Neuroplasticity, Meditation, and Improving Smarts (Hey, Boy George, You Listening?)

Here, some interesting folks at The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, a non-profit which "works to integrate contemplative awareness and contemporary life, to help create a more just, compassionate, and reflective society." Here, an article on how to meditate; more here.

Here, a link to a Time article on the benefits of meditation: "How to Get Smarter, One Breath at a Time--Scientists Find That Meditation Not Only Reduces Stress, But Also Reshapes the Brain."

At 4:30, when most of Wall Street is winding down, Walter Zimmermann begins a high-stakes, high-wire act conducted live before a paying audience. About 200 institutional investors . . . shell out up to $3,000 a month to catch his daily webcast on the volatile energy markets, a performance that can move hundreds of millions of dollars. . . Zimmermann, 54, watched most of his peers in energy futures burn out long ago. He attributes his brain's enduring sharpness not to an intravenous espresso drip but to 40 minutes of meditation each morning and evening. The practice, he says, helps him maintain the clarity he needs for quick, insightful analysis—even approaching happy hour. "Meditation," he says, "is my secret weapon."

Everyone around the water cooler knows that meditation reduces stress. But with the aid of advanced brainscanning technology, researchers are beginning to show that meditation directly affects the function and structure of the brain, changing it in ways that appear to increase attention span, sharpen focus and improve memory.

One recent study found evidence that the daily practice of meditation thickened the parts of the brain's cerebral cortex responsible for decision making, attention and memory. Sara Lazar, a research scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital, presented preliminary results . . .that showed that the gray matter of 20 men and women who meditated for just 40 minutes a day was thicker than that of people who did not. Unlike in previous studies focusing on Buddhist monks, the subjects were Boston-area workers practicing a Western-style of meditation called mindfulness or insight meditation. "We showed for the first time that you don't have to do it all day for similar results," says Lazar. What's more, her research suggests that meditation may slow the natural thinning of that section of the cortex that occurs with age. . .

Richard Davidson, director of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin . . . has collaborated with the Dalai Lama to study the brains of Tibetan monks, whom he calls "the Olympic athletes of meditation." Using caps with electrical sensors placed on the monks' heads, Davidson has picked up unusually powerful gamma waves that are better synchronized in the Tibetans than they are in novice meditators. Studies have linked this gamma-wave synchrony to increased awareness. . . Bruce O'Hara, associate professor of biology at the University of Kentucky . . . had college students either meditate, sleep or watch TV . . . . Those who had been taught to meditate performed 10% better—-"a huge jump, statistically speaking," says O'Hara. . . . Not surprisingly, given those results, a growing number of corporations—-including Deutsche Bank, Google and Hughes Aircraft—-offer meditation classes to their workers. . . .Another benefit for employers: meditation seems to help regulate emotions, which in turn helps people get along.

"Helps people get along," eh? How about meditation lessons for Bubble Boy, Rummy, and, most especially, Cheney?

Might be their only hope.




meditation
Dalai Lama
stress reduction
neuroplasticity

Another Stupid NY Times Article Supposedly About Feminism.

Here goes. Ok, so here not goes, since the link doesn't work because the NYT--wants to sell another one of yesterday's papers? Has no taste for the internets? Never mind. It was a crappy article in any case. Here's why.


Imagine writing about Betty Friedan's most well-known book and making a mistake about its title. Imagine making another mistake about a basic concept from her most well-known book. Imagine writing about "The Feminist Mystique" and thinking you're making any sense at all.

Somebody finally edited up Patti Cohen's bizarre creation, and had the mistakes she made in my home-delivered paper copy fixed by the time I went to the New York Times online this afternoon, but, oy--what's wrong at the Gray Lady? Now that we've heard of poor John Tierney weeping at there being just too damn many college-educated women, & now that we've read that rich, well-educated young women have more than enough damn money to be able to choose to whether to stay home or to go to work, one must ask--so, hey, which New York Times shill's putting down feminism now?

That would be Patti. Contrary to current revisionist historians such as Patti, ye olde-time women's libbers were perfectly well versed in, and supportive of--choices. Choices for men, and choices for women.

What part of that is so hard to follow?

Patti states, "But reality, of course, is messy and confusing. It's not clear what should give when women are still responsible for a disproportionate share of the housework . . .'

Uh, hello, DUUHH. What, are you kidding me? How stupid can one get?

That's the part that's hard to follow?

The part that suggests a 50/50 gender balance in jobs at the New York Times, all across the board? And elsewhere? A 50/50 balance in housework, and suchlike?

Is that what sticks in their gender-bent corporate craw? Yo.

With apologies to the Everly Brothers: Wake up, little Patti. Wake up.




New York Times
feminism
Tierney

Can You Cry Alito More Crocodile Tears on Cue, Honey?

It's sad, so sad. It's a sad, sad situation. All those mostly white guys sometimes mostly asking her white guy husband real questions, as if he had to actually answer them or something, instead of being rubber-stamped and anointed in the traditional way of our Godly Preznit Toad-Exploder. Looks like Alito's little woman's just not man enough to be a Supreme Court spouse.





(Check out Grace's blog comparing snivelling Alito to Jackie Kennedy.)

Alito
crocodile tears
vile Rovian spin

Reichwingers Howl, Boosting Condom Sales

Here, a story of one more American religious group vehemently trying to cram its religious beliefs down throats of innocent others who are not even semi-aspiring members of said group.

Condom key chains in US spark religious furor
A Connecticut abortion rights group has angered some conservative Christian groups by selling condom key chains that include an image of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel with God handing Adam a condom.

"It's an example of depraved morals and contempt for the sensibility of Catholics everywhere," said C.J. Doyle of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts.

No Blood for Hubris, of course, considers the war in Iraq an example of depraved morals and contempt for the sensibility of Buddhists everywhere.

NBFH considers the insane, un-American, anti-human policies of the current Bushist Fascist regime to be an example of depraved morals and contempt for the sensibility of intelligent persons everywhere.

NBFH considers the whining of the anti-condom crowd to be beneath contempt everywhere. Cry about it, CJ.

The $3 key chains sold by Planned Parenthood of Connecticut on its Web site come in 28 designs including an image of a U.S. flag with the stars replaced with the words "Wear with Pride" and a Statue of Liberty holding a condom instead of a torch.

Another reads" "Condoms are cheaper than diapers" over a cartoon of a screaming baby.

I liked that one in particular.

Judy Tabar, Planned Parenthood of Connecticut's president and chief executive, said growing controversy over the key chains sparked a surge in Internet traffic to its Web site this week.

She said 100,000 visitors swamped the site on Thursday, causing it to shut down temporarily, after Internet columnist Matt Drudge posted a statement by a conservative Christian group condemning the key chains as "blasphemous."

Yuh? Well, boo frickin' HOO, Taliban Xtians.

The key chains had been on sale for a year, but had attracted controversy only this week.

"The media attention led to an avalanche of orders so much so that it caused our Web site to shut down. We have expanded our capacity and it is up again today," she said.

The politically sensitive issues of unwanted pregnancy and abortion are among the hottest topics in Washington this week during Senate confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito.

Kristian Mineau, president of the conservative Massachusetts Family Institute, called the Sistine Chapel key chain image "a very crude and crass maneuver."

"This does nothing to deal with the horrific promiscuity rate we have among teenagers," he said. "We believe the real approach particularly to the young people that this is targeted at is abstinence before marriage."

Hey, Kristin, you want to teach that to your kids, go ahead. Just don't force your personal religious beliefs down the throats of everybody else in the country. And I won't be posting the Four Noble Truths in your town square anytime soon.

Taber said the variety of designs was aimed at appealing to a wide range of personalities. "Condoms are the best protection against unintended pregnancy and infection, so it's really important to get the message out there," she said.

No, no, no, we'd much rather increase the number of unwanted pregnancies and thus the number of unwanted children in the United States. We just don't have enough child abuse already, and we don't have enough criminals, either.

So, you're telling me--your Reichwing God wants more?

Mayor Bloomberg Orders Inquiry in Death of Abused Girl.

