What.

Why is the city of Montgomery condemning the property of African-Americans along a civil rights trail?

Over the last decade or so, dozens—perhaps hundreds—of homes in Montgomery have been declared blighted and razed in a similar manner. The owners tend to be disproportionately poor and black, and with little means to fight back. And here's the kicker: Many of the homes fall along a federally funded civil rights trail in the neighborhood where Rosa Parks lived. Activists say the weird pattern may not be coincidence. (...)

Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange didn't respond to my request for an interview, but he has insisted in other outlets that the reaction from Jones, Beito, and other critics is overblown. "I want property owners to act responsibly," Strange told an Atlanta Fox News affiliate last month. "If they don't care about their property then I want them to sell it to somebody that does care."

And yet one city resident, Jimmy McCall, was in the process of building a home when the city declared his property a public nuisance in 2008. When the city said the construction wasn't moving fast enough, McCall got restraining orders from both state and federal courts to prevent the city from destroying the building. The city tore it down anyway, then sent McCall a bill for the destruction. McCall won a court judgment for damages. The city is appealing.

Jim Peera, an Atlanta real estate developer, fought the city for six years over eight acres of low-income housing he owned that the city declared a public nuisance. After he won two court victories, two of his buildings mysteriously caught fire. He says the fire department never investigated, though a city official publicly suggested Peera set the fires himself to collect insurance. Peera eventually broke down and sold his land rather than fight the city's appeals. The property now belongs to Summit Housing Group, one of the country's largest developers of subsidized housing. Mayor Strange told ABC News last month that the city of Montgomery's involvement with these properties ends once the rubble is cleared—that the city isn't taking land from residents and selling it to developers. But in Peera's case, the city of Montgomery, not Summit, wrote the check for his land. (...)

Jim Peera filed an open records request for all of Montgomery's demolitions in 2008, then plotted them on a map, which he presented at a rally earlier this month sponsored by the libertarian public interest firm the Institute for Justice. The first thing you notice about Peera's map is that the vast majority of 2008 demolitions were west of Court Street, a part of the city that's mostly black. Within this area, the demolitions seem to fall rather consistently along the Selma to Montgomery Trail route. Hurst speculates that the city is trying to condemn and seize properties along the trail instead of buying them at fair market value—as eminent domain would require. I wasn't able to substantiate that claim (and short of a smoking gun document, I'm not sure how I could). But even if the demolitions are more generally about keeping eyesores out of a tourist area, it's hard to ignore the context: The city of Montgomery is destroying the homes of low-income, African-American residents along a trail commissioned to celebrate the civil rights movement.

"Vanguard?"

I'm reading discussions about the idea of a communist "vanguard" for the working class, and trying to sort out my feelings about the whole thing.

The bare bones idea seems to be that you can't wait for a group of people who've been marginalized, denied educational opportunities, and denied opportunity for political expression to figure out how to start a revolution and then do it effectively (since all that crap piled on them seems aimed at preventing precisely that). The solution some people have come up with (if I'm understanding what I'm reading correctly) is that what's needed is for a "vanguard" of intellectual working-class-allies to agitate the working class, get them all riled up and carve out some room for them to express themselves and start exercising the power they were always told they didn't have or deserve.

This sounds fairly reasonable, especially because it's speaking to the part of me that gets very frustrated with low-income self-identified conservatives who repeatedly vote against their own self-interest (oddly, in the name of protecting the sanctity of self-interest itself). However, I feel like I have to check that part of me. That part of me also says that these low-income self-destructive conservatives are obviously too stupid to know what's good for them, and clearly a bunch of educated elites like me (since, though it seems odd to me, an education is kind of an "elite" quality, for good or ill) to come in and take their whole lives and all their problems out of their hands so that someone who knows what to do can make it all better.

How fucking disempowering is that logic? That's why I resist it. If I look at people who disagree with me as though they must be saved from their own decisions, I stop being the person who's trying to help them realize their own power.

Seems to me that's the power and the danger of the "vanguard" notion as well. Obviously not all corners of middle- or working- or lower-class society are going to be class-conscious enough (or have the energy to spare, or have safe enough conditions, though those are obstacles I don't see mentioned much in leftist discussions) to go out and kick patriarchal classist capitalist ass. Obviously those people who have a better idea should lend those skills to something useful instead of using them to further their own power.

But they can use this to further their own power. We've seen this with TEA Parties organized by multi-billion dollar insurance companies that are agitating less-conscious working-class people to give their power over from working for their own welfare to working for the welfare of their oh-so-helpful-and-sympathetic new corporate masters. That's the really nasty thing about astroturf organizing like this; it uses people's suffering and gets them all riled up to diffuse that bitterness and hope in a direction that accomplishes nothing and is therefore "safe" for the companies holding their leashes.

How to organize without doing that? How is it possible to get people interested in a cause without taking their energy and directing it as a commodity belonging to whomever can take it?

I think it comes down to something I learned in a women's empowerment circle (and yes, I attended one for a little while, and still would be if my work schedule allowed it). There is a huge difference between offering support to someone while she works through her problems, and taking her problems out of her hands to solve them for her. One of these affirms her right and ability to control her own life, and one undermines it even as it attempts to assist.

It seems to me there's a place for a "vanguard," but the term makes it sound cohesive enough to worry me. The only reason I'm even conceding the term is that--should the seemingly-impossible occur and a revolution come or... or something--these people will have power. They will. Since I am firmly against power being wielded in secret (since power that is openly named can be more easily held accountable), naming this kinda-sorta-group of people is okay with me right now.

I'm just trying to sort out my feelings on the whole thing, and trying to figure out just what it is that people are advocating when they talk about a "vanguard." I guess it might just be like any "ally" out there. White allies to POC are good, but shouldn't use their advantages to take over anti-racist work. Same with hetero and cis allies to LGBT people, men who support feminism, etc.

Maybe this is a case of an archaic word being jammed into a discussion which has moved beyond it. I'm still not sure what I think; I'm just rambling here and hoping it goes somewhere useful.

Iran.

People are asking me why I haven't put something up about Iran yet. I've been concentrating on Twitter (check the #IranElection tag) and Facebook, but I need to get my blog, too.

Dowlat-eh Koodeta, Estefa, Estefa!

Sad to say, I found out about this when it tricked through to my LJ friends page and on the news (which I can now watch on TV). This means I was days behind, because all the news was on Twitter. The Iranian election results--a wide margin of victory for the incumbent, with every geographic region voting in the identical proportions--are shady as fuck.

Iranians are not. Fucking. Happy.

There is a really excellent account over here, for those of you who haven't heard this from the news or Neil Gaiman's Twitter page.

In short: Once people started getting upset, the Iranian government began shutting down communication infrastructure. They blocked cell phone service, they blocked major websites, removed protest videos from Youtube, and lauched DDoS attacks on protesting websites to shut them up. The Iranians are getting around it, and doing their best to make themselves heard.

