Account from a black site prison
December 15
When you read this story about the experience of Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, keep a couple things in mind which get you enraged. One is that this man was innocent. You can't denounce the torture of terrorism suspects without conservatives denouncing you for sympathizing with terrorists, but like in seemingly nearly every case of prisoners being tortured by our government, this man is innocent. The other thing is that it was done by OUR GOVERNMENT. The torturers are Americans acting under authority from the Bush administration in the name of the American people. I can't believe impeachment seems too drastic when we should be talking about war crimes trials.
Inter Press right on NIE story
December 9
A kudo goes to the Inter Press news service, which reported a month ago, correctly as it turns out, that the acting vice-president* prevented the release of the recently released NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) for a year to try to force changes. The reporter of the linked article is Gareth Porter, whose sources were right that the NIE completely contradicts the Bush administration and the neocons pushing for war with Iran. A kudo goes also to Common Dreams, which is the only site I know of which carries Inter Press reports.
Just to not miss the obvious, the biggest kudo has to go to unknown professionals in the intelligence agencies who pushed the administration to release it no matter how much they didn't want to. They took a big step to restore their credibility after Iraq, and strengthen the argument that they didn't get Iraq wrong, but rather the bushies picked the few bits that supported them. I read somewhere, and I hope some reader can send me a link because I can't remember where or find it now, that these intelligence employees were determined to release themselves if their bosses wouldn't, even at the risk of jail. It makes sense given how badly the NIE contradicts Bush, and how unprepared Bush and the neocons were to respond. They usually leak in bits, put it out late Friday afternoon, have credulous reporters acting as stenographers for the spin, but this time they didn't have their stories straight. Bush tried to say Iran might still develop something even if it isn't working at it now, and wingnut pundits are denying the NIE can be trusted. They're trying to say it doesn't really contradict the policy, and trying to say the intelligence agencies are conspiring to get Bush.
My take on it is that the war on Iran isn't definitely off. It just became a harder sell is all. Some conservatives are about that, but others want to just go ahead with the war. After all, a president can do anything he wants in regards to war, right? Constitution be damned. That's why I don't agree with those who think a war won't happen because it's an insanely bad idea with no support. I recognize it's an insane idea with no support, but the administration and its flunkies are insane enough not to care.
*I should explain again that I don't call Cheney the "acting vice-president" because he isn't really doing the job. Just like when I call Bush the "acting president", I mean they stole their elections. Thus, they are "acting" until we have a legitimate president and vice-president. I started calling them that after they stole the 2000 election, and I keep it up because they stole 2004 also.
They knew
December 9
Several congressional leaders were briefed by the CIA in 2002 and 2003 about the interrogation techniques used against terrorism suspects. These leaders included leading Democrats, including current Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Jay Rockefeller, then senior minority member on the Intelligence Committee. Rep. Jan Harman at least wrote a CYA (cover your ass) letter in protest, and then did nothing. The rest jumped right to doing nothing. Pelosi knew torture was being used when she said impeachment was off the table. I recognize Republicans were briefed too, and appear to have approved, let alone did nothing to stop it. I also realize Republicans were in charge, and Democrats might not have allowed this had they been in charge. Still they knew, and did a lot less than all they could to stop it. Speaking as an active grassroots Democrat, I want them gone. They don't have to leave Congress, but I want a new House Speaker, and a new Senate Intelligence Committee chairman. They have failed in their core responsibilities to protect the Constitution and fight against abuses of civil liberties and human rights.
Good news-bad news on California electoral votes initiative
December 9
The good news is the effort to put an initiative on California's ballot to divide its electoral college votes by congressional district has stalled, and the earliest they can get on a ballot is now November. The bad news is Republicans still want to split California's votes, and so are hardly likely to stop. I can even imagine them trying in other big Democratic-leaning states, even though none are the prize of California.
Obviously Republicans just wanted to trick Californians into slitting their vote and giving the GOP presidential candidate a big advantage. I'm being literal when I say "trick", because the petition contractors tell signers it's for an initiative to fight cancer in children. If they really thought electoral votes should be split that way, they would be trying all over the country. Democrats need to consider that the only reason they could so this was because we pick presidents through the inanity known as the electoral college. If you think awarding by congressional districts is an improvement, consider that right now about 10-15 states really pick the president. That sounds like very few people having a voice, and it is. However, they congressional districts are gerrymandered by party, only about 30 districts are in doubt. That means only 30 districts will pick the president. That's far fewer people even than 10-15 states. Meanwhile, other countries seem capable of having direct popular elections to pick presidents, and their elections even get judges free and fair by international observers. What's our problem?