[Seven-year old] Nixzmary Brown . . . was beaten to death by her stepfather for eating a container of yogurt . . . Nixzmary died after months of being systematically tortured and denied food, prosecutors said. She weighed not quite 36 pounds. Her stepfather, Cesar Rodriguez, has been charged with murder, and her mother, Nixzaliz Santiago, with manslaughter. Both were also charged with endangering the welfare of a child.

child abuse
unwanted children
family planning
Catholic Action League

Brit General: US Army Racist, Slow, Wrong

From the Sydney Morning Herald

US Army its own worst enemy

A senior British Army officer has written a scathing critique of the US Army and its performance in Iraq, accusing it of cultural ignorance, moralistic self-righteousness, unproductive micromanagement and unwarranted optimism. . .


In an article published this week in the army magazine Military Review, Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, who was deputy commander of a program to train the Iraqi military, said American officers in Iraq displayed such "cultural insensitivity" that it "arguably amounted to institutional racism" and may have spurred the growth of the insurgency.

The US Army has been slow to adapt its tactics, he argues, and its approach during the early stages of the occupation "exacerbated the task it now faces by alienating significant sections of the population" . . .

"[The US Army] seemed weighed down by bureaucracy, a stiflingly hierarchical outlook, a predisposition to offensive operations, and a sense that duty required all issues to be confronted head-on."

Those traits reflect the army's traditional focus on conventional wars and are seen by some experts as less appropriate for counterinsurgency, which they say needs patience, cultural understanding and a willingness to use innovative, counterintuitive approaches.

In counterinsurgency campaigns, Brigadier Aylwin-Foster says, "the quick solution is often the wrong one".

He argues that intense conformism and overly centralised decision-making slowed the army's operations in Iraq, giving the enemy time to respond.

The army's can-do spirit also encouraged a "damaging optimism" that interfered with realistic assessments. . ."

Hmm--damaging optimism, quick & wrong, racist, impatient--sounds suspiciously like our Fearless Leader, Bubble Boy, Preznit Toad-Exploder, does it not?

Your Tax Dollars Fund NSA to Spy on Quaker Peaceniks

Here, via Raw Story:

NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY MOUNTED MASSIVE SPY OP ON BALTIMORE PEACE GROUP

by Kevin Zeese

The National Security Agency has been spying on a Baltimore anti-war group, according to documents released during litigation, going so far as to document the inflating of protesters' balloons, and intended to deploy units trained to detect weapons of mass destruction, RAW STORY has learned.

According to the documents, the Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore, a Quaker-linked peace group, has been monitored by the NSA working with the Baltimore Intelligence Unit of the Baltimore City Police Department. . .

Links to NSA documents follow at RawStory. No time to post more now, just wanted to present this outrageous misuse of government funds and resources.

Deliberating Inflicting Pain: Force-Feeding at Gitmo

Details about the kind of force-feeding currently being used by the United States at the prison camp rightwingers call "Club Gitmo" are coming out in articles such as this one, from IrelandClick:

January 11 marks the fourth anniversary of detainees being held in the US Military Detention Centre in Guantanamo Bay. . .The UN special rapporteur on torture [Manfred Nowak] has revealed that there are allegations that Guantanamo hunger strikers are being force-fed in a cruel manner. . . Denied access to a judicial process and forced to live in what human rights groups have described as 'dog kennels' that offer little protection from the elements, prisoners, some believed to be as young as 13, have in the words of Amnesty International been involved in a "travesty of justice".

. . .New Lodge man Sam Millar, the former republican prisoner, . . . said watching the scenes from the horror camp were extremely distressing.

"When I look at what is going on in Guantanamo Bay and compare it with what happened to us, the parallels are frightening. . . I think there should be absolute outrage at what's going on, but for some reason it just doesn't seem to be a big issue. The way it is portrayed as well, they make you become immune to it. . . The telephone transcripts that have been released of the prisoners on the phone would break your heart. I am afraid this will alienate ordinary Americans from the rest of the world because of what their government is doing," he said.

In recent weeks . . .chilling new reports have emerged that forced with a growing hunger strike campaign by the detainees, the military has instigated a new regime of force feeding. . . [T]he grim reality of force feeding was described in detail by Sinn Féin's Gerry Kelly . . .

"They press their knuckles into your jaws and press in hard. The way they finally did force feed me was getting forceps and running them up and down my gums," he said.

"I opened my mouth, but I was able to resist after that," said the Sinn Féin man in the interview.

"Then they tried – there's a part of your nose, like a membrane and it's very tender – and they started on that. It's hard to describe the pain. It's like someone pushing a knitting needle into the side of your eye. As soon as I opened my mouth they put in this wooden bit with a hole in the middle for the tube. They rammed it between my teeth and then tied it with cord around my head.

"Then they got paraffin and forced it down the tube. The danger is that every time it happens you think you're going to die. The only things that move are your eyes.

"They get a funnel and put the stuff down."

Affidavits from the prisoners in Guantanamo describe how the torture victims vomited up "substantial amounts of blood" while being fed through their nose. The US Military has denied that torture takes place in Guantanamo Bay and says there was not truth in the allegations.

However, by admitting to force feeding prisoners for republicans like Gerry Kelly, these words will have a hollow ring to them.

Here, via RawStory, The Observer covers admissions by the chief American physician at Club Gitmo.

New details have emerged of how the growing number of prisoners on hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay are being tied down and force-fed through tubes pushed down their nasal passages into their stomachs to keep them alive.

They routinely experience bleeding and nausea, according to a sworn statement by the camp's chief doctor, seen by The Observer. . . It is painful, Edmonson admits. Although 'non-narcotic pain relievers such as ibuprofen are usually sufficient, sometimes stronger drugs,' including opiates such as morphine, have had to be administered.

Thick, 4.8mm diameter tubes tried previously to allow quicker feeding, so permitting guards to keep prisoners in their cells for more hours each day, have been abandoned, the affidavit says. The new 3mm tubes are 'soft and flexible'.

The London solicitors Allen and Overy, who represent some of the hunger strikers, have lodged a court action to be heard next week in California, where Edmondson is registered to practise. They are asking for an order that the state medical ethics board investigate him for 'unprofessional conduct' for agreeing to the force-feeding.

Edmonson's affidavit, in response to a lawsuit on behalf of detainees on hunger strike since last August, was obtained last week by The Observer, as a Guantánamo spokesman confirmed that the number of hunger strikers has almost doubled since Christmas, to 81 of the 550 detainees. Many have been held since the camp opened four years ago this month, although they not been charged with any crime, nor been allowed to see any evidence justifying their detention.

This and other Guantánamo lawsuits now face extinction. Last week, President Bush signed into law a measure removing detainees' right to file habeas corpus petitions in the US federal courts. On Friday, the administration asked the Supreme Court to make this retroactive, so nullifying about 220 cases in which prisoners have contested the basis of their detention and the legality of pending trials by military commission.

Although some prisoners have had to be tied down while being force-fed, 'only one patient' has had to be immobilised with a six-point restraint, and 'only one' passed out.' In less than 10 cases have trained medical personnel had to use four-point restraint in order to achieve insertion.' Edmondson claims the actual feeding is voluntary. During Ramadan, tube-feeding takes place before dawn.

Article 5 of the 1975 World Medical Association Tokyo Declaration, which US doctors are legally bound to observe through their membership of the American Medical Association, states that doctors must not undertake force-feeding under any circumstances. Dr David Nicholl, a consultant neurologist at Queen Elizabeth's hospital in Birmingham, is co-ordinating opposition to the Guantánamo doctors' actions from the international medical community. 'If I were to do what Edmondson describes in his statement, I would be referred to the General Medical Council and charged with assault,' he said.

The essence of this article appears at Islam On-line.
here.

The chief doctor in the US notorious Guantanamo detention camp has testified that detainees on hunger strike were tied down and force-fed through tubes pushed down their nasal passages, reported The Observer on Sunday, January 8.

In a court affidavit, Captain John S Edmondson, commander of Guantanamo's hospital, said the procedure, now standard practice at Guantanamo, causes the strikers to suffer bleeding and nausea.

"Experience teaches us" that such symptoms must be expected "whenever nasogastric tubes are used," he added. . .

"A Guantanamo spokesman confirmed that the number of hunger strikers has almost doubled since Christmas, to 81 of the 550 detainees.

Many have been held since the camp opened four years ago this month, although they have not been charged with any crime, nor been allowed to see any evidence justifying their detention.

