accepted what they had. They would have said that dictatorship is not so bad after all.

So much for Bush's excellent adventure in democracy promotion. Fadam writes lots more about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees now in Syria. Their condition sounds a lot like what we heard in Damascus two years ago. Go read it all.

H/t for Syria Comment for pointing to this.

Politicians without friends: Carole Midgen and Phillip Burton

Statue of Congressman Philip Burton overlooking the Golden Gate National Recreation Area he created.

Looking over reports of San Francisco State Senator Carole Migden's loss in the primary last week to Assemblyman Mark Leno, this phrase from the Sacramento Bee jumped out at me:

But Leno had a reputation for being as congenial as Migden is brusque.

Yes -- that about catches it. Leno has overturned the established order of things -- the understanding in effect since term limits came into force in California -- that once installed in their comfortably gerrymandered seats, incumbents would get to serve out their limited time. But not Carole.

You see, Migden is a politician who had no friends. There were lots of people who feared her, who owed her, who had contributed funds to her, who admired her intellect and her ability to get things done -- but darn few who liked her. Her own problems -- campaign finance violations and reckless driving possibly with medical causes -- created an opening for Leno. And when push came to shove, a record of disdain for community activists and bullying of allies left her with few real defenders. And so Migden succumbed to an ideologically indistinguishable replacement who is "congenial."
***
This contemporary story makes a fascinating counterpoint to the book I'm reading this week: John Jacobs' Rage for Justice: the Passion and Politics of Phillip Burton. The looming memory of Phil Burton is beginning to pass away in San Francisco politics. The Congressman, who dominated San Francisco and sometimes the entire state's Democratic politics for thirty years, died in 1983. But his influence, through his brother, recently termed out State Senator John Burton, his successor in Congress Nancy Pelosi, and even in an attenuated way Carole Migden in her role in the 1990's as Democratic party boss, (see Randy Shaw here) has been with the city for a half century.

We shouldn't forget him. Jacobs makes clear that Phil Burton was a legislator without peer. He understood the intricacies of government, law and finance as hardly anyone ever does, worked incessantly, and used his knowledge to shape some of the most progressive legislation ever dredged out of Sacramento and Washington. We should still be thanking Phil for S.S.I. (often the sole support of disabled people), the existence of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, and vast expansions of national parks.

He was also, when he could be bothered, a superb campaign tactician. Jacobs' account of how Burton figured out in the 1950s that he could organize precinct level "get out the vote" operations targeting "big families," African Americans, and the as-yet-not-politically-mobilized San Francisco Chinese community is delightful to anyone interested in campaigns. He always based his appeal on representing underdogs and outsiders -- it is not surprising that late in his political life he was able to appeal to the emerging San Francisco gay community by championing AIDS research. He would have loved and mastered the opportunities for micro-targeting political messages made possible by contemporary voter databases.

Yet Burton had a problem: however much he fought for "the people," he had very little use for constituents. His ideal was a safe Democratic seat, properly gerrymandered so that re-election required no campaign. He was mightily offended in 1982 to have to campaign in a redrawn district in which perennial Republican San Francisco office holder Milton Marks might push him hard.

The Marks challenge ... angered Burton because he had important business in Washington and this would divert his attention. He did not even live in the district, had spent only nine days there the year before -- at that, in a suite at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel. He believed his value to the district was his record. Period. ...Early in his career he had sent press releases to ethnic media, to "big families," to every black, Asian and Hispanic lawyer, dentist, and physician in San Francisco. But he had not sent a piece of mail in years. ...such was his brand of political egotism that he could not understand why voters needed to be reminded who he was or why he mattered.

Burton won that campaign. But the stress of it probably did him in, along with too much booze, no exercise, and a life lived in a rage while seeking power in order to do justice.

Jacobs asserts, and it seems likely, that Phil Burton would have suffered miserably through the Reagan and Bush I years -- though he might have had the political smarts to put up a better fight against cutbacks to his programs than the Democrats of the 1980s mounted. He didn't care who liked him and he used his anger to fuel programmatic innovations.

But he also couldn't tolerate people who operated independently of him and he didn't make friends. And so, though he and other Democrats like him at the end of the long Democratic ascendancy that began with FDR and continued through LBJ could create good government programs, they didn't factor into their initiatives the need to create grassroots constituencies to support the programs government could offer. If liberal politicians could manipulate the levers of power forever, who needed annoying, unsophisticated idealistic advocates and constituents? And so, when Republicans stimulated a pseudo-populist grassroots backlash against racial equality and "big government," there weren't progressive constituency organizations to counter them. Too many liberal politicians found themselves out on their own limb by themselves, wondering what happened.