Yesterday there were proxies being circulated to help Iranians get around government bans, and hackers were launching DDoS attacks of their own on pro-Ahmadinejad sites so that the protesters could control the flow of information. They seem to have done a decent job of keeping Ahmadinejad's propaganda to the outside at a minimum, and Obama has made a statement that while the USA respects Iranian sovereignty and their right to choose their own leaders, he is disturbed by the violence he's seen and supports the right of the Iranian people to have their voices heard.

This is being called a revolution, and it isn't ours; it isn't even about us. Making it about us is the worst thing we can possibly do. The best thing we can do is make it clear that these people are heard, that efforts at silencing them are not going to work. It's far too late.

It's a little thing to do, and I don't know if it helps. But it makes me feel good, so I'll be doing it. People are wearing green as a show of solidarity with the revolutionaries, as a simple acknowledgment that we heard them and we know they're there. I don't get out much, so I don't think anyone will even see me. But someone might see you.

And in case there was any confusion, How to Tell Who the Good Guys Are.

Debunking Canadian Health Care Myths

Link is here, but you know what they say. People who aren't basing their decisions on facts can't be dissuaded with facts.

However, I still thought this was a good article. This is the trope I always hear from people who care less about numbers and facts than they do about adhering with all proper fanaticism to their superstitious devotion to the unregulated market.

Myth: Canada's government decides who gets health care and when they get it.

While HMOs and other private medical insurers in the U.S. do indeed make such decisions, the only people in Canada to do so are physicians. In Canada, the government has absolutely no say in who gets care or how they get it. Medical decisions are left entirely up to doctors, as they should be.

There are no requirements for pre-authorization whatsoever. If your family doctor says you need an MRI, you get one. In the U.S., if an insurance administrator says you are not getting an MRI, you don't get one no matter what your doctor thinks - unless, of course, you have the money to cover the cost.

And you know what? Here's why private health insurance companies are scared of what it will mean to be competing with a government health care plan (because you can bet they're not opposing it for your benefit):

Myth: Canada's health care system is a cumbersome bureaucracy.

The U.S. has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world. More than 31 percent of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc. The provincial single-payer system in Canada operates with just a 1 percent overhead. Think about it. It is not necessary to spend a huge amount of money to decide who gets care and who doesn't when everybody is covered.

The last thing private insurance companies want is for our health care system to look like Canada's. And do you know why? Because it'll put them out of business. Because they don't love "free market" competition as much as they persuade their prostrate worshipers to love it.

But that seems to be how it goes. That's where blind faith in the "invisible hand" of the "free market" gets you. It gets you working your ass off to help people screw you over, all the while congratulating them on managing to be so much more worthy of your money (or your rights, in many cases) than you are.

Death Penalty Ban in New Mexico

So, in New Mexico, there's a death penalty discussion going on.

The fact that the death penalty system is one of the most glaring and most tragic examples of institutionalized racism around wasn't enough to get people talking about getting rid of it. The fact that it reduces reporting of sex crimes by discouraging molestation victims from turning in criminals, and provides an incentive to rapists to kill their victims isn't enough to bother too many folk. No, the problem is that it's expensive!

Many of the costs are built into the system and cannot be changed. They include the costs of specially trained defense lawyers, mental health and mitigation experts, and a longer course of appeals. And there are the many added costs of housing death row prisoners.

"As long as you have a death penalty system, you'll have regular expenses. And those expenses aren't getting cheaper," Dieter said. "There's a maintenance cost to the death penalty."

Death penalty cases can have an outsized effect in smaller counties, which tend to have smaller budgets. There, a case can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars -- close to $1 million if the issues are particularly complicated -- and force officials to cut programs to fund the prosecution.

So... merely having the option of the death penalty is a drain on other programs that aren't oriented toward killing people. But the death penalty is seldom even used! So it's not even good for killing people. So it's a ridiculous and farcical miscarriage of justice at worst, and a waste of money at best.

Sounds great!

The governor of New Mexico is considering whether he's going to sign or veto a death penalty ban that's going to come across his desk. Evidently in previous years he'd have vetoed it flat-out, but now he's looking for an idea of public opinion. There's a poll at The Albuquerque Journal right now, and unfortunately the people who believe Richardson should not sign the ban are winning.

I know that I haven't historically made a big issue out of the death penalty in the past, but this really is important. To recap! Capital punishment is a grossly-racist establishment overall, disproportionately condemning non-whites. Capital punishment doesn't help victims because it doesn't act as a deterrent. What it does do is harm the victims of many crimes of exploitation (such as child rape) for the sake of feeding a need to punish--even at the expense of those victimized. And it's expensive as hell, for a program that doesn't do what it's intended to do (provide a deterrent to violent crime).

It doesn't do what it's supposed to do. Instead it does all this other terrible shit. Encourage Gov. Richardson to sign the death penalty ban in his state. The legislature already passed it, so please tell him not to negate their work. There's some analysis suggesting that Gov. Richardson might listen. Let's just vote to be safe.

Thanks for your time, and hopefully we can get some work done here.

-Ashley

Repost! Important things ahead!

Send Your Comments on the “Conscience” Rule to HHS

from Feministe by Cara

I recently wrote that President Obama was planning to overturn Bush’s last minute HHS “conscience” rule that prevents health care providers from “discriminating” against all levels of anti-choice employees who literally refuse to do their jobs, and is intended to not only restrict access to abortion, but also birth control and reproductive health care in general.

Well he’s gone and begun the process to do exactly that. The 30 day comment period for the public to send in their thoughts on the proposed change opened earlier this week. Which means that just like it was important for you to send in your opposition to the rule when Bush proposed it, it’s important to send in your support for its repeal now. Not because we have reason to believe that Obama will back out of his promise, but because pro-choice causes, women’s health, and access to services needs all of the public support that they can get.

Click here to send your comments to the Department of Health and Human Services. And then, make sure to spread the word and ensure that all of your friends do the same!

Reviewing Activist Legislators-from-the-Bench

So. I hear a lot about "activist judges" who "legislate from the bench" and take away the right of The People to take charge of the laws of the land. "Activist" judges are gonna be the downfall of our system if you ask the right people.

Trouble is, I'm not sure what these people want the judiciary to do instead.

So let's go through a very basic remedial civics lesson. There are people I know online who have a much deeper knowledge base than I've got at my command, so if they come in and say I'm wrong, you should listen to them. But based on what I learned in high school, this is how things work. The legislature (that means the House of Representatives and the Senate) makes law. The executive branch (that's the President and the people working under him) enforce the law. The judicial branch (courts and judges) interprets law and legal precedents. Since 1803 this has included doublechecking them against the Constitution to make sure they're okay laws in the first place. This, along with what scraps I remember from my high school government course, is the core of my knowledge here.