Tell me again how much success Karen Hughes' trip to the Muslim world must have had in repairing the image of the United States. Or, do you suppose Muslims just might be "actions speak louder than words" kinda folks?





Torture
Bush
force-feeding
Gitmo
Guantanamo

The War on Christmas

(Found this via Hlinko at Kos and loved it--many thanks to Tawnya Dudash, Annabel Dudash, and Russell Baldon, photo by Geoff Douglass. Let's get them elves in the slammer where they belong!)

Hero of My Lai Dies at 62

Four hundred unarmed civilian men, women, children and infants were slaughtered by American troops at My Lai. Only four soldiers faced trial for this massacre, and only one man was convicted, William Calley. Convicted in 1971 of the murder of 22 civilians, Calley has been a free man since November, 1974.

NYT: Hugh Thompson, Jr.,

an Army helicopter pilot who rescued Vietnamese civilians during the My Lai massacre, reported the killings to his superior officers in a rage over what he had seen, testified at the inquiries and received a commendation from the Army three decades later, died yesterday in Alexandria, La. He was 62.

The cause was cancer, Jay DeWorth, a spokesman for the Veterans Affairs Medical Center where Mr. Thompson died, told The Associated Press.

On March 16, 1968, Chief Warrant Officer Thompson and his two crewmen were flying on a reconnaissance mission over the South Vietnamese village of My Lai when they spotted the bodies of men, women and children strewn over the landscape.

Mr. Thompson landed twice in an effort to determine what was happening, finally coming to the realization that a massacre was taking place. The second time, he touched down near a bunker in which a group of about 10 civilians were being menaced by American troops. Using hand signals, Mr. Thompson persuaded the Vietnamese to come out while ordering his gunner and his crew chief to shoot any American soldiers who opened fire on the civilians. None did.

Mr. Thompson radioed for a helicopter gunship to evacuate the group, and then his crew chief, Glenn Andreotta, pulled a boy from a nearby irrigation ditch, and their helicopter flew him to safety.

Mr. Thompson told of what he had seen when he returned to his base.

"They said I was screaming quite loud," he told U.S. News & World Report in 2004. "I threatened never to fly again. I didn't want to be a part of that. It wasn't war."

Mr. Thompson remained in combat, then returned to the United States to train helicopter pilots. When the revelations about My Lai surfaced, he testified before Congress, a military inquiry and the court-martial of Lt. William L. Calley Jr., the platoon leader at My Lai, who was the only soldier to be convicted in the massacre.

When Mr. Thompson returned home, it seemed to him that he was viewed as the guilty party.

"I'd received death threats over the phone," he told the CBS News program "60 Minutes" in 2004. "Dead animals on your porch, mutilated animals on your porch some mornings when you get up. So I was not a good guy."

On March 6, 1998, the Army presented the Soldier's Medal, for heroism not involving conflict with an enemy, to Mr. Thompson; to his gunner, Lawrence Colburn; and, posthumously, to Mr. Andreotta, who was killed in a helicopter crash three weeks after the My Lai massacre.

The citation, bestowed in a ceremony at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, said the three crewmen landed "in the line of fire between American ground troops and fleeing Vietnamese civilians to prevent their murder."

On March 16, 1998, Mr. Thompson and Mr. Colburn attended a service at My Lai marking the 30th anniversary of the massacre.

"Something terrible happened here 30 years ago today," Mr. Thompson was quoted as saying by CNN. "I cannot explain why it happened. I just wish our crew that day could have helped more people than we did."

Mr. Thompson worked as a veterans' counselor in Louisiana after leaving military service. . .

Through the years, he continued to speak out, having been invited to West Point and other military installations to tell of the moral and legal obligations of soldiers in wartime.

He was presumably mindful of the ostracism he had faced and the long wait for that medal ceremony in Washington. As he told The Associated Press in 2004: "Don't do the right thing looking for a reward, because it might not come."

Thompson became the symbol of what's right with America at the same time becoming a lightning rod for the crackpot sadists who are emblematic of what's wrong with America--the guys and gals who were pro-atrocity and pro-civilian massacres in Vietnam, and now are pro-torture. They're the un-American cowards who swift-boated John Kerry, and who to this day think that admitting atrocities is way worse than committing them.

"I just killed. I wasn't the only one that did it; a lot of people in that company did it, hung 'em, all types of ways, any type of way you could kill someone that's what they did. That day in My Lai I was personally responsible for killing about twenty-five people. Personally. I don't think beforehand anyone thought that we would kill so many people. I mean we're talking about four to five hundred people. We almost wiped out the whole village, a whole community. I can't forget the magnitude of the number of people that we killed and how they were killed, killed in lots of ways.

Do you realize what it was like killing five hundred people in a matter of four or five hours? It's just like the gas chambers--what Hitler did. You line up fifty people, women, old men, children and just mow 'em down. And that's the way it was--from twenty-five to fifty to one hundred. Just killed. We just rounded 'em up, me and couple of guys, just put the M-16 on automatic, and just mowed 'em down."

Varnado Simpson, personal interview. [Four Hours in My Lai, Bilton & Sim]



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Hugh Thompson
Vietnam
torture
war crimes

The Authoritarian Madness of King George: I'll Do Whatever I Please

Oblivious to his own inadequacies as a leader, oblivious to the dozens of poor decisions he's made, Preznit Toad-Exploder makes another one, via the Globe as he struts to announce his ability to do whatever he damn well pleases, regardless of the laws of the land.

Why? Cuz he's the PREZNIT, that's why!

Congress can pass that pussy McCain amendment, but if Bubble Boy don't want it to apply, then--it don't!

Pretty nifty for a guy who slept through Poli Sci 101, and can't even spell "authoritarian regime."


BUSH ASSERTS HE CAN BYPASS THE MCCAIN ANTI-TORTURE LAW

and pretty much anything else that he feels like . . .

WASHINGTON -- When President Bush last week signed the bill outlawing the torture of detainees, he quietly reserved the right to bypass the law under his powers as commander in chief.

After approving the bill last Friday, Bush issued a ''signing statement" -- an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law -- declaring that he will view the interrogation limits in the context of his broader powers to protect national security. This means Bush believes he can waive the restrictions, the White House and legal specialists said.

''The executive branch shall construe [the law] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President . . . as Commander in Chief," Bush wrote, adding that this approach ''will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President . . . of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks."

Some legal specialists said yesterday that the president's signing statement, which was posted on the White House website but had gone unnoticed over the New Year's weekend, raises serious questions about whether he intends to follow the law.

A senior administration official, who spoke to a Globe reporter about the statement on condition of anonymity because he is not an official spokesman, said the president intended to reserve the right to use harsher methods in special situations involving national security. . . .

[T]he official said, a situation could arise in which Bush may have to waive the law's restrictions to carry out his responsibilities to protect national security. . .

''Of course the president has the obligation to follow this law, [but] he also has the obligation to defend and protect the country as the commander in chief, and he will have to square those two responsibilities in each case," the official added. ''We are not expecting that those two responsibilities will come into conflict, but it's possible that they will."

David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues, said that the signing statement means that Bush believes he can still authorize harsh interrogation tactics when he sees fit.


''The signing statement is saying 'I will only comply with this law when I want to, and if something arises in the war on terrorism where I think it's important to torture or engage in cruel, inhuman, and degrading conduct, I have the authority to do so and nothing in this law is going to stop me,' " he said. ''They don't want to come out and say it directly because it doesn't sound very nice, but it's unmistakable to anyone who has been following what's going on."

'The whole point of the McCain Amendment was to close every loophole," said Marty Lederman, a Georgetown University law professor who served in the Justice Department from 1997 to 2002. ''The president has re-opened the loophole by asserting the constitutional authority to act in violation of the statute where it would assist in the war on terrorism. . ."

Elisa Massimino, Washington director for Human Rights Watch, called Bush's signing statement an ''in-your-face affront" to both McCain and to Congress.

''The basic civics lesson that there are three co-equal branches of government that provide checks and balances on each other is being fundamentally rejected by this executive branch," she said.

''Congress is trying to flex its muscle to provide those checks [on detainee abuse], and it's being told through the signing statement that it's impotent. It's quite a radical view."

Radical?

Yep. That's our Bubble Boy.