And yes I know, Nebraska and Maine already split their votes as proposed in California. However, they each have just two seats, so the statewide winner loses one vote at most, and they have never split. Above all, of course, they're too small to have any effect. Saying that might irritate electoral college supporters who think it gives small states more to say, but even with disproportional influence, small states get nothing to say unless the election is close and they're swing states. That rarely happens. So as glad as I am that California liberals organized to successfully (so far) oppose this initiative, I hope they realize that the real vulnerability is the way the electoral college warps our elections.
Stacked up Take the Red Pill Awards
December 7
It's been a long time since I've given out any Take the Red Pill Awards, and there's a backlog of worthy recipients. In fact, it got much more backed up over the last week, so let's award a couple.
This Take the Red Pill Award gets shared among the Catholic League, Focus on the Family, and the conservative Christian spokesmen, organizations, and benighted followers getting all worked up about The Golden Compass, the film adaptation of His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. They're calling for a boycott, calling for the firing of movie reviewers working for the Conference of Bishops because they approved it, and passing around the e-mail threads normally used for long-debunked conspiracy theories. They're outraged that a movie addressing religion could be written by an atheist, and even though reviewers say the controversial elements have been stripped out, the movie is apparently just a Trojan horse to get kids to read the book and then, horror of horror, ask questions about the nonsense handed out by some religious authorities. Remember, in the last few years, that there have been fantasy movies adapting from novels written by Christians, namely The Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings? Remember all the protests by people getting upset that those movies might challenge their non-Christian beliefs? I don't either. It's that fundamentalist thinking that they can inflict their religion on you, but it's wrong for you to inflict yours on them, because they're right and you're wrong. They know this because they have faith that they're right and you're wrong. That's why the rules are different and only a lost non-believer could fail to see that. As to the effect of trying to stop Christians from seeing the movie, I can honestly say the TV commercials had gone right past me. I knew there was a movie with polar bears wearing saddles, but that's as far as it went, and I had never heard of Philip Pullman or his books. Thanks Catholic League! In return, please enjoy a Take the Red Pill Award.
The Take the Red Pill Award goes to the mobs of Khartoum who demanded the execution of a teacher who allowed her students to name a teddy bear "Mohammed." The teacher was Gillian Gibbons, a British woman teaching at a school in Khartoum with a mix of Muslim and Christian students (though it seems referring to elementary school students as Muslims or Christians is like referring to them as Socialists or Libertarians --- their understanding will be about the same). OK, maybe she should have guessed using the name of their prophet would get Muslims insulted, and she sure should have known they take their insults very seriously, apparently assuming Mohammed has a delicate ego and needs protecting. I could give the award to the Sudanese government for convicting her for insulting Islam regardless of the punishment, and certainly six months in jail and 40 lashes is in Red Pill territory, assuming they believe this stuff and weren't just keeping the masses happy. However, at least they weren't trying to to execute her. Then again, in Sudan, it's hard to believe a big demonstration/mob could form without government approval. So OK, the men in the government can share the award with the men in the street.
Behind the scenes at the forum
December 2
Better late than never I suppose. I'm finally getting to writing about the forum for DFL senate candidates put on by my senate district last Tuesday. There were some bloggers there, though I don't know who except I don't hate America. There was an article in the Star Tribune. First, since most media either didn't mention who put on the forum or got it wrong, I want to make a point of saying it was volunteers from the DFL in SD62 (state senate district 62, which is the eastern part of south Minneapolis). We put up the money and put in a bunch of work, and lots people helped, so darn it I want us to get some credit. I admit to being flattered when the state party chair, Brian Melendez, who also moderated, said it was so well organized he couldn't believe it was being done by Democrats. Maybe he would said that regardless, but we did try to get every detail down.
You might think that being involved means I have more detail to offer on just what was said and what happened among those on stage. You would be wrong. One of my parts, besides picking things up and putting them somewhere else, was helping sort through audience questions. We had some to get started until we could pick from among submitted questions, and as a consequence of going through them I didn't hear the opening statements or answers to the first questions. Maybe being on a stage and behind a curtain felt like a brief return to my theatrical days, but I actually found out what the candidates said early on by reading the linked reports. I just listened to their voices, which I recognize by now, to know who was speaking and about where they were.