Now let's take an example and see what happens. Let's say a state legislature makes a law stating that... I dunno. That black people can fairly be barred from certain establishments, that keeping whites and blacks separate is okay as long as their "rightful" places are allegedly equal. We'll call these "Jim Crow" laws. That's a catchy name. Kinda reminds you of one of those adorable blackface performers, doesn't it? Yeah. Jim Crow laws.

So you've got state executive branches enforcing these laws, because that's what they do. Eventually, though, someone gets upset with the Jim Crow laws. Let's call him Brown. He sues, say, a board of education in... say... Kansas, because he doesn't believe that separate can ever be equal (which would have to be true for the Jim Crow laws to be Constitutional). Maybe he gets some other people to join in the suit, but that's not important. He loses, but he appeals. He appeals and appeals and eventually he gets to the US Supreme Court.

Now the court is faced with a decision. A case has been brought before them, and they either have to rule in favor of the board of education or they have to rule in favor of Brown. Now, the former choice means reaffirming that Jim Crow laws are Constitutional. The latter choice means ruling that Jim Crow laws are not Constitutional after all... at which point they have to strike down the law.

What to do?

Well, let's say after some judicial review (which is what legal scholars call the right of the courts to interpret the Constitution and evaluate other laws), they decide that separate can indeed not be equal, which means they must sadly annul the Jim Crow laws by dint o'violatin' the greater law o'the land.

The principle allowing school segregation is ruled Unconstitutional. Suddenly school districts are banned from separating blacks and whites into different schools. Wait, wait, wait. Did the Supreme Court just make a ban? Isn't that making law from the bench?

Legal scholars say no, because striking down a law is not the same as making law. These two are only confusable if you conflate changing the law with creating law. Of course judicial review may require changing the law. What good is it to have the power to evaluate the Constitutionality of laws if you can't annul them upon deciding they're bad?

Most people who dislike the outcome of a specific instance of judicial review will refer to the court's behavior as "judicial activism" instead. Why? Because "activism" makes it sound like they're stepping up and actively reaching beyond the power they were given. However, they only do this in the case of decisions they don't like. There's good reason for this.

Most citizens and pundits who believe that something should be legal (whether it already is or not) believe that their desired outcome will be Constitutional. Otherwise they wouldn't want it to be done. This means that if a decision is made that favors their outcome, it falls in line with their own definition of "what the Constitution says." As a result, this is not judicial "activism," it's judicial "review." However, if it violates their personal definition of "what the Constitution says," in their minds the judges have stepped out of line. These are "activist" judges.

Need more proof that "activist judge" just means "judge I don't agree with?" Here's a FindLaw article that I feel puts it fairly well, because it mentions such accusations coming from both conservatives and liberals on their respective "pet issues."

Most prominently, the Court's conservatives attack judicial activism in the service of reproductive rights, gay rights, and church-state separation while practicing judicial activism in the service of states' rights, color-blindness, and associational freedom. And the liberals practice judicial activism in cases involving the first set of issues while attacking it in cases involving the second set.

So why are so many people so afraid of judges "legislating from the bench," a phrase that we've basically established is code for "changing the legal code?"

The big problem for many people is that judiciary aren't elected, they're appointed. This sounds very scary until you think about why this was intended by the founders. The first was an old (and now evidently-unpopular) assumption that legal scholars know more about the Constitution than laymen. This meant to the founders that being unpopular with laymen should not be enough to jeopardize a judge's career (and thus influence his decisions). It actually helps to remove politics from the decision-making of the judiciary by freeing them from the necessity of pleasing their constituents.

Now, you and I are both constituents, and we like to be pleased. I feel you there. Totally. But if a legal expert is afraid to honestly evaluate the Constitution simply because the decision may be so unpopular with laymen that he/she could lose his/her job, those decisions will be compromised. Look at how easy it is to sway legislators. Do you want the people interpreting the Constitution to be relying on lobbyists and PACs to keep their jobs?

People who favor the castration of the judiciary are generally in two camps. One is the populist "only elected officials should make law" camp. These people don't want the judiciary having anything to do with creating or annulling laws, since laws should (by their view) be decided by the legislature. There are governments that do this. In socialist law as I understand it, the interpretation of the law is given over to the legislature. Oddly enough China does this to retain more government control of legal interpretation rather than giving more to "the people," but that's neither here nor there. I think.

The point is that with this philosophy, it seems to me that the courts have the whole process of judicial review taken from them. They can interpret the law, but not to the extent that they start comparing laws to each other. Their job is to decide who has broken the law (as long as they don't decide that anyone in the government is at fault). Oddly enough, this seems to leave them in charge only of enforcing law, which, to me, would seem to be executive territory in our American system. So with this model, I'm not entirely sure what we'd need the judiciary for at all.

The other side of this that I've encountered is the "executive privilege" camp. See, back in US v. Nixon, the Supreme Court decided that it couldn't make the executive branch do things it didn't want to do, like disclose information in response to a subpoena. The Bush administration has invoked executive privilege a lot so they can avoid complying with legislative investigations, which creates a hierarchy among the three branches. Three guesses who comes out on top. This also makes the judiciary redundant for obvious reasons. Their job is to decide who has broken the law, but if their rulings carry little force against an entire branch of the government...

Either way, I fail to see how you can justify the existence of a judicial branch without the power of judicial review. Call it "activism" when you don't like the decision, but we need them doing it or we don't need them at all.

Like I said at the start. I'm not sure what these people want the judiciary to do instead.

I don't think they know either.

AAA Ethics Code Changes

I was sent an email by the American Anthropological Association about proposed revisions to their ethics guidelines. Check here for specific revisions they're looking at making. Anthropologists have worked with the military before, but it's becoming a more and more pressing concern. I can't give any better a run-down than this article, so I refer you there if you're curious. I'll probably refer back to this latter article a bunch of times because it's great.

I'm just putting down my opinion on the matter.

I was very interested at first to learn about the Human Terrain System. The idea is to have experts in culture on the ground to inform the military about the people they're dealing with. On the surface this sounds fantastic, and my first thought was, "Great. Maybe now our military can stop acting like total ignorant boobs everywhere they go. They'll have someone around who actually cares about understanding culture. What could go wrong?"

Well, I hadn't thought it through.

First off, anthropology started out as a component of colonialism. Imperialists brought experts on the local savages with them, so that they could better subjugate them. I assumed this kind of thing doesn't happen anymore until I realized one day into my Religions of the World 101 course that 2/3 of my classmates were there so that they could be better missionaries. That's right. They wanted to understand local religions better so they'd be more effective in supplanting local culture.

This is disrespectful. Imperialism kinda makes you a dick. I shouldn't have to point out that disrespect of one's informants (the people you're studying) is also unethical. They're helping you with your research, your career. If you can't actually give them something in return (other than the great gift of your superior culture), at least try not to hurt them.