Clearing brush. Undermining the rule of law. Undermining the Constitution.

It's hard work.



.

Waiting for the NY Times Op-Ed Page to Have a 50/50 Male/Female Writers Ratio While Not Holding My Breath

Re: John Tierney's latest op-ed, which I can't link to, because the Times in its wisdom no longer allows it.

It's called: "Male Pride and Female Prejudice" and it's the latest in a spate of gee those poor rich college-educated women with good jobs and a mind of their own will never find a guy to marry boo hoo hoo kinda articles.

This one is totally unintelligible.

Johnny asks,

"When there are three women for every two men graduating from college, whom will the third woman marry?"

Uh--no one?

A nice blue-collar guy who graduated from high school?

A college educated woman?

A nice guy who didn't graduate from high school, like Peter Jennings?

A furriner?

This is not an academic question. Women, who were a minority on campuses a quarter-century ago, today make up 57 percent of undergraduates, and the gender gap is projected to reach a 60-40 ratio within a few years.

Yuh, and a quarter-century ago, nobody found it a problem that women weren't being educated. No one was whining about men marrying spouses who earned less than they did, or didn't work at all. How'd you miss that one, Johnny? Or is that just the natural order of things to which you'd like to return?

So more women, especially black and Hispanic women, will be in a position to get better-paying, more prestigious jobs than their husbands, which makes for a tricky variation of "Pride and Prejudice."

Ditto above. Tricky? Feh.

It's still a universal truth, as Jane Austen wrote, that a man with a fortune has good marriage prospects.

OK, tell me, why does this guy have a job? He has COMPLETELY and UTTERLY misunderstood Austen's beautiful and wittily ironic phrase, a phrase which is, in fact, this one:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

[Yoo-hoo. Austen is making fun of Mrs. Bennet and her ilk, and also drawing our attention to the dismal economic realities of that time where intelligent women like Charlotte Lucas had to choose dismal dullards like the vicar merely in order to survive. Johnny has forgotten that Jane Austen chose never to marry.]

It's not so universal for a woman with a fortune, because pride makes some men determined to be the chief breadwinner

Oh, God. Get over it, Johnny.

I can't quote the entire article, nor, of course, can I link to it, but I can point out further strangenesses. Handsome, grey-haired Johhny claims:

Steven Nock of the University of Virginia has found that marriages in which the wife and husband earn roughly the same are more likely to fail than other marriages. That situation doesn't affect the husband's commitment to the marriage, Nock concludes, but it weakens the wife's and makes her more likely to initiate divorce.

Oh, so you mean economic equality means that women can afford to leave their bad marriages? But Johnny prefers it the other way around?

It's understandable that women with good paychecks have higher standards for their partners, since their superior intelligence, education and income give them what Buss calls high "mate value." They know they're catches and want to find someone with equal mate value - someone like Mr. Darcy instead of a dullard like the cleric spurned by Elizabeth Bennet.

This is bizarre on all counts. Johnny thinks that poor women, therefore, have lower standards for their partners?

[Let's leave aside Johnny's continuing misunderstanding of Pride & Prejudice. Mr. Darcy is of course, quite above Elizabeth's touch, and the dull Mr. Collins is quite a good catch, economically speaking, as he will inherit Longbourne. This is why Elizabeth's friend marries him.]

Which means that, on average, college-educated women and high-school-educated men will have a harder time finding partners as long as educators keep ignoring the gender gap that starts long before college

.

Are you noticing this phenomenon? I'm not, but I'm sure noticing that a whole lot of disgruntled, anti-feminist men seem real worried.

Advocates for women have been so effective politically that high schools and colleges are still focusing on supposed discrimination against women: the shortage of women in science classes and on sports teams rather than the shortage of men, period.

What, now there are so many women going to college that there are too many women going to college? Johnny wants us all to go back to having too many men?

You could think of this as a victory for women's rights, but many of the victors will end up celebrating alone.

So this whole column was written out of Johnny's deep and endless compassion for the college-educated spinsters of the world, all the latter-day Jane Austens. Poor intelligent single wretches. Boo hoo.

Or maybe he just wants someone to fix him up with Maureen Dowd?




John Tierney
Maureen Dowd
feminism
New York Times

Child Abuse & Unwantedness: Take 5

Are there happy outcomes for unwanted children? Maybe sometimes.

Are there outcomes like this, below, for children whose mothers love them and are well able to care for them?

Emphatically, no.

FLORIDA MOM CHARGED WITH 3 YEAR OLD SON'S FATAL SCALDING

January 2, 2006

DEERFIELD BEACH, Fla. --A 3-year-old boy died after his mother held him in a tub of scalding water as punishment on Christmas Day and his grandmother, who had custody, failed to get him medical care for a week, authorities said Monday. The mother had lost custody of the boy for previous abuse.

Broward County sheriff's deputies found Jaquez Mason with burns over 50 percent of his body after getting a 911 call Sunday morning. He was pronounced dead a half hour later. It was unclear why he was punished, spokesman Jim Leljedal said.

His mother, Valerie Kennedy, 30, was charged with child abuse murder and jailed without bond. His grandmother, Annie Williams, 51, accused of failing to take the boy for medical treatment, was charged with manslaughter and was being held on $10,000 bond.

Raise your hand if you believe in cause and effect.



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Bush Cuts, Prepares to Run

US HAS END IN SIGHT ON IRAQ REBUILDING



Sorry we broke your country into smithereens, chumps, but US mid-terms are coming, so we Bushist fascists are like, SO outta here!!

Full story at WaPo.

BAGHDAD -- The Bush administration does not intend to seek any new funds for Iraq reconstruction in the budget request going before Congress in February, officials say. The decision signals the winding down of an $18.4 billion U.S. rebuilding effort in which roughly half of the money was eaten away by the insurgency, a buildup of Iraq's criminal justice system and the investigation and trial of Saddam Hussein.

Just under 20 percent of the reconstruction package remains unallocated. When the last of the $18.4 billion is spent, U.S. officials in Baghdad have made clear, other foreign donors and the fledgling Iraqi government will have to take up what authorities say is tens of billions of dollars of work yet to be done merely to bring reliable electricity, water and other services to Iraq's 26 million people.

"The U.S. never intended to completely rebuild Iraq," Brig. Gen. William McCoy, the Army Corps of Engineers commander overseeing the work, told reporters at a recent news conference. In an interview this past week, McCoy said: "This was just supposed to be a jump-start."

Since the reconstruction effort began in 2003, midcourse changes by U.S. officials have shifted at least $2.5 billion from the rebuilding of Iraq's decrepit electrical, education, water, sewage, sanitation and oil networks to build new security forces for Iraq and to construct a nationwide system of medium- and maximum-security prisons and detention centers that meet international standards, according to reconstruction officials and documents. Many of the changes were forced by an insurgency more fierce than the United State [e.g., Bubble Boy & his confederacy of dunces] had expected when its troops entered Iraq.

In addition, from 14 percent to 22 percent of the cost of every nonmilitary reconstruction project goes toward security against insurgent attacks, according to reconstruction officials in Baghdad. In Washington, the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction puts the security costs of each project at 25 percent. . . .

[P]riorities were shifted rapidly to fund initiatives addressing the needs of a new Iraq: a 300-man Iraqi hostage-rescue force that authorities say stages operations almost every night in Baghdad; more than 600 Iraqis trained to dispose of bombs and protect against suicide bombs; four battalions of Iraqi special forces to protect the oil and electric networks; safe houses and armored cars for judges; $7.8 million worth of bulletproof vests for firefighters; and a center in the city of Kirkuk for treating victims of torture.

At the same time, the hundreds of Americans and Iraqis who have devoted themselves to the reconstruction effort point to 3,600 projects that the United States has completed or intends to finish before the $18.4 billion runs out around the end of 2006. These include work on 900 schools, construction of hospitals and nearly 160 health care centers and clinics, and repairs on or construction of nearly 800 miles of highways, city streets and village roads.

But the insurgency has set back efforts across the board. In two of the most crucial areas, electricity and oil production, relentless sabotage has kept output at or below prewar levels despite the expenditure of hundreds of millions of American dollars and countless man-hours. Oil production stands at roughly 2 million barrels a day, compared with 2.6 million before U.S. troops entered Iraq in March 2003 . . .