I didn't see the audience reaction, but I heard it. "I don't hate America" noted the big reaction for Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer and others mentioned they thought he did well, but I think I put up a mental block. I heard the huge applause he got during introductions, which told me not that he was doing well --- too soon for that --- but that he did best at getting his supporters there, just like when I hear differing reactions to candidates at the televised presidential debates. That caused me to mentally damper the reactions to him, though I have no problem with it if his campaign was a big reason we got a good turnout.
An interesting reaction I've noticed is that Franken, though being the one who is well known and widely despised by Republicans, is portrayed as one of the moderates. That seems to be the story developing, that Franken and Ciresi are the moderates while Nelson-Pallmeyer and Cohen are the progressives. I think there is a bit more moderation from Ciresi, but I don't think that's true of Franken. He seemed more detailed in his answers, more aware of the nuances of issues, and as far as I can tell they all keep coming down in the same place, except perhaps with single-payer health care. Ciresi isn't for it, Cohen and Nelson-Pallmeyer are for implementing it right away, and Franken seems in the middle since he wants to mandate that the states have discretion in how they achieve universal insurance, but they have to do it and they have to have a single-payer system for children. I've heard him argue on his radio show that the public won't accept single-payer right away because they've learned not to trust the government to handle things after decades of conservative propaganda and enormous failures with everything the Republicans touch. He has a point. If single-payer works for children, and we already have it in Medicare, it will make no sense even to many conservatives to protect insurance companies when it comes to working adults.
Though the Star Tribune article mentioned candidates throwing elbows, I didn't hear much of that, with a repeat of the caveat that I was working on picking more questions much of the time. My ears perked up when Franken started an answer by saying "I actually understood the question." It turned out he was answering the question about having another 911 commission. We had a bunch of questions about 911, some of which clearly came from people who willing to believe one of the conspiracy theories about it, that the government knew and let it happen, and that the Bush administration actually carried it out (can anyone really see those fools carrying out anything more complex than a smear campaign?). Nonetheless, I've heard of polls showing maybe a quarter of the public believes these theories, and we tried to pick representative questions. We picked a reasonable question, whether there should be another commission. Even those of us with no doubt that Al Qaida was the culprit and the government didn't know can get behind another commission. Contrast 911 with Pearl Harbor: Bush took about a year and a half to appoint a commission, and then did so under political pressure, whereas FDR about a Pearl Harbor commission in about a week, and he cooperated with it rather than fighting it every step, like Bush. No wonder it was fertile ground for conspiracies. I'll disclose that I agree with Franken, that the bushies bungled everything that might have stopped the attack, and then covered up the bungling. Anyway, Ciresi talked about Iraq, clearly not getting the question at all, which is a bit disturbing considering how many people care passionately about it. Franken had I thought one of his best moments, talking about how the first commission was compromised and another was needed, and admitting people have a right to be suspicious, even though he didn't Al Qaida did it. Cohen and Nelson-Pallmeyer didn't address the issue head on, leaving me to wonder if they got it.
I admit surprise at getting several questions about how the candidates would appeal outside the Twin Cities, or how they would beat Norm Coleman. A couple were phrased almost precisely the same, which made me suspicious that someone was planting them, though as I think about it now, I wonder if those were reporters. Those are reporter-sort of questions, not voter questions. We decided the vast majority would want to hear about issues, not campaign strategy, and they would prefer to hear their own concerns addressed rather than asking strategic questions about appealing to people not present.
A few other observations, some of which may not be any surprise: There was at least a great a concern about avoiding war with Iran and doing something about Iraq. This being a DFL crowd, it wasn't an issue of whether attacking Iran is a good idea, but how to stop the neocon nutcases in DC. On another issue, though you might think from the Republican presidential debates that immigration is one of the biggest issues of the moment, but there were no questions about it. In fact, trying to get the questions sorted and picked before the moderator ran out, we were most of the way through before I noticed, and no one else noticed until I mentioned it. Immigration was mentioned by the candidates, I think by Ciresi, and I think in response to a question on gay rights. Ciresi said, and I think he's right, that immigration will be a bigger wedge issue this election than anything else. I haven't covered immigration at all in this blog, but I'm wondering if my 3G quotes archive will have to become 3G-I.