Hurting your informants sucks for many reasons. First is obviously that it makes you a dick. You're hurting people who helped you. The second is that it hurts your field. If you give anthropologists a reputation for being dicks in a discipline that depends heavily on establishing trust with informants, you are hurting your colleagues' chances of doing research as well. If your colleagues are doing research in dangerous areas, it becomes even more important that they have the trust and esteem of their informants, because their informants are also protecting them. So you're also potentially compromising the safety of your colleagues, just because you had to go and be a dick.

The upshot of having anthropologists involved with the military is that whatever credibility anthropologists bring is going to reflect well on the military. They'll look better with us than without us, because at least for a while they'll have people around to tell them how to do stuff right. The downside of this is that their ignorance and destructiveness combined with the imperialist mode of our foreign policy makes anthropologists look worse, which means the credibility we're lending troops probably won't last forever. They'll look better for a while, but they'll drag us down and then we won't be able to do our work without building our reputation all over again.

These are all ethical considerations anthropologists have to figure out for themselves, of course. The AAA Ethics Code doesn't have rules so much as what you'd call guidelines. Each individual scholar has to decide whether their work is ethical or unethical given these guidelines, and there's always room for debate. Debate is too much fun (and far too important) to ever get rid of.

Here's another problem with working for the military: Anthropologists need the freedom (and the power) to make decisions about their own work. When an anthropologist is doing fieldwork for any entity (whether a corporation or a government or a foundation, whatever), we give up some of our autonomy. We lose a little of our room to veto things that we view as unethical. However, if we're working for some academic body or other, odds are we're working with and for other scholars who have some idea of why anthropological ethics are important.

You cannot do this as well with the military. If you're working for them, you're working for them. End of line. It's a much more authoritarian structure in which people with power command people with less. If you're a civilian anthropologist, this means you. This is a problem in any situation where you have experts under the thumb of non-experts, and most of the time it's merely annoying or counterproductive. But in the military, anthropologists can get people hurt if we don't have the ability to enforce our own ethics on our own work. As the article I mentioned above states, "Some scholars have been deeply alarmed by reports that social science work has been used by the military to figure out how to degrade or humiliate prisoners from Muslim nations."

I've already explained why hurting your informants is bad. Now I've established that the military can force you to participate in the harm of your informants. This is bad. It's bad for your ethical obligation to your informants, it's bad for your credibility as a scholar (and the credibility of everyone in your discipline), and in the end it's even bad for the military, since once they've squandered all the credibility you once had, they lose you as a resource to bolster their own poor reputation.

"But Ashley," you say. "Not all anthropologists are working in Muslim nations. This isn't just about the Middle East." Quite right. Just because Iraq is the big troublesome example doesn't mean it's the only one that matters. Any country with a foreign military presence is likely to be experiencing a great deal of political pressure. Political pressure from the military power on the local powers creates social and cultural pressure, and this causes problems with informed consent. The more social and cultural pressure your informant is under to accomodate and even obey you as a member of an occupying force, the more careful you need to be in getting their consent lest you inadvertently use your position to coerce them into doing what you want. This makes you a dick, and being a dick is generally unethical.

This means that even an anthropologist who is working with the military to ensure greater access to vaccinations and other medical services needs to be wary of whether their ties to power are pressuring their informants to do things they wouldn't do otherwise. Coercion is bad, mmkay?

I think in light of all this that work with the military is generally going to entail compromising a scholar's ethics. There are individual cases where it won't, in which case the opportunity to educate military leaders and help inform their decisions is absolutely worth taking. If anthropology can be done ethically with the US military, it's probably our responsibility as scholars to do it. However, it's so frighteningly likely that military work will compromise a scholar's ethics that I think the AAA is right to warn their people against it.

Okay. I didn't want to post any more about Sarah Palin, but this was worth a giggle.

Here's the current word around the campfire, according to this article.

Sarah Palin had a yahoo email account to avoid government transparency laws (because while she can be ordered to share the contents of her official email, any official business she does with another email is still "off the record"), which is some dodgy shit. So when "Anonymous" found out about it, someone hacked the account and posted all the content to the public web. The account was deleted after this, but if Palin deleted it all, she broke the law by destroying evidence of her first pseudo-crime.

It's shocking the number of times I've said this, but... go 4chan. You made my day again with your wacky vigilante hijinks.

(h/t rm)

Commemorating the dead... Or are we?

Here's what I believe. This is a religious belief, but one that a reading of The Funeral Casino by Alan Klima has suggested to me. When you invoke the dead, you owe them. When you use the dead for your own benefit, you must pay them back. This is a pseudo-religious, semi-philosophical entry of untrammeled rambling, so I ask you to bear with me while I ramble about stuff I'm sure I'm explaining poorly.

The examples used in The Funeral Casino: Meditation, Massacre, and Exchange with the Dead in Thailand are Thai revolutions. It's frighteningly common in Thailand for protesters (even unarmed students still in uniform) to simply be gunned down by existing government military. Of course this causes an uproar, and a new government arises by climbing up on top of the bodies of those dead students. Unfortunately, these governments don't actually make any of the changes the students cared about (and in fact they paint the students as rabblerousers or simply forget them as soon as possible), they become the kind of government the students were trying to change, and pretty soon you've got another bloody mess on your hands.

The Thai Buddhist angle on this (at least according to Klima) is that you cannot invoke the dead without owing them something. You had best be strictly and carefully commemorating them, or else you'll be profiting from their deaths and suffering. This isn't a bad thing in itself, but at that point you've gotten something and you need to give something, or you're going to get screwed badly. It may come from a seemingly unrelated situation, but Klima's assertion is that from the Thai perspective death imagery holds power. 

"Across the field of Sanam Luang is another construction from the days of the regicide: the lag muang, the city pillar, built as the magical pole around which a sorcerous power to protect the city would circulate. ... I have been told rumors that before they laid the foundation for the city pillar in stone, they dug trenches in the ground, brought young, pregnant slaves to the site, and there slashed their throats with swords and cast the corpses with their dying fetuses into the earth. It was believed, or so I am told, that the collective force of their murdered spirits would empower the pillar" (Klima 2002: 80). 

Of course this is a metaphor. I don't have to tell you that, but I wanted to stave off a flood of comments about how necromancy is bullshit and if this is the best argument Klima can offer that the dead have power you aren't buying it. The reason I mention this is that I want you to start looking for these pillars in American policy. Start looking for protective structures of pristine white stone that gain their power and sanctity from the corpses of the brutally slain. 

Start wondering where these pillars get their power, and start wondering why anyone would try to harness it. You can't control power like that. Once you let it out, death imagery runs wild. Worse still, if you invoke the dead without paying them back... bad things will happen to you. The problem with successfully paying them back is that there's no way to tell just what will settle the debt.