Iraqis nationwide receive on average less than 12 hours of power a day. For residents of Baghdad, it was six hours a day last month, according to a U.S. count, though many residents say that figure is high.

The Americans, said Zaid Saleem, 26, who works at a market in Baghdad, "are the best in destroying things but they are the worst in rebuilding. . ."


The heavy emphasis on security, and the money it would cost, had not been anticipated in the early months of the U.S. occupation. In January 2004, after the first disbursements of the $18.4 billion reconstruction package, the United States planned only $3.2 billion to build up Iraq's army and police. But as the insurgency intensified, money was shifted from other sectors, including more than $1 billion earmarked for electricity, to build a police force and army capable of combating foreign and domestic guerrillas. . . .

In the process, the United States will spend $437 million on border fortresses and guards, about $100 million more than the amount dedicated to roads, bridges and public buildings, including schools. Education programs have been allocated $99 million; the United States is spending $107 million to build a secure communications network for security forces. . .

[M]oney has gone toward building or renovating 10 medium- and maximum-security prisons -- early plans called for four prisons -- and for detention centers nationwide. . . .

The shifts in allocations have led Stuart Bowen, the inspector general in charge of tracking the $18.4 billion, to talk of a "reconstruction gap," or the difference between what Iraqis and Americans expected from the U.S. reconstruction effort at first and what they are seeing now. . .

"It is easy for the Americans to say, 'We are doing reconstruction in Iraq,' and we hear that. But to make us believe it, they should show us where this reconstruction is," said Mustafa Sidqi Murthada, owner of a men's clothing store in Baghdad. "Maybe they are doing this reconstruction for them in the Green Zone. But this is not for the Iraqis."

"Believe me, they are not doing this," he said, "unless they consider rebuilding of their military bases reconstruction."

Let's ask Condi Rice what she thinks.




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Happy (Non-Tibetan) New Year

I don't know why certain American people who claim to be conservative Republicans and also claim to be following the teachings of Jesus Christ think it's fine and dandy for some people to boil other people to death, under their aegis.

Or that it's dandy to order the torture of human beings very directly in other ways--such as deliberately and painfully jamming feeding-tubes down their gullets, and deliberately inflicting unendurable pain and suffering by various and sundry other methods. Indeed, some claim such acts somehow qualify as "good."

Beats me. But hey, I'm Buddhist. From that point of view, if one commits an evil deed deliberately, and then afterwards one is satisfied with this action, then that act creates what is called a complete karma: on the basis of such actions, ultimately, everyone will reap just exactly what they have sowed. But I digress.

Anyhow--

Happy New Year.


On the upside, besides persons like Bubble Boy and sadistic pro-torturists Cheney and Rummy, and their shrieking hysterical sheeple ilk, there are also other sentient beings, noble ones, like the Polish poet and Nobel Prize Winner for Literature Czeslaw Milosz, who wrote the following, and whose work I present in hopes that the new year brings to us all a swift renaissance of compassion and wisdom:


ON ANGELS

All was taken away from you: white dresses,
wings, even existence.
Yet I believe you,
messengers.


There, where the world is turned inside out,
a heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts,
you stroll, inspecting the trustworthy seams.


Short is your stay here:
now and then at a matinal hour, if the sky is clear,
in a melody repeated by a bird,
or in the smell of apples at the close of day
when the light makes the orchards magic.


They say somebody has invented you
but to me this does not sound convincing
for humans invented themselves as well.


The voice--no doubt it is a valid proof,
as it can belong only to radiant creatures,
weightless and winged (after all, why not?),
girdled with lightning.


I have heard that voice many a time when asleep
and, what is strange, I understood more or less
an order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue:


day draws near
another one
do what you can.







--Czeslaw Milosz


Hat tip to Jesus' General and Wealth Bondage.

Blonde Blowhard Blog-Slagger Flip-Flops; Slobbered Over Right Blogs, Now Slags Blogs Left

Chubby buxom blonde Bushist blowhard "columnist" Kathleen Parker's panties revealed to be in major twist re nasty snarky blogtopian bloggerseses.

Here, Kathy warns regular people (who would be those upon whom the NSA is currently spying?)

"to beware and resist the ego-gratifying pack that contributes only snark, sass and destruction."

"Snark, sass, destruction": oh MY!

This Southern blonde bombshell buxom-version clone of civil Ann Coulter decries "the less visible, insidious enemies of decency, humanity and civility--the angry offspring of narcissism's quickie marriage to instant gratification."

Hunh?

Kathy sucks up to the Media Whore Media for a coupla paragraphs, God knows why, ranting on:

Bloggers persist no matter their contributions or quality, though most would have little to occupy their time were the mainstream media to disappear tomorrow. Some bloggers do their own reporting, but most rely on mainstream reporters to do the heavy lifting. Some bloggers also offer superb commentary, but most babble, buzz and blurt like caffeinated adolescents competing for the Ritalin generation's inevitable senior superlative: Most Obsessive-Compulsive.

Even so, they hold the same megaphone as the adults and enjoy perceived credibility owing to membership in the larger world of blog grown-ups. These effete and often clever baby "bloggies" are rich in time and toys but bereft of adult supervision.

Spoiled and undisciplined, they have grabbed the mike and seized the stage, a privilege granted not by years in the trenches, but by virtue of a three-pronged plug and the miracle of WiFi. They play tag team with hyperlinks ("I'll say you're important if you'll say I'm important") and shriek "Gotcha!" when they catch some weary wage earner in a mistake or oversight. Plenty smart but lacking in wisdom, they possess the power of a forum, but neither the maturity nor humility that years of experience impose.

Each time I wander into blogdom, I'm reminded of the savage children stranded on an island in William Golding's "Lord of the Flies." Without adult supervision, they organize themselves into rival tribes, learn to hunt and kill, and eventually become murderous barbarians in the absence of a civilizing structure.

What Golding demonstrated--and what we're witnessing as the Blogosphere's offspring multiply--is that people tend to abuse power when it is unearned and will bring down others to enhance themselves. Likewise, many bloggers seek the destruction of others for their own self-aggrandizement. When a mainstream journalist stumbles, they pile on like so many savages, hoisting his or her head on a bloody stick as Golding's children did the fly-covered head of a butchered sow. . .

I mean no disrespect to the many brilliant people out there--professors, lawyers, doctors, philosophers, scientists and other journalists who also happen to blog. Again, they know who they are. But we should beware and resist the rest of the ego-gratifying rabble who contribute only snark, sass and destruction.

We can't silence them, but for civilization's sake--and the integrity of information by which we all live or die--we can and should ignore them.

So, Kathy, where's all this weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth comin' from, Kathy honey? Some bad ol' blogger deal you some big-time snark?

What became of the blog-lovin' Kathy Parker of 2003, here?

If not for blogs, Howell Raines might still be editor of The New York Times; Trent Lott might still be majority leader of the U.S. Senate. . . I'm not an expert on blogging, but I am a fan. As a regular visitor to a dozen or so news and opinion blogs, I'm riveted by the implications for my profession. Bloggers are making life interesting for reluctant mainstreamers like myself and for the public, whose access to information until now has been relatively controlled by traditional media.

I say "reluctant mainstreamer" because what I once loved about journalism went missing some time ago and seems to have resurfaced as the driving force of the blogosphere: a high-spirited, irreverent, swashbuckling, lances-to-the-ready assault on the status quo. While mainstream journalists are tucked inside their newsroom cubicles deciphering management's latest "tidy desk" memo, bloggers are building bonfires and handing out virtual leaflets along America's Information Highway.

In some areas, bloggers are beating the knickers off mainstream reporters and commentators. Bloggers are credited, for instance, with ramping up interest in Trent Lott's suicidal praise of Strom Thurmond's segregationist history. Bloggers like Andrew Sullivan, former editor-in-chief of The New Republic magazine and author of www.andrewsullivan.com , was riding herd on Raines and The New York Times long before Jayson Blair became synonymous with criminal journalism. He was insisting on Raines' dismissal while everyone else was tapping the snooze button.

And of course Matt Drudge of www.DrudgeReport.com escorted Monica Lewinsky onto the stage.