As we move toward again putting liberal politicians in power in Washington (and perhaps in 2010 in Sacramento), let's hope we can keep a noisy, intrusive chorus of popular organizations hollering to keep them honest -- to make them come home again, listen, and insist they need friends.

A view from Berlin: Two wannabees and one washout

Lots of reflection on U.S. politics from Germany today. According to Der Spiegel there is no distress about seeing the last of Bush:

US President George W. Bush will arrive in Europe this week amid a trans-Atlantic spat about American chickens. ... For 11 years, American chicken has been unwanted in Europe, banned because of the chlorine solution used to disinfect the birds in the US. ...But the issue is not likely to disrupt the business at hand: Bush's ride into the political sunset. Europe is more than happy to see him off.

In the same publication, Ralf Beste and Konstantin von Hammerstein reveal a German view of McCain, who they call "a choleric hardliner." Some of the anecdotes they record need to be heard on this side of the ocean.

His fits of rage are legendary. In February 2006, he and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier became embroiled in a heated argument in a backroom at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof in Munich. Steinmeier, a Social Democrat, had suggested that Russia be treated as a difficult but indispensable partner. McCain, one of Moscow's most vocal critics, exploded and began shouting at Steinmeier. To this day, none of the diplomats present at the meeting cares to repeat McCain's choice of words. "It wasn't in keeping with the rules of politeness."

McCain's outbursts have long been the subject of ridicule among Americans attending the Munich conference. Once, when the senator arrived late for a breakfast meeting, a fellow American said: "Who do you think he declared war on this time?" And when defense experts discussed a proposal to keep missiles and nuclear warheads stored in separate locations in the future, there were those in his entourage who joked that the purpose of separate storage was to prevent a fit of rage by a President McCain from triggering a nuclear attack.

On the other hand, the Germans have caught Obamamania. They want some of the spirit of the Democratic candidate's campaign.

The dream goes something like this: What if just a small fragment of the American presidential election primary were to spill over into Germany? The enthusiasm, for example, and the vitality, energy and drama that the world's oldest democracy has presented to the global public for months? And what if German politicians would exude just a smidgen of the youthfulness and spirit of optimism that Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, seems to have in abundance?

... "Germany is Obama country," says Karsten Voigt, Berlin's coordinator for German-American cooperation, while Constanze Stelzenmüller of the German Marshall Fund in Berlin jokes: "About the only other person capable of generating this much passion and adoration here in Germany is the Dalai Lama."

I literally don't remember the last time anything about this country inspired anyone elsewhere. Do you?

Rainbow flag flies in Beirut

The Babylon & Beyond blog at the Los Angeles Times passes on this picture along with news that Helem, a Lebanese organization dedicated to the protection and empowerment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered individuals, had pulled off a successful celebration of the International Day Against Homophobia.

LGBT folks told their stories, displayed their art, and asserted their pride in their community.

My friend who pointed me to the story reports that around 200 people attended.

Political post mortems: where's the war?

This morning the New York Times managed to print a 4000 word dissection of how a freshman Senator from Illinois toppled the "inevitable" Clinton candidacy -- and never once mentions the Iraq war. Think perhaps "the newspaper of record" has something it its history it would like to forget? Perhaps a little "complicit enabling" in former Bush press flack Scott McClellan's phrase?

The Times also rounded up a roster of 13 bigwig former pols and current pundits: only one mentions Clinton's vote enabling the Iraq war. That one, Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, asserts that Clinton failed to explain her vote properly to the presumably brainwashed electorate who should have understood that she really didn't mean to sanction an amoral pre-emptive war of choice that proved disastrous to the country.

Malcolm Crowley, a luminary of another enabling institution, the New Republic, does point out the obvous in the Los Angeles Times.

Clinton backed the Senate's 2002 Iraq war resolution. At the time, Washington wisdom held that no future Democratic presidential candidate could afford to oppose using force against Saddam Hussein. ...Although there's some evidence that Clinton may have supported the war resolution on principle, there's little question that politics made the vote easier for her and that many voters saw her as having acted out of political calculation, which helped set up Clinton to be criticized as forever calculating.

That momentous vote on Oct. 11, 2002, would set the tone for the entire Democratic primary campaign. It was Obama's opposition to the war in the fall of 2002 that enabled him to mount a credible challenge against Clinton in the first place.