Klima asserts, "the moral onus and the horror of the public cadaver--its unpredictable power and its danger--is a free-floating danger once it is unleashed, irretrievably, into the public realm, providing the often unrecognized force of animation to the phantasmagoric dreams of capital culture" (Klima 2002:67). (As an aside, every time Klima uses the word "phantasmagoria" or a variant in this book, take a drink.)

This is a gross oversimplification of a book that was such a pain in the ass to read, even I don't want to read it again, and I'm pretty sure it completely changed my worldview.

It changed my worldview because now I look at the use of the September 11th attack and think, "The Bush administration got what it deserved by rotting out from the inside, and Klima basically predicted it." By invoking the victims of the attacks seven years ago, by attempting to command the power of all those images of all those corpses and videos of the moments of death, the government incurred a debt just like the Thai government did in the mid-seventies, and then again in the early nineties. They invoked corpses so that they can get use out of them and then try to forget them as quickly as possible.

How long has it been since there was a real commemoration by our government of the victims of September 11th that was not crystallizing them into means to an end? That wasn't reducing them from individual humans to a sort of vague ache in the back of our hearts that makes us run weeping to whatever cause is dangled before us?

Pulling the dead out when you need them and forgetting them when you don't? Morally reprehensible by most standards, and certainly disrespectful to the victims. However, in Klima's description of Thai Buddhism, it's also deeply imprudent from a practical standpoint. If you benefit in any way from the death of another, you owe that person for their suffering. If you don't pay that debt, an avalanche of seemingly-unrelated disasters start collapsing onto you. At least in Thailand.

Perhaps karma works differently in America, but every time I look at George W's approval ratings circling the drain, every time I see another study about rampant corruption ruining the government, every time I see the new account of our national debt, every time I see where the USD now is in relation to other currency, every time another high official is arrested, subpoenaed, fired, or "voluntarily resigns," I can't help but think of Klima's argument. I can't help but think that they don't just deserve what they're getting.

They caused it.

And that's why I'm not making a big deal out of September 11th. It has become a tool of politicians to remind us of all-too-recent fear and pain. It has become a tool to lather us up against brown people and Muslim people and foreign people in general, anybody who doesn't love America enough--even if they're Americans. It's no longer a tragedy; it's a tool. It has become a means to an end, and I don't want to involve myself in it. Strictly speaking it's probably not particularly wise of me to even be blogging about it, since in a way I'm indirectly getting blog traffic out of the whole mess.

The reason I feel it's important to say something is that I worry about people who drag out the dead again and again. If you aren't going to honor them as individuals, if you're only going to honor them as "victims," don't honor them at all. It's hard not to frame them in the context of our ill-conceived "War on Terror," but I think that the willingness of our government to do so was the beginning of a long series of crimes in these victims' names, and the beginning of a grave and profound debt that can only be erased from our government be removing those who caused it.

Let's set aside for the moment that the only practical way to stop the careening disaster that is our government is to replace as many of the cuplrits as we can. I'm talking about a religious and philosophical imperative. George W. Bush and the people holding his leash have incurred a masssive debt by unleashing the power of the images of our dead, and until we remove them from power--power they hold because of their willingness to exploit the corpses of September 11th--Klima would suggest that we will all pay.

Now, it's a fine line whether I just used the dead myself. I'm trying to keep a careful balance here between mentioning them and using them, between criticizing Bush for using them and merely using them myself for a different purpose. But I think that we cannot pay the dead for their deaths, and adding more debt by invoking their faces, bodies, voices, and blood every time the government thinks we aren't scared enough yet is only making the debt worse.

And we need to stop.

The tough question is, "Well, Ashley, what do you think we should do, huh? You don't want us to remember them this way or that way, mention them in this context or that. What should we do, if you're so damned smart in the ways of cosmic consequence?"

This is an important question to ask, and it'd be easier to answer if they had actually deliberately laid their lives on the line and died for anything, other than as victims of malice at the hands of those consumed with despair and hatred. It'd be a clue to what they wanted by their deaths, and how the debt can be paid.

I think the closest thing we can discern is that the mistakes that caused their deaths ought not be repeated. I'm not talking about shoddy airport security, or the folly of trusting dark-skinned foreigners. I'm talking about generating and sustaining hate. Europe and the United States' imperialist foreign policy generated hate out of ignorance (and for our own benefit), so terrorists sustained it out of bitterness (and for their own benefit). 

That's what has to stop. Working to curb the kind of greed and ignorance and bitterness and violence that causes innocent people to die will go further to pay the debt than more greed (for oil), more ignorance (hatred of Muslims) and more bitterness (caused by the United States' disrespect for the new Iraqi government).

Our government is only digging the hole deeper, because they are not paying attention to that debt. They only want the dead to be remembered when it gives them power, not when it lends power to anyone else. It's why the Republican National Convention aired so much footage from September 11th and its aftermath, even though they would never allow anyone else to use the dead in such a way. They want to unleash the power of death imagery, but they think they can control it. 

That has never worked. And it isn't working. They're only making things worse, and until we take from them the power that allows them a perceived monopoly on the use of our dead, they will continue to make things worse. 

The Thai governments tried this, too. They used the deaths to get into power and to make a lot of changes, and a lot of people benefited from this. You could say that everybody benefited, but no one paid except the dead and the loved ones they left behind. They were denied compensation, aid, and attention, as their end of the loss was a messy and unpleasant loose end for a government that wanted only to move forward: to benefit and forget.

For a few days in May 1992, the Black May dead were objects of intense value, traded over the surface of the earth and right on the killing ground. The evocative power of their images displaced the military and ushered in a democratic government, and they gave to the public sphere a powerful argument for the need of media freedoms, not to mention generating in their death great profits all around. But after only three years, the dead are of little interest or value, and those who profited the most from the death can now say of those who lost the most that they are avaricious and improper in their desire to benefit from the deaths. "Don't uses corpses for your own gain." (Klima 2002:232).

This should also remind you of America's response to Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters in recent memory (like the flooding in the midwest). Many politicians wailed appropriately loudly, but few did anything tangible to assist. Most made the problem worse by using it as a photo op to illustrate the evils of everyone else in the government, diverting local resources from dealing with the problem. Politicians build their power on the dead and then forget the dead as quickly as possible, which is why when you hear about Katrina you hear about refugees and property damage, not necessarily about the dead people. Many profited from the dead and forgot them as soon as they possibly could. Now Katrina survivors (and possibly the survivors of midwestern floods) are commonly viewed by respectable citizens in the cities where they took refuge as greedy opportunists using the corpses of their dead for their own gain. 

Have these politicians paid a price? When their debt to Katrina victims (their immediate willingness to display the tragedy and its corpses to tout their own virtues versus their opponents) comes due, what happens next? Unless I hear about some politicians coming out and saying, "I would like to thank the victims of these disasters for their suffering and their deaths because their timely corpses lent the energy and power for X or Y endeavor that I wanted to accomplish," I'm going to seriously doubt they'll ever pay up. 