During the Iraq war, "warbloggers" often posted new developments far ahead of the mainstream. Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor of National Review Online, slept maybe 4.5 hours the entire three weeks as she posted on the site's group blog, "The Corner." Put it this way, as you were waking up, Lopez was on her third Diet Coke.

The best bloggers, who are generous in linking to one another [wait, wait, in the other article, Kathy doesn't like this!} - -alien behavior to journalists accustomed to careerist, shark-tank newsrooms - - are like smart, hip gunslingers come to make trouble for the local good ol' boys. The heat they pack includes an arsenal of intellectual artillery, crisp prose, sharp insights and a gimlet eye for mainstream media's flaws [manly blogs! yee-haw!]

Glenn Reynolds, the blogosphere's Rowdy Yates (www.Instapundit.com ), as well as a University of Tennessee law professor, last year wrote, "Big journalism is in trouble," and proclaimed "the end of the power of Big Media."

He's right about the trouble part, but the blogosphere may help more than hurt. The view from my bunker suggests that blogs can't be anything but good for journalism. Just as a new restaurant is good for established ones, competition is good. And fun! As another famous cowboy recently put it, "Bring `em on!"

Oh, we get it, Kathy. Reichwing blogs are good, anybody else's blogs are bad.

Not that one cares about your whiney prissy faux Phyllis Schlafly scribblings anyhow, but on the less is more principle, when one can boil down one's whole message to a single sentence, just that one sentence will do. Or, and this would be kinder and more civil, entirely spare us your puerile, silly bleatings.


Keep Blogtopia beautiful.



["Blogtopia" - - a term coined by and at Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo].

Kathleen Parker

Excerpt from the UK Torture Memos

Via Wealth Bondage via Daily Kos:


Letter #3

CONFIDENTIAL
FM TASHKENT
TO IMMEDIATE FCO

TELNO 63
OF 220939 JULY 04

INFO IMMEDIATE DFID, ISLAMIC POSTS, MOD, OSCE POSTS UKDEL EBRD LONDON, UKMIS GENEVA, UKMIS MEW YORK

SUBJECT: RECEIPT OF INTELLIGENCE OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE

SUMMARY

1. We receive intelligence obtained under torture from the Uzbek intelligence services, via the US. We should stop. It is bad information anyway. Tortured dupes are forced to sign up to confessions showing what the Uzbek government wants the US and UK to believe, that they and we are fighting the same war against terror.

2. I gather a recent London interdepartmental meeting considered the question and decided to continue to receive the material. This is morally, legally and practically wrong. It exposes as hypocritical our post Abu Ghraib pronouncements and fatally undermines our moral standing. It obviates my efforts to get the Uzbek government to stop torture they are fully aware our intelligence community laps up the results.

3. We should cease all co-operation with the Uzbek Security Services they are beyond the pale. We indeed need to establish an SIS presence here, but not as in a friendly state.

DETAIL

4. In the period December 2002 to March 2003 I raised several times the issue of intelligence material from the Uzbek security services which was obtained under torture and passed to us via the CIA. I queried the legality, efficacy and morality of the practice.

5. I was summoned to the UK for a meeting on 8 March 2003. Michael Wood gave his legal opinion that it was not illegal to obtain and to use intelligence acquired by torture. He said the only legal limitation on its use was that it could not be used in legal proceedings, under Article 15 of the UN Convention on Torture.

6. On behalf of the intelligence services, Matthew Kydd said that they found some of the material very useful indeed with a direct bearing on the war on terror. Linda Duffield said that she had been asked to assure me that my qualms of conscience were respected and understood.

7. Sir Michael Jay's circular of 26 May stated that there was a reporting obligation on us to report torture by allies (and I have been instructed to refer to Uzbekistan as such in the context of the war on terror). You, Sir, have made a number of striking, and I believe heartfelt, condemnations of torture in the last few weeks. I had in the light of this decided to return to this question and to highlight an apparent contradiction in our policy. I had intimated as much to the Head of Eastern Department.

8. I was therefore somewhat surprised to hear that without informing me of the meeting, or since informing me of the result of the meeting, a meeting was convened in the FCO at the level of Heads of Department and above, precisely to consider the question of the receipt of Uzbek intelligence material obtained under torture. As the office knew, I was in London at the time and perfectly able to attend the meeting. I still have only gleaned that it happened.

9. I understand that the meeting decided to continue to obtain the Uzbek torture material. I understand that the principal argument deployed was that the intelligence material disguises the precise source, ie it does not ordinarily reveal the name of the individual who is tortured. Indeed this is true – the material is marked with a euphemism such as "From detainee debriefing." The argument runs that if the individual is not named, we cannot prove that he was tortured.

10. I will not attempt to hide my utter contempt for such casuistry, nor my shame that I work in and organisation where colleagues would resort to it to justify torture. I have dealt with hundreds of individual cases of political or religious prisoners in Uzbekistan, and I have met with very few where torture, as defined in the UN convention, was not employed. When my then DHM raised the question with the CIA head of station 15 months ago, he readily acknowledged torture was deployed in obtaining intelligence. I do not think there is any doubt as to the fact

11. The torture record of the Uzbek security services could hardly be more widely known. Plainly there are, at the very least, reasonable grounds for believing the material is obtained under torture. There is helpful guidance at Article 3 of the UN Convention;

"The competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the state concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights." While this article forbids extradition or deportation to Uzbekistan, it is the right test for the present question also.

12. On the usefulness of the material obtained, this is irrelevant. Article 2 of the Convention, to which we are a party, could not be plainer:

"No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."

13. Nonetheless, I repeat that this material is useless – we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful. It is designed to give the message the Uzbeks want the West to hear. It exaggerates the role, size, organisation and activity of the IMU and its links with Al Qaida. The aim is to convince the West that the Uzbeks are a vital cog against a common foe, that they should keep the assistance, especially military assistance, coming, and that they should mute the international criticism on human rights and economic reform.

14. I was taken aback when Matthew Kydd said this stuff was valuable. Sixteen months ago it was difficult to argue with SIS in the area of intelligence assessment. But post Butler we know, not only that they can get it wrong on even the most vital and high profile issues, but that they have a particular yen for highly coloured material which exaggerates the threat. That is precisely what the Uzbeks give them. Furthermore MI6 have no operative within a thousand miles of me and certainly no expertise that can come close to my own in making this assessment.

15. At the Khuderbegainov trial I met an old man from Andizhan. Two of his children had been tortured in front of him until he signed a confession on the family's links with Bin Laden. Tears were streaming down his face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with Bin Laden as I do. This is the standard of the Uzbek intelligence services.

16. I have been considering Michael Wood's legal view, which he kindly gave in writing. I cannot understand why Michael concentrated only on Article 15 of the Convention. This certainly bans the use of material obtained under torture as evidence in proceedings, but it does not state that this is the sole exclusion of the use of such material.

17. The relevant article seems to me Article 4, which talks of complicity in torture. Knowingly to receive its results appears to be at least arguable as complicity. It does not appear that being in a different country to the actual torture would preclude complicity. I talked this over in a hypothetical sense with my old friend Prof Francois Hampson, I believe an acknowledged World authority on the Convention, who said that the complicity argument and the spirit of the Convention would be likely to be winning points. I should be grateful to hear Michael's views on this.

18. It seems to me that there are degrees of complicity and guilt, but being at one or two removes does not make us blameless. There are other factors. Plainly it was a breach of Article 3 of the Convention for the coalition to deport detainees back here from Baghram, but it has been done. That seems plainly complicit.

19. This is a difficult and dangerous part of the World. Dire and increasing poverty and harsh repression are undoubtedly turning young people here towards radical Islam.

The Uzbek government are thus creating this threat, and perceived US support for Karimov strengthens anti-Western feeling. SIS ought to establish a presence here, but not as partners of the Uzbek Security Services, whose sheer brutality puts them beyond the pale.

MURRAY

"I met an old man from Andizhan. Two of his children had been tortured in front of him until he signed a confession on the family's links with Bin Laden. Tears were streaming down his face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with Bin Laden as I do. This is the standard of the Uzbek intelligence services."

The material speaks for itself.





More at BlairWatch.
Also here and here.

Torture
Bush
Blair
UK Torture memos
Rumsfeld

Bubble Boy: Keeping U.S. Safe From Vegans

Here, via AmericaBlog:

Reuters: "U.S. News and World Report . . . reported last week that more than 100 sites, including private homes, were monitored [by the NSA] without court approval as required by FISA.