It's worth noting that Clinton herself did better than the commentators. Her concession speech included ending the Iraq war as part of a laundry list of Democratic objectives.

Campaigning out among the people can be educational for these people. If the peace movement remains insistent that working for Senator Obama means working for peace and promises to keep the pressure on reluctant Democrats, we might get the action over 60 percent of us demand.

Running women

This morning I got to photograph a few of the women running the New York Mini 10K, an event that claims the title of "the world's first road race exclusively for female participants." First run in 1972, the Mini is still going after 37 years.

This post is pretty much pure self-indulgence. I directed a women's run myself in 1982 and ran lots of them in my time. I no longer race, though I still galumph plenty of distance.


The leaders whizzed by in a bit of a blur. All three of the women the U.S. will send to the Olympic Marathon in Beijing this summer were in the lead pack. The blonde on the left is Deena Kastor; Blake Russell and Magdalena Lewy Boulet are on the right. They didn't win this one: Hilda Kibet of the Netherlands prevailed in 32:43.

But really, it wasn't the elite runners whose race tags carried their names that interested me. It was the anonymous hordes (5000 starters) who dashed or labored by on this 80 degree day.


Some of these folks are pretty fast.


And certainly not uncompetitive.




Back when I ran races, I might have been among these folks at the back.


Her T-shirt advertises a running event organized by the footwear corporation Nike to be run in locations across the globe. I have to admit, this seems like a granfalloon to me. But hey, I am quite likely to run some miles that day... And this sister was hoofing it.


There weren't a lot of non-running slogans on these shirts -- but I'll take my peace messages anywhere I see them.


You go girl!

A fire that burned everything...

Faiza Al-Arji, formerly of Baghdad, now living in Amman, Jordan, speaks in the language of prophets:

The war against Iraq was a fire that burned everything -- as we used to say: the green and the dry, in Iraq… then it started sneaking into neighboring countries, then to other world countries; not necessarily in the form of violence and explosions, but the deteriorating economy, the rising costs of living, poverty, and the shortages in employment prospects, all these are side effects of wars, which spread to hit the close and the far-off ones, touching their lives and their pockets; those selfish ignorant fools from the nations of Europe and America; the financial crisis will touch their pockets, and one day they will move in anger to ask their governments what have they done to them, to ask the corrupt decision makers what have they done to them, but then it would be too late, for then the devastation and ruin might have reached a non-controllable point…

And when the love of injustice prevails, when that becomes accepted and favored in people's hearts, they should wait for dire consequences from God; the Lord of heaven and earth… it doesn't matter whether they believe in Him or not, that's their problem…The important thing is -- that He sees and hears, His is the true judgment, leaving no small matter or big out of count….

And that who spent his life ignorant, with a blind insight, not blind eyes, shall be sorry in the end, for not putting forward any justice, or pushing back an injustice…

We ask God that we shall not be among these people, but among those who install justice and peace on this earth….
Peace be upon you…..

Read the rest.

And while you are at it, you might want to check out the stories being written by, among others, my friend Gerald Lenoir, from a People of Color Delegation currently traveling in Israel/Palestine.

Surveillance anxieties; canvassing effectiveness

Social science researchers at Northeastern University have published a study of the movements of 100,000 cell phones (and their users) tracked over various time periods, amid howls from academic ethicists. It seems that in some "industrialized country," a cell phone provider was willing to hand over 6 million valid numbers from which the researchers picked 100,000 anonymous ones to follow through the cell relay towers they utilized. Such a study would be illegal in the U.S. according to the Federal Communications Commission.

My partner, who serves on an institutional review board at a major university for just such projects, says it would never have passed muster there. The study raises major concerns about informed consent by subjects (there wasn't any) and possible privacy issues (researchers say they ensured individual privacy.)

Of course the alarm this experiment really rings is a reminder that we voluntarily adopt technologies that provide a constant stream of information about our activities that can be monitored by numerous entities. Every Google search and website click may well be recorded somewhere for advertising and who knows what other purpose. We are constantly photographed by surveillance cameras in public places. And who knows what the government spooks are doing with our information; we know that telecom companies haven't been scrupulous about obeying the law before providing access to the authorities -- that's what the fight about FISA in Congress is about.

There is not much we can do directly about the capacity of various entities to monitor us; we need our internet; we enjoy our techno toys. But we can work to create law that protects privacy and autonomy as much as possible. ***
Interestingly, the major finding of the controversial study seems to be that most people don't have much range of movement.

