In These Times

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

Posted to Bill Moyers Interviews Rev. Jeremiah Wright

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

Posted to News You Can Lose

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

Posted to Political Vice Squad

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

Posted to Political Vice Squad

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

Posted to As Hunger Rises, Chew on This

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

Posted to As Hunger Rises, Chew on This

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

Posted to Book Club of Champions

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

Posted to A Speech Even Condi Could Love

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

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

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

Posted to The Upside of Nationalism

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

Posted to Caricaturing Danish Muslims

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

Posted to Is Wright Right About Racism?

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

Posted to Is Wright Right About Racism?

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

Posted to The Man or the Movement

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

Posted to The War That Never Ends

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

Posted to The War That Never Ends

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

Posted to The War That Never Ends

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

Posted to The War That Never Ends

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

Posted to The War That Never Ends

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

Posted to The War That Never Ends

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

Posted to The War That Never Ends

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

Posted to Kenya's Indy Media

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

Posted to The Nadir of Nader

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

Posted to The Nadir of Nader

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

Posted to The Malign Magic of Misdirection

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

Posted to How Black is Obama?

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

Posted to How Black is Obama?

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

Posted to Jose Padilla Brings Torture to Trial

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

Posted to Women Behind Bars

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

Posted to Nas: Whose Word Is This?

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

Posted to The Next Gay Moment?

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

Posted to Fat Kids, Fat Profits

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

Posted to Fat Kids, Fat Profits

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

Posted to Killer Credit

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

Posted to The Jamie Lynn Effect

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

Posted to N.J. Closes Death Row

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

Posted to RoboCop in Iraq

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

Posted to Empire's Architecture

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

Posted to Dropping Out of Electoral College

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

Posted to Dropping Out of Electoral College

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

Posted to Dropping Out of Electoral College

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

Posted to Dropping Out of Electoral College

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

Posted to Dropping Out of Electoral College

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

Posted to Dropping Out of Electoral College

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

Posted to Come on Cosby, Stop Hatin'

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

Posted to Hanging Hate

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

Posted to Supreme Court Inc.

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

Posted to Anthropologists on the Front Lines

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

Posted to Dark Side of Russias Rainbow

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

Posted to Public Libraries For Profit

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

Posted to Kids LOL @ Navy Recruiters

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

Posted to Wingnut Awareness Week

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

Posted to Wingnut Awareness Week

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

Posted to Wingnut Awareness Week

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

Posted to Come on People! Bill Cosby is Right

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

Posted to Come on People! Bill Cosby is Right

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

Posted to Come on People! Bill Cosby is Right

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

Posted to Rudy Guiliani: Criminal or Liar?

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

Posted to El Salvadors Patriot Act

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

Posted to El Salvadors Patriot Act

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

Posted to El Salvadors Patriot Act

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

Posted to Funding Iraqs Citizen Soldiers

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

Posted to Biofuels Are No Cure for Climate Change

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

Posted to Examining the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act

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

Posted to Prison Breakdown

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

Posted to Prison Breakdown

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

Posted to Prison Breakdown

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

Posted to A Resolution Too Far?

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

Posted to Jena and the Post-Civil Rights Fallacy

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

Posted to Jena and the Post-Civil Rights Fallacy

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

Posted to Harassment Unchecked at Army Hotel

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

Posted to Harassment Unchecked at Army Hotel

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

Posted to Harassment Unchecked at Army Hotel

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

Posted to A Mother's March For Justice

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

Posted to Make-a-Sheikh

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

Posted to Feeding the Hungry is a Crime

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

Posted to Feeding the Hungry is a Crime

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

Posted to FCC Rocks Chicago, Chicago Rocks Back

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

Posted to The Times vs. Feminism

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

Posted to Recipe For Disaster

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

Posted to Merc is the New Crack

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

Posted to Merc is the New Crack

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

Posted to Inside the Secret Facility

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

Posted to An Unholy Alliance

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

Posted to An Unholy Alliance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted to Holy Toyland

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

Posted to Holy Toyland

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

Posted to Obama's in the Eye of the Beholder

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

Posted to Crocker's Kooky Economics

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

Posted to Crocker's Kooky Economics

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

Posted to Crocker's Kooky Economics

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

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

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

Posted to Unveiling Muslim Feminism

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

Posted to Restoring Classroom Justice

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

Posted to Extending Tours, Stressing Troops

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

Posted to How Does Laura Bush Sleep at Night?

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

Posted to The Kids Aren't Alright

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

Posted to Equating Stillbirths with Murders

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

Posted to Equating Stillbirths with Murders

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

Posted to The Drug War's Collateral Damage

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

Posted to Locking Attorneys out of Guantánamo

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

Posted to Blaming Hip-Hop for Imus

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

Posted to These Guns for Hire

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

Posted to These Guns for Hire

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

Posted to Sacred Lands, Sewer Snow

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

Posted to Sacred Lands, Sewer Snow

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

Posted to Rebelde for the Cause

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

Posted to Rebelde for the Cause

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

Posted to Defining Hate in the United States

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

Posted to Circumcision Promotion Divides AIDS Activists

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

Posted to Circumcision Promotion Divides AIDS Activists

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

Posted to Circumcision Promotion Divides AIDS Activists

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

Posted to Gone, But Not Forgotten

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

Posted to The Guantánamo Hunger Strike

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

Posted to Why Women Hate Hillary

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

Posted to Why Women Hate Hillary

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

Posted to Power to the Public Financing

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

Posted to Abuses Alleged During Immigration Raid

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

Posted to GI Bill Fails Vets

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

Posted to GI Bill Fails Vets

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

Posted to The Fraudulence of Voter Fraud

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

Posted to Inside the Death Chamber

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

Posted to Inside the Death Chamber

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

Posted to Thank You Mr. Vonnegut

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

Posted to Biofuels: Promise or Peril?

Couldn't resist.

Posted to Biofuels: Promise or Peril?

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

Posted to Digital Revives the Indie Pop Star

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

Posted to Uncle Sam Wants Sustainability

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

Posted to Resisting the War on Science

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

Posted to Resisting the War on Science

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

Posted to Resisting the War on Science

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

Posted to Resisting the War on Science

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

Posted to Resisting the War on Science

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

Posted to Slavery and the State of Denial

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

Posted to Slavery and the State of Denial

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

Posted to A Pain, and Proud of It

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

Posted to A Pain, and Proud of It

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

Posted to A Pain, and Proud of It

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

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

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

Posted to Why Does CNN Suck?

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

Posted to Why Does CNN Suck?

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

Posted to Bisexual Healing

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

Posted to For Israel's Sake

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

Posted to For Israel's Sake

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

Posted to Reclaiming What Makes Us Human

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

Posted to Reclaiming What Makes Us Human

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

Posted to Reclaiming What Makes Us Human

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

Posted to Reclaiming What Makes Us Human

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

Posted to Reclaiming What Makes Us Human

Just reclaiming what makes me human, miguel.

Posted to Reclaiming What Makes Us Human

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

Posted to Reclaiming What Makes Us Human

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

Posted to Reclaiming What Makes Us Human

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

Posted to A Politically Correct Lexicon

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

Posted to A Politically Correct Lexicon

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

Posted to A Politically Correct Lexicon

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

Posted to A Politically Correct Lexicon

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

Posted to A Politically Correct Lexicon

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

Posted to A Politically Correct Lexicon

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

Posted to Eyes Off the Prize

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

Posted