"We are concerned that, under this secretive program, [the Bush] government has overstepped constitutional bounds by intruding on private property without any probable cause or valid court orders," [the Council on American-Islamic Relations]' national legal director, Arsalan Iftikhar, said in a statement. . .

In Crawford, Texas, where Bush is spending the holidays, his spokesman, Trent Duffy, defended what he called a "limited program."

"This is not about monitoring phone calls designed to arrange Little League practice or what to bring to a potluck dinner," he told reporters. "These are designed to monitor calls from very bad people to very bad people who have a history of blowing up commuter trains, weddings, and churches."

Of course, the Bushist fascists are only monitoring bad people.

Your tax dollars are being used to allow the FBI and other government branches to spy on domestic terrorist bad people, & the category "bad" apparently includes Quakers, environmentalists, animal rights activists, grannies, Code Pinks, Catholics, and (Ohh, NOOO!!) vegans.

Your tax dollars are being used by Rummy's Department of Defense to identify grannies and vegans as threats. See for yourself, here. Say, are we safer yet? Osama Bin Who?


Thanks to Bubble Boy, freedom's definitely on the march.

Our freedoms. Marching right out the door, into the dustbin.

Heckuva job, Preznit Toad-Exploder.




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Bush
NSA
FBI
spying

Human Trafficking? Pentagon: What, Me Worry?

Here, via RawStory, excerpts from a Chicago Tribune article on the Pentagon's failure to ban their subcontractors from using forced slave labor and sex slaves.

"US STALLS ON HUMAN TRAFFICKING

WASHINGTON -- Three years ago, President Bush declared that he had "zero tolerance" for trafficking in humans by the government's overseas contractors, and two years ago Congress mandated a similar policy.

But notwithstanding the president's statement and the congressional edict, the Defense Department has yet to adopt a policy to bar human trafficking.

A proposal prohibiting defense contractor involvement in human trafficking for forced prostitution and labor was drafted by the Pentagon last summer, but five defense lobbying groups oppose key provisions and a final policy still appears to be months away, according to those involved and Defense Department records.. . .

Lining up on the opposite side of the defense industry are some human-trafficking experts who say significant aspects of the Pentagon's proposed policy might actually do more harm than good unless they're changed. These experts have told the Pentagon that the policy would merely formalize practices that have allowed contractors working overseas to escape punishment for involvement in trafficking, the records show.

The long-awaited debate inside the Pentagon on how to implement presidential and congressional directives on human trafficking is unfolding just as countertrafficking advocates in Congress are running into resistance. A bill reauthorizing the nation's efforts against trafficking for the next two years was overwhelmingly passed by the House this month, but only after a provision creating a trafficking watchdog at the Pentagon was stripped from the measure at the insistence of defense-friendly lawmakers, according to congressional records and officials. The Senate passed the bill last week.

Delay seen as weakness

The Pentagon's delay in tackling the issue, the perceived weakness of its proposed policy and the recent setbacks in Congress have some criticizing the Pentagon for not taking the issue seriously enough.

"Ultimately, what we really hope to see is resources and leadership on this issue from the Pentagon," said Sarah Mendelson, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a national security think tank in Washington. She also had called for creation of an internal Pentagon watchdog after investigating the military's links to sex trafficking in the Balkans.

Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.), author of the original legislation targeting human trafficking, said there seems to be an institutional lethargy on the issue at the Pentagon below the most senior levels. He said he was concerned that the Pentagon's overseas-contractor proposal might not be tough enough and that the delays in developing it could mean more people "were being exploited while they were sharpening their pencils."

But he pledged to maintain aggressive oversight of the plan.

`We're addressing the issue'

Glenn Flood, a Pentagon spokesman, said he did not know why it has taken so long to develop a proposal but said, "From our point of view, we're addressing the issue."

An official more directly involved with the effort to draft a formal policy barring contractors from involvement in trafficking said it might not be ready until April, at least in part because of concerns raised by the defense contractors.

Bush declared zero tolerance for involvement in human trafficking by federal employees and contractors in a National Security Presidential Directive he signed in December 2002 after media reports detailing the alleged involvement of DynCorp employees in buying women and girls as sex slaves in Bosnia during the U.S. military's deployment there in the late 1990s.

Ultimately, the company fired eight employees for their alleged involvement in sex trafficking and illegal arms deals.

In 2003, Smith followed Bush's decree with legislation ordering federal agencies to include anti-trafficking provisions in all contracts. The bill covered trafficking for forced prostitution and forced labor and applied to overseas contractors and their subcontractors.

But it wasn't until last summer that the Pentagon issued a proposed policy to enforce the 2003 law and Bush's December 2002 directive.

The proposal drew a strong response from five defense-contractor-lobbying groups within the umbrella Council of Defense and Space Industries Associations: the Contract Services Association, the Professional Services Council, the National Defense Industrial Association, the American Shipbuilding Association and the Electronic Industries Alliance.

The response's first target was a provision requiring contractors to police their overseas subcontractors for human trafficking.

In a two-part series published in October, the Tribune detailed how Middle Eastern firms working under American subcontracts in Iraq, and a chain of human brokers beneath them, engaged in the kind of abuses condemned elsewhere by the U.S. government as human trafficking. KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary, relies on more than 200 subcontractors to carry out a multibillion-dollar U.S. Army contract for privatization of military support operations in the war zone.

Case of 12 Nepali men

The Tribune retraced the journey of 12 Nepali men recruited from poor villages in one of the most remote and impoverished corners of the world and documented a trail of deceit, fraud and negligence stretching into Iraq. The men were kidnapped from an unprotected caravan and executed en route to jobs at an American military base in 2004.

At the time, Halliburton said it was not responsible for the recruitment or hiring practices of its subcontractors, and the U.S. Army, which oversees the privatization contract, said questions about alleged misconduct "by subcontractor firms should be addressed to those firms, as these are not Army issues."

Once implemented, the new policy could dramatically change responsibilities for KBR and the Army.

Alan Chvotkin, senior vice president and counsel for the Professional Services Council who drafted the contractors' eight-page critique of the Pentagon proposal, said it was not realistic to expect foreign companies operating overseas to accept or act on U.S. foreign policy objectives.

"This is a clash between mission execution [of the contract] and policy execution," Chvotkin said. "So we're looking for a little flexibility."

He said that rather than a "requirement that says you have to flow this through to everybody," the group wants the policy to simply require firms to notify the Pentagon when their subcontractors refuse to accept contract clauses barring support for human trafficking.

Still, Chvotkin said, "We don't want to do anything that conveys the idea that we are sanctioning or tolerating trafficking."

In a joint memo of their own, Mendelson and another Washington-based expert, Martina Vandenberg, a lawyer who investigated sex trafficking for Human Rights Watch, told the Pentagon its draft policy "institutionalizes ineffective procedures currently used by the Department of Defense contractor community in handling allegations of human trafficking."

Without tough provisions requiring referrals to prosecutors, they said, contractors could still get their employees on planes back to the U.S. before investigations commenced, as they allege happened in several documented cases in the Balkans. They said some local contract managers even had "special arrangements" with police in the Balkans that allowed them to quickly get employees returned to the U.S. if they were found to be engaged in illegal activities.

One is so pleased, is one not, that our Fearless Leader, Preznit Toad-Exploder, is so strongly for "zero tolerance" (which really means "tolerance").

Sort of like "not torture" meaning "torture", and "clean air bill" meaning "poisoning our environment."





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Democracy's On The March, Minus Freedom of Speech

Here, a charming story from the NYT called "Professors' Politics Draw Lawmakers Into the Fray."

Blonde, buxom, passionately committed Republican activist Jennie Mae Brown

"told her Pennsylvania state representative, Gibson C. Armstrong, that she felt a physics professor's comments in the classroom about President Bush and Iraq were inappropriate.

"How could this happen?" Ms. Brown [whined to] Representative Gibson C. Armstrong two summers ago, complaining about a physics professor . . . [who] used class time to belittle President Bush and the war in Iraq. As an Air Force veteran, Ms. Brown said she felt the teacher's comments were inappropriate for the classroom."