Gonzalez and her team found that most mobile phone users traveled only short distances ... Also, regardless of whether a person routinely traveled to just five locations or 50, most devoted about 70 percent of their time to just two repeatedly visited destinations.

When you think about this, it doesn't really seem strange. Presumably most peoples' main locations were home -- and work or school.

But the findings do remind me of the slightly surprising finding election researchers came up with in controlled experiments aimed at increasing voter turnout.

... the closer the canvasser lives to the voter, the higher the likelihood of turning the voter out. Researchers were surprised by how strong the effect was. A canvasser from the same precinct was measurably more successful than one from a few streets further away.

We are very strongly creatures of accustomed place. It's hard to recruit people to work on elections in unaccustomed surroundings. And it turns out that even if you can get them, their effectiveness is not as great as that of locals.

Those cell phone users might not be surprised at this -- they don't go anywhere novel. Why would someone from far away come far to bother them about a candidate? Is such behavior suspicious, or just incomprehensible?

Sometimes I'm amazed that electioneering works at all -- but we keep doing it.

Primary postscript: Horse race uber alles

Click on image for a more legible version. To return to this page, use your browser's back button.

No wonder too many of us still think we don't know what politics is all about:

...coverage overall in 2008 has so far focused largely on the horse race.

Fully 78% of the stories studied between January 1 and the first week of May have focused on political matters, such as who won the latest primary.

By contrast, policy stories made up 7% of the stories, personal matters 7%, and the candidates' public record, 2%. And few major storylines stand out.

Pew Research Center.
May 29, 2008

Or rather, no wonder we are easily distracted by lies and bigoted nonsense such as "Muslims will kill Obama because he converted to Christianity" or "Hillary Clinton cackles." Most folks would have had to dig for anything but this fluff or delegate counts.

Time for some light weight matters ...

What spice are you?

You are Fennel!You scored 50% intoxication, 50% hotness, 75% complexity, and 25% craziness!

You're a cool cat. Crisp, clean, fresh, and extremely complicated. You're like quantum physics or modern jazz. Think Niels Bohr meets Ornette Coleman. You may look normal now, but once you sprout, you look kind of, uh, funny.

The Which Spice Are You Test written by jodiesattva.

H/t Tobias Haller.
***
Where should you live?

You Should Live in the Country

You are laid back, calm, and good at entertaining yourself. You don't need an expensive big city to keep you busy. You'll take the peaceful life over the stressful life any day of the week.

Where Should You Live?

***
I'm not sure either of these are true, but they are amusing, nonetheless. Over the next few days I'll sort out my various electronic clippings from the recent campaign and see whether I have anything worth saying...

Primary season exhausted

Who'd have thought it possible? He's the nominee. Gotta love that such a thing could happen, before I go back to musing about how to make sure he's a better President than he'll be allowed to be without an aroused people.

With relatives, I watched them all on TV tonight, something I never do. McCain was far worse than I expected. Jeffery Toobin almost called his performance catatonic.



Hillary Clinton showed how good a candidate she's become. She would have wiped the floor with McCain. But she voted for the war and never knew what was wrong with that little act of political calculation, so she was never on my list.

Obama -- who knows? We'll see.

After watching the other two, what I noticed was how stingy Obama is with that wide grin when he's orating. He doesn’t smile easily. He demands your serious attention. Hillary is at her best, holding you with her beauty, a sort of warmth (not entirely genuine feeling, but high energy) and her pride in accomplishment. It's an attractive style. McCain was just plain pathetic. He looked as if he'd been practicing his smile for days until he could glue it on his pasty face at will, while wishing he could scratch his butt. It was more weird than offensive. Have to wonder what's wrong with the guy.

Meanwhile in Iraq ...

This isn't today's hot story, but it still matters.

A blogger who called himself "BlogIraq" went back to Baghdad to bring out his family. His friend reports:

He had an appointment that day with a guy he knew. This guy was supposed to get him some documents that prove corruption in some USAID office back in Baghdad. I don't have complete details about it. ...

His brother in-law found him dead with his friend in Mansour district in one of the small streets there. Thank God his body was found, unlike many of our friends who were killed or just vanished without a trace.

When I first setup this blog for him, he gave me the admin password of his blog and I gave him the password of mine. We agreed that whoever dies first, the other should write about it in his blog. Its just my bad luck that he died first.