No one should use the dead. It isn't just sleazy and disrespectful. It'll cost you, particularly if you don't give a nod back and acknowledge what you've gotten as a (direct or indirect) result of their sacrifice. If you're going to build a pillar on the corpses of the slain, don't whitewash it for eyes or minds and forget the corpses as soon as it's expedient, as soon as you've gotten what you wanted.

If you must mention the dead, don't gain from them. Don't take: give. Give respect, give honor, and give love. Don't expect a reward for it, because any power that comes to you from them cannot be controlled by anyone, and comes with a terrible price.

Freedom of Assembly at the Republican... Assembly

Massive police raids on suspected protestors in Minneapolis

Several of those who were arrested are being represented by Bruce Nestor, the President of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers' Guild. Nestor said that last night's raid involved a meeting of a group calling itself the "RNC Welcoming Committee", and that this morning's raids appeared to target members of "Food Not Bombs," which he described as an anti-war, anti-authoritarian protest group. There was not a single act of violence or illegality that has taken place, Nestor said. Instead, the raids were purely anticipatory in nature, and clearly designed to frighten people contemplating taking part in any unauthorized protests.

Nestor indicated that only 2 or 3 of the 50 individuals who were handcuffed this morning at the 2 houses were actually arrested and charged with a crime, and the crime they were charged with is "conspiracy to commit riot." Nestor, who has practiced law in Minnesota for many years, said that he had never before heard of that statute being used for anything, and that its parameters are so self-evidently vague, designed to allow pre-emeptive arrests of those who are peacefully protesting, that it is almost certainly unconstitutional, though because it had never been invoked (until now), its constitutionality had not been tested.

Federal government involved in raids on protesters

So here we have a massive assault led by Federal Government law enforcement agencies on left-wing dissidents and protesters who have committed no acts of violence or illegality whatsoever, preceded by months-long espionage efforts to track what they do. And as extraordinary as that conduct is, more extraordinary is the fact that they have received virtually no attention from the national media and little outcry from anyone. And it's not difficult to see why. As the recent "overhaul" of the 30-year-old FISA law illustrated -- preceded by the endless expansion of surveillance state powers, justified first by the War on Drugs and then the War on Terror -- we've essentially decided that we want our Government to spy on us without limits. There is literally no police power that the state can exercise that will cause much protest from the political and media class and, therefore, from the citizenry.

Beyond that, there is a widespread sense that the targets of these raids deserve what they get, even if nothing they've done is remotely illegal. We love to proclaim how much we cherish our "freedoms" in the abstract, but we despise those who actually exercise them. The Constitution, right in the very First Amendment, protects free speech and free assembly precisely because those liberties are central to a healthy republic -- but we've decided that anyone who would actually express truly dissident views or do anything other than sit meekly and quietly in their homes are dirty trouble-makers up to no good, and it's therefore probably for the best if our Government keeps them in check, spies on them, even gets a little rough with them.

After all, if you don't want the FBI spying on you, or the Police surrounding and then invading your home with rifles and seizing your computers, there's a very simple solution: don't protest the Government.

This is why we need judicial review. I know there are people on my friends list who don't like the idea of the Judicial branch "making law," since that's the Legislative branch's job. However, the Judicial branch is here to evaluate laws that are brought to them and determine whether they're Constitutional or not. If they're not, the Judicial branch has the legitimate power to strike down those laws, effectively changing our legal code by ruling that certain parts of it should never have been passed.

By what understanding of the First Amendment is this crap okay? Our courts had better do their damned jobs here, even if it gets them labelled "activist judges." This shit, now that it's been invoked and can be challenged, needs to be thrown out and America needs to take a good hard look at itself, wondering how we let ourselves come to this.

Oh God DHHS no.

The Bush administration has officially proposed a rule to the Dept. of Health and Human Services that doctors can refuse to treat patients if their consciences protest for any reason. Basically if they dunwanna, you don't get medical care.

Send an email to consciencecomment@hhs.gov, with the subject line "provider conscience regulation." They are publishing these comments right now, because it is in a 30-day public comment period. This is an absolute emergency. Don't let the misogynist religious whackos be the only voices DHHS hears. Say something. Just send an email. Otherwise, after thirty days, this rule goes into effect.

Really. It does. This is going to happen. Please tell them you are NOT falling for this bullshit, and that you are NOT going to let fundamentalists speak for you. Forward this to anyone you know who doesn't believe that women should be forced to breed on anyone's timeline or by anybody's rules but their own.

Here's what I'm saying.

Doctors do and always have had the freedom of conscience to choose not to provide certain kinds of medical care. This is the choice they make in medical school when they're investing tens of thousands of dollars to become educated and licensed. If they are not ready to fulfill the obligations of their chosen profession, then just like anyone else who doesn't want to do their job? They shouldn't be doing it. Doctors need to provide patients with medical care. End of line.

Here's the problem. Doctors should not be the ones to decide which patients "deserve" the standard of care they are coming to receive. Those who say that this ruling is not about denying women access to birth control are either gullible or lying. Here's how I know it's about denying women health care.

One: This is clearly about allowing doctors to refuse to perform abortions for patients who request them. Considering that 87% of counties in America don't have an abortion provider, this puts rural women at a serious disadvantage when they need medical care. Why does this statistic matter? Because if the one doctor within reasonable range of a woman in need refuses to treat her, she may not be able to find another, particularly considering that this proposed rule does not include provisions for women who have been refused. Not only can her doctor say no, but he is not obligated to refer her to a physician willing to provide her with an abortion.

Two: This becomes truly scary when you think about the fact that DHHS wants to change the definition of "life" to "at fertilization" rather than "at implantation." These are both pretty damned arbitrary classifications considering that a fertilized egg is less of an independent organism than the gut flora living in my large intestine (and which I am allowed to slaughter at will with every antibiotic treatment I undergo). Why is this scary? See point three.

Three: Non-barrier methods (basically anything but a diaphragm or condom) works at least partly by preventing implantation. It prevents the fertilized egg from sticking to the inside of your uterus so that it never has a chance to start getting nourishment from your body. It's flushed out like any unfertilized egg, and your body does this on its own. What this means is that any non-barrier method that interferes with implantation will be classified as an abortion, giving doctors a perfect airtight legal excuse to deny women these prescriptions because a moral imperative the patient obviously does not share (or she wouldn't be asking for contraceptives) dictates that she doesn't need contraceptives after all.

If you are not ready to provide the services of a physician, don't become one. If it's against my religion to dance in public, I should not dream of Broadway. If I believe that rum is the devil's poison and that Prohibition should be re-established, I should not aspire to become a bartender. If it's against my conscience to provide medical advice or procedures to certain people or for certain reasons, I should not dream of a medical career.

Medicine is about service. You are doing a disservice to half the population of this country by codifying an appalling belief: that women's LIVES are not as important as the FEELINGS of doctors who should never have gone into that practice in the first place.