Is there a "Thou Shalt Not Belittle President Bush" clause in the Bill of Rights now? Did Karl Rove actually manage to white-out the First Amendment, that dicey Freedom of Speech thing?

But wait. It gets better.

The encounter has blossomed into an official legislative inquiry, putting Pennsylvania in the middle of a national debate spurred by conservatives over whether public universities are promoting largely liberal positions and discriminating against students who disagree with them.

You heard that right. The very same [buxom blonde Bushist fascist] activist Republican, Jennie Mae, who is complaining about her professor expressing his political views seems the spearhead of a movement complaining that librul academic people are being mean to [Bushist fascists] for airing their [inherently stupid Bushist fascist] Republican views; thus, them libruls should all shut up, and, via Rovian reality, have only the [Bushist fascists] be allowed to speak, sort of like in Bubble Boy's lockdown political rallies.

A committee held two hearings last month in Pittsburgh and has scheduled another for Jan. 9 in Philadelphia. A final report with any recommendations for legislative remedy is due in June.

The investigation comes at a time when David Horowitz, a conservative commentator and president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, has been lobbying more than a dozen state legislatures to pass an "Academic Bill of Rights" that he says would encourage free debate and protect students against discrimination for expressing their political beliefs.

That would be protecting activist Republican students against being discriminated against for airing their [stupid Bushist fascist] views while seeking the quash the expression of [intelligent, manly, triumphant] liberal/progressive viewpoints.

Very nice. The merry band of Rovians, having eliminated liberal/progressive viewpoints from the Media Whore Media, eroded them on public television, are trying to wipe out liberal/progressive viewpoints in academia, justifying it through a zombie Fairness Doctrine, a concept Reichwingers scuttled so they could freely foul the public airwaves with their very special brand of vitriol.

Perish the thought that there are more Democrats than Republicans on college campuses because there are more smart people than stupid people on college campuses, and that smart people are more likely to have liberal/progressive views because they're smart, while stupid people are more likely to be loudmouth greedy sexist Bushist fascist hysterics who can't tell a loofah from a felafel.





[All sexist comments in this post were intentional & for informational purposes only.}

The Madness of King George, On A Tibetan Buddhist Christmas Eve

Here we have Chuck Krauthammer apparently choking on his own vomit, as he comes up with feeble excuses why Preznit Toad-Exploder deliberately broke a law which he could just as easily have followed. But Bubble Boy's hubris just won't allow that kind of thing: he's big bad King George, you wonder how he gets that fat head into a hat. Quoth Chuckie:

"Contrary to the administration, I also believe that as a matter of political prudence and comity with Congress, Bush should have tried to get the law changed rather than circumvent it. ("circumvent" is the new translation for "break the law") This was an error of political judgment. But that does not make it a crime. And only the most brazen and reckless partisan could pretend it is anything approaching a high crime and misdemeanor."

No, silly Chuckie, only the most brazen and reckless partisan could pretend it's NOT an impeachable offense.

And the FISA thing is not the only one: here we have Big Brother Bubble Boy spying on virtually anyone at any time.

Here, we have SPY AGENCY MINED VAST DATA TROVE, OFFICIALS REPORT:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks . . .according to current and former government officials.

The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said.

As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.

The government's collection and analysis of phone and Internet traffic have raised questions among some law enforcement and judicial officials familiar with the program. One issue of concern to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has reviewed some separate warrant applications growing out of the N.S.A.'s surveillance program, is whether the court has legal authority over calls outside the United States that happen to pass through American-based telephonic "switches," according to officials familiar with the matter.

"There was a lot of discussion about the switches" in conversations with the court, a Justice Department official said, referring to the gateways through which much of the communications traffic flows. "You're talking about access to such a vast amount of communications, and the question was, How do you minimize something that's on a switch that's carrying such large volumes of traffic? The court was very, very concerned about that."

Well, King George is the King, so who's going to tell him he can't have his own way all the time? Isn't the Constitution, after all, to Bubble Boy just a "goddamned piece of paper"?

Here we have some Republicans waking up after their long slumber, finally noticing that "The Pursuit of Terrorism Does Not Authorize the President to Make Up New Laws."

From Barron's:

"AS THE YEAR WAS DRAWING TO A CLOSE, we picked up our New York Times and learned that the Bush administration has been fighting terrorism by intercepting communications in America without warrants. It was worrisome on its face, but in justifying their actions, officials have made a bad situation much worse: Administration lawyers and the president himself have tortured the Constitution and extracted a suspension of the separation of powers.

It was not a shock to learn that shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to conduct intercepts of international phone calls to and from the United States. The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act permits the government to gather the foreign communications of people in the U.S. -- without a warrant if quick action is important. But the law requires that, within 72 hours, investigators must go to a special secret court for a retroactive warrant.

The USA Patriot Act permits some exceptions to its general rules about warrants for wiretaps and searches, including a 15-day exception for searches in time of war. And there may be a controlling legal authority in the Sept. 14, 2001, congressional resolution that authorized the president to go after terrorists and use all necessary and appropriate force. It was not a declaration of war in a constitutional sense, but it may have been close enough for government work.

Certainly, there was an emergency need after the Sept. 11 attacks to sweep up as much information as possible about the chances of another terrorist attack. But a 72-hour emergency or a 15-day emergency doesn't last four years.

In that time, Congress has extensively debated the rules on wiretaps and other forms of domestic surveillance. Administration officials have spent many hours before many committees urging lawmakers to provide them with great latitude. Congress acted, and the president signed.

Now the president and his lawyers are claiming that they have greater latitude. They say that neither the USA Patriot Act nor the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act actually sets the real boundary. The administration is saying the president has unlimited authority to order wiretaps in the pursuit of foreign terrorists, and that the Congress has no power to overrule him.

"We also believe the president has the inherent authority under the Constitution, as commander-in-chief, to engage in this kind of activity," said Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The Department of Justice made a similar assertion as far back as 2002, saying in a legal brief: "The Constitution vests in the president inherent authority to conduct warrantless intelligence surveillance (electronic or otherwise) of foreign powers or their agents, and Congress cannot by statute extinguish that Constitutional authority." Gonzales last week declined to declassify relevant legal reviews made by the Department of Justice.

Perhaps they were researched in a Star Chamber? Putting the president above the Congress is an invitation to tyranny. The president has no powers except those specified in the Constitution and those enacted by law. President Bush is stretching the power of commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy by indicating that he can order the military and its agencies, such as the National Security Agency, to do whatever furthers the defense of the country from terrorists, regardless of whether actual force is involved.

Surely the "strict constructionists" on the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary eventually will point out what a stretch this is. The most important presidential responsibility under Article II is that he must "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." That includes following the requirements of laws that limit executive power. There's not much fidelity in an executive who debates and lobbies Congress to shape a law to his liking and then goes beyond its writ.

Willful disregard of a law is potentially an impeachable offense. It is at least as impeachable as having a sexual escapade under the Oval Office desk and lying about it later. The members of the House Judiciary Committee who staged the impeachment of President Clinton ought to be as outraged at this situation. They ought to investigate it, consider it carefully and report either a bill that would change the wiretap laws to suit the president or a bill of impeachment.

It is important to be clear that an impeachment case, if it comes to that, would not be about wiretapping, or about a possible Constitutional right not to be wiretapped. It would be about the power of Congress to set wiretapping rules by law, and it is about the obligation of the president to follow the rules in the Acts that he and his predecessors signed into law.

Some ancillary responsibility, however, must be attached to those members of the House and Senate who were informed, inadequately, about the wiretapping and did nothing to regulate it. Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, told Vice President Dick Cheney in 2003 that he was "unable to fully evaluate, much less endorse these activities." . . . Published reports quote sources saying that 14 members of Congress were notified of the wiretapping. If some had misgivings, apparently they were scared of being called names, as the president did last week when he said: "It was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war. The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy."

Wrong. If we don't discuss the program and the lack of authority for it, we are meeting the enemy -- in the mirror."

Barron's, eh? Republicans? Yeah, Republicans, finally waking up from their five-year stupor. Perhaps there is hope for this country, after all?

Let's send all the Bushist fascists--the ones who drove our country into moral and fiscal bankruptcy--all those liars, cheaters and torturers to -- Gitmo for Christmas!!

Torture
Bush
Vets
Christmas
spying