Iraq is off the front pages of U.S. newspapers these days. But Iraqis are still living what we have wrought.

H/t Baghdad Treasure.

How not to raise money...

Like most public universities, my alma mater, the University of California at Berkeley, is hurting for cash these days. Investing in future citizens is not in vogue in most states, especially those that have let Republicans make taxing ourselves nearly impossible.

So, like most good nonprofits on the make, they send out glossy brochures. Since I'm away from my mail, I don't know if I got this one. But I saw a mention over at Balkinization and tracked it down.

Apparently they thought that in the interests of non-partisanship and diversity, they should showcase a Republican Asian. But Mr. Torture Memo? And then letting him whine about how disruptive it was to interrupt his academic career to go justify atrocities...I mean do "public service." Plueeez...

Public service is an important responsibility, especially for those of us who are members of a public university. Moving to Washington for a few years can be very disruptive to a professor’s research plans and personal life. But I think that it is important we make a contribution when our government calls. Personally, I would not want to hold again any of the jobs that I have held, not because I disliked them, but because it would feel like watching the same movie again.

Berkeley, you lost me here.

Death penalty for an undocumented immigrant

This is simply obscene.

In May 2007, Victoria Arellano, a 23-year-old transgender immigrant from Mexico, was sent to a detention center in San Pedro after being arrested on a traffic charge.

Arellano, who was born a male and had come to the United States illegally as a child, had AIDS at the time of her arrest but exhibited no symptoms of the disease because of the medication she took daily. But once detained, her health began to deteriorate.She lost weight and became sick. She repeatedly pleaded with staff members at the detention center to see a doctor to get the antibiotics she needed to stay alive, according to immigrant detainees with whom Arellano shared a dormitory-style cell. But her requests were routinely ignored.

The task of caring for Arellano fell to her fellow detainees. They dampened their own towels and used them to cool her fever; they turned cardboard boxes into makeshift trash cans to collect her vomit. As her condition worsened, the detainees, outraged that Arellano was not being treated, staged a strike: They refused to get in line for the nightly head count until she was taken to the detention center's infirmary.

Officials relented, and Arellano was sent to the infirmary, then to a hospital nearby. But after two days there -- and after having spent two months at the federally operated facility -- she died of an AIDS-related infection. Her family has taken steps to file a wrongful-death claim against the federal government.

Los Angeles Times,
June 1, 2008

Immigration detainees have almost no rights. And the private contractors that run many detention centers have no incentive to spend money on caring for them. Who knew a Mexican transsexual would have a family that would sue?

California Congressmember Zoe Lofgren has introduced a bill to remedy to remedy some detainee abuses.

Ultimately, if we want these people to serve as our labor force, and we seem to, we need an equitable immigration law.

No Torture, No Exceptions

I assume this banner that I noticed on a nearby street is part of the Banners Across America project of the National Religious Campaign against Torture.

The moral issue hovering over the 2008 election is the Bush Administration’s embrace of torture as a tool of statecraft. This mistake must be thoroughly repudiated, and the nation must undertake a vow never to repeat it.

Scott Horton,
No Comment Blog,
Harper's Magazine

Horton, a human rights lawyer, points us to the No Torture, No Exceptions campaign to get both Presidential nominees on record repudiating torture. Horton says the remaining candidates, both Obama and McCain, have verbally committed to ending U.S. torture.

I'm not so confident about that. In February, McCain noisily supported a law that would have limited legal U.S. treatment of prisoners to what is allowed by the Army Field Manual -- then voted against an explicit stipulation against waterboarding. Okay, so McCain, despite personal experience, may be a phony on torture.

What about Obama? What record we have is good. He didn't just vote against the 2006 Military Commissions Act that put Guantanamo tortures under wraps in kangaroo military He actually exercised leadership. But the demands of the campaign process sometimes force him into bellicose posturing, as for example in support of Israel and by threatening Pakistan. It is hard to know what Obama would do if called upon to "prove his toughness" in response to terrorists.

No Torture, No Exceptions aims to give the candidates a reminder that stiffens their spines. They ask that we call the campaigns and let them know we expect them not only to verbally oppose torture, but also to renounce any executive orders or strained legal interpretations that legalize abuse, as well as ending renditions:

• John McCain: Phone: (202) 224-2235 Fax: (202) 228-2862

• 
  Barack Obama: Phone: (202) 224-2854 Fax: (202) 228-4260

Seems simple enough.