And yes, this is about a woman's life versus the feelings of her doctor. If a woman cannot control her reproduction, she cannot control any aspect of her life. If a woman cannot delay pregnancy she is at a serious disadvantage compared to a man when it comes to getting an education, maintaining a career, and supporting herself. If at any time she could be railroaded into halting her life to bear a child at someone else's will, then her life as she know it can end at any time.

Anyone reading this, I'm begging you to think about this. Think about what effect having a child really has on women. In third world countries early pregnancy and single motherhood are one of the chief reasons that women and their children are economically and socially the biggest victims of poverty, disease, and hunger. Do you want that here? Are you ready for those consequences? Because that's where we're going.

If you love even a single woman in your life--mother, sister, daughter, friend, lover, anything--please protect her. Say no to this. Treat them like human beings, with wills and lives of their own. Let the women you love control their reproduction, instead of breeding on someone else's timeline and by someone else's rules. You owe them that much.

The right to choose. Women may choose to bear children from these "surprise pregnancies," and they may choose to delay childbearing. But they have the right to choose for themselves on their own terms.

Women in the Military

Oh my various gods. You have to be kidding me.

So I was surfing the internet today, and ran across this article by Ann Wright. As the end of the article states, "US Army Reserve Colonel, Retired, Ann Wright is a 29-year veteran of the Army and Army Reserves. She was also a US diplomat in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned from the US Department of State in March 19, 2003 in opposition to the Iraq War."

And she wrote one doozy of an article. Holy hell.

Is There an Army Cover Up of Rape and Murder of Women Soldiers?

The gist of the article is that a number of factors--each disturbing on its own--are adding up to something ugly. If one in three women who join the US military will be sexually assaulted by the men with whom they serve, if "suicides" are often clearly anything but (particularly post-rape), and if a large percentage of women's deaths are being attributed to this nebulous ruling... what the hell is going on?

I'll put some excerpts in here, but the article itself obviously carries a trigger warning. If you don't really want to know why these "suicide" investigations are suspect, I suggest you steer clear.

But, now, even more alarming, are deaths of women soldiers in Iraq, and in the United States, following rape. The military has characterized each of the deaths of women who were first sexually assaulted as deaths from “non-combat related injuries,” and then added “suicide.” Yet, the families of the women whom the military has declared to have committed suicide, strongly dispute the findings and are calling for further investigations into the deaths of their daughters. Specific US Army units and certain US military bases in Iraq have an inordinate number of women soldiers who have died of “non-combat related injuries,” with several identified as “suicides.”

94 US military women in the military have died in Iraq or during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). 12 US Civilian women have been killed in OIF. 13 US military women have been killed in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). 12 US Civilian women have been killed in Afghanistan.

Of the 94 US military women who died in Iraq or in OIF, the military says 36 died from non-combat related injuries, which included vehicle accidents, illness, death by “natural causes,” and self-inflicted gunshot wounds, or suicide. The military has declared the deaths of the Navy women in Bahrain that were killed by a third sailor, as homicides. 5 deaths have been labeled as suicides, but 15 more deaths occurred under extremely suspicious circumstances.

8 women soldiers from Fort Hood, Texas (six from the Fourth Infantry Division and two from the 1st Armored Cavalry Division) have died of “non-combat related injuries” on the same base, Camp Taji, and three were raped before their deaths. Two were raped immediately before their deaths and another raped prior to arriving in Iraq. Two military women have died of suspicious “non-combat related injuries” on Balad base, and one was raped before she died. Four deaths have been classified as “suicides.”

[See original article for the example cases Col. Wright offers]

Although the data on the number of suicides in the military is vague and purposely underreported by the Veterans Administration, of 69 suicides of men in the military since 2002, 64 committed suicide in the United States, 1 in Kuwait, 2 in Iraq and 2 in Afghanistan. Men are much more likely to commit suicide once they return from a combat zone, than in the combat zone. Of the 8 alleged suicides of women in the military, 3 were in Iraq, 2 in the US, 1 in Kuwait and 1 in Bahrain. The question of why women would be more likely to commit suicide outside the US than once home should be investigated.

The circumstances surrounding each of these deaths warrants further investigation by the US military. Congress can compel the military to reopen cases and provide further investigation.

Granted, some of the commenters on this entry make a good point. What did we think was going to happen when the military started recruiting more and more convicts? Did we think that the quality of our servicemen would be improved with the introduction of more violent offenders? Or was quality not an issue so much as quantity? We need more soldiers, and consequences be damned as long as we get them.

This is a problem for the people our soldiers meet on the ground, obviously. But with a large number of female soldiers these days, it's becoming clear that servicewomen can't have high expectations, either. The best they can hope for is to be safe from their own comrades in arms.

For about a third of those women, their hopes won't pan out. And for a troubling percentage of that sad population... they may lose their lives and have the real cause covered up. It's bad enough that the government has done a poor job of seeing to the health needs of women veterans, and hopefully we're on the way to fixing that. But this? This is a whole different level of disregard, a whole new level of downright misogynist cruelty.

The (Our) Iraqi Prime Minister Expresses an Opinion!

McCain? Those were your balls.

Iraqi PM backs Obama troop exit plan - magazine

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told a German magazine he supported prospective U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months.

In an interview with Der Spiegel released on Saturday, Maliki said he wanted U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible.

"U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."

(snip)

"The Americans have found it difficult to agree on a concrete timetable for the exit because it seems like an admission of defeat to them. But it isn't," Maliki told Der Spiegel.

As the Carpetbagger Report mentioned in Maliki endorses Obama’s Iraq strategy — by name, "I can’t wait for a) McCain to explain why Maliki’s opinion about events in his own country don’t matter; and b) the media to explain to me why this is good news for McCain."

FISA: Why we continue to fight

FISA: Why we continue to fight.

Back in March, I wrote a story laying out the rationale for drawing out a FISA fight that everyone expected us eventually to lose. ("We don't have the votes!") The basic premise:

Every time Congressional Dems actually slow down and take stock of the situation -- from Senator Chris Dodd's brave (and lonely and seemingly futile) stand, to the cautious maneuvering of House Dems today -- new revelations arise that should make all Americans who value our freedoms glad they did.

Well, the House stopped slowing down recently, and have handed an all-too-willing Senate (which has all along been more willing than the House, it must be noted) a bill that puts retroactive immunity for the pay-for-play telecom spies back on the table. Now it's back in the Senate's lap, with a few brave souls preparing to do what they can to keep the train wreck in slow motion.

Is that worth doing? Sure. And for all the same reasons, which perhaps deserve mention again as Senators prepare to vote on this mess when they come back to work next week. And it couldn't hurt for you to be armed with this list if you see your Senators or Representatives at your local Fourth of July festivities.

So, over the years since we first learned of the Bush domestic spying scheme, and in the six month reprieve that the extended FISA fight has given us, what have we learned about the security and surveillance practices of the "administration" that we supposedly should trust with these new powers?

I suggest people read the entry on the original page. If you want to know what people like me are so damned worried about, look at the list in the entry.

War Crimes. Get it?

I know people who can't imagine the United States committing war crimes. Some of them just don't want to know, so they stay away from any venue that might bring up evidence. Others are more resilient, viewing evidence and ignoring it.

In one conversation, I had someone demand that a major news network have covered it, because after all you can't trust anything you read online. You want CNN? You've got it. 

But suddenly news networks couldn't be trusted. After all, they're secretly controlled by the liberal Jewish Illuminati, so we'd better ask soldiers who're actually on the ground. They'll know. Often the discussion stops after this link, because then we have to believe that American soldiers are just like any other soldiers. Decent humans sometimes do terrible things they wouldn't do in peacetime. We know this. It's just hard for some people to apply that to our own soldiers, to treat them like humans in addition to heroes.

But sometimes they can get past that, and then you'll hear, "Well, it wasn't ordered by the government. They wouldn't do that. It's unethical and illegal." And then you link them a few more things. 

How about the fact that the US camps hid detainees (can we call them POWs yet?) from the Red Cross.

CIA's Counterterrorism Center, disclosed that detainees were moved routinely to avoid the scrutiny of the ICRC, which keeps tabs on prisoners in conflicts around the world.

"In the past when the ICRC has made a big deal about certain detainees, the DOD (Defense Department) has 'moved' them away from the attention of the ICRC," Fredman said, according to the minutes.

(snip)

The administration overrode or ignored objections from all four military services and from criminal investigators, who warned that the practices would imperil their ability to prosecute the suspects. In one prophetic e-mail on Oct. 28, 2002, Mark Fallon, then the deputy commander of the Pentagon's Criminal Investigation Task Force, wrote a colleague: "This looks like the kind of stuff Congressional hearings are made of. ... Someone needs to be considering how history will look back at this." The objections from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines prompted Navy Capt. Jane Dalton, legal adviser to the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, to begin a review of the proposed techniques.

But Dalton, who's now retired, told the hearing Tuesday that the review was aborted quickly. Myers, she said, took her aside and told her that then-Defense Department general counsel William Haynes "does not want this ... to proceed."

(snip)

Regarding the ICRC, the United States long has complained that other countries such as China or the old Soviet Union prevented independent access to prisoners or made their conditions look better when outsiders were inspecting.

Whoops. Do I even have to say it. I probably do. What the hell were they hiding?

Your answer is here. Retired General: Bush Administration Committed War Crimes.

A new report put out by Physicians for Human Rights documents multiple instances of torture and abuse of prisoners by American personnel at Guantanamo Bay, in Iraq and in other prisons on military bases around the world. Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who led the Pentagon's investigation into the abuses at Abu Ghraib, minces no words in the introduction to the report:

After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.

Once again, this is not coming from someone that can be dismissed by Bush apologists as some wild-eyed liberal ACLU type. This is the man that the Pentagon picked to investigate a major incident of abuse. And there is more, both in Taguba's introduction to the report and in the report itself.

Uh oh! Looks like they're in trouble now. Believe what you want, but these war criminals know that trouble's coming. Wonder what they're gonna do to save their asses... Oh, I know!

US asks to rewrite evidence against Guantanamo detainees ahead of court review.

The government has stood behind the evidence for years. Military review boards relied on it to justify holding hundreds of prisoners indefinitely without charge. Justice Department attorneys said it was thoroughly and fairly reviewed.

Now that federal judges are about to review the evidence, however, the government says it needs to make changes.

The decision follows last week's Supreme Court ruling, which held that detainees have the right to challenge their detention in civilian court, not just before secret military panels.

Accountability is a bitch, innit? Wouldn't it just be awful if the government had to demonstrate their actual reasons for doing any of these things? I remain convinced that if the United States is forced to comply with its own human rights standards and pay some modicum of respect to international law... well, the terrorists will win. Right?

Right?

War crimes.

Get it?

Go Sandra!

Retired U.S. justice O'Connor unveils video game

Fri Jun 6, 2008 4:39am EDT

By Claudia Parsons

NEW YORK (Reuters) - America's first female Supreme Court justice unveiled a videogame project on Wednesday to teach children how courts work, saying she wanted to counter partisan criticism that judges are "godless" activists.

Sandra Day O'Connor, 78, who served as U.S. Supreme Court justice from 1981 until her retirement in 2006, said she never imagined she would be asked to address a conference about digital gaming.

She said she got involved with developing the project called "Our Courts" out of concern over public ignorance about the judiciary and partisan attacks on what should be an independent institution.

"In recent years I've become increasingly concerned about vitriolic attacks by some members of Congress, some members of state legislatures and various private interest groups ... on judges," O'Connor told the Games For Change conference on using gaming technology for social improvement and education.

"We hear a great deal about judges who are activists -- godless, secular, humanists trying to impose their will on the rest of us," she said. "Now I always thought an activist judge was one who got up in the morning and went to work."

She said it was worrying to see members of the Senate requiring nominees to the Supreme Court to state how they would rule on certain cases during the confirmation process, and to see special interests trying to influence the election of state judges in states where such elections are still held.

"With partisan attacks and political pressure mounting, it's much more difficult to achieve fair and impartial judgments from the judges who are serving," O'Connor said.

PUBLIC IGNORANCE

She said the only way to preserve an independent judiciary was through public education, which she said was failing to produce citizens with enough knowledge about the three branches of U.S. government -- legislative, executive and judicial.

The Our Courts project will have two parts, O'Connor said. The first is on online interactive civics program designed to be used by children from 7th to 9th grades either to supplement existing courses or as a distinct unit in the curriculum.

The program, developed with Georgetown University law school and Arizona State University, will be distributed free online.

"It will allow students to engage in real legal issues," she said. Asked to give an example, she said one element would focus on a scenario of a school attempting to stop students wearing a T-shirt with a controversial slogan -- a free speech issue designed to elicit argument about the 1st Amendment.

She said the web site at www.ourcourts.org/ should have some initial material by this September and be fully operational with interactive elements a year later.

The second part of the project will be for young people to use in their free time, O'Connor said, noting that studies showed children spend around 40 hours a week using media, including computers, television, videogames or music.

"If we can capture just a little bit of that time to get them thinking about government and civic engagement rather than playing shoot-'em-up video games, that's a huge step in the right direction," she said.

O'Connor said she had seen from her own grandchildren that technology was the best way to inspire children to learn and it was vital to speak to them in their own language.

Asked what videogames she has played herself, she said: "I don't play videogames. Sorry."

(Editing by Michelle Nichols and Cynthia Osterman)

Go Sandra!

She needs to team up with the makers of Phoenix Wright. I will buy the crap out of that, especially if I can point at the TV with the Wiimote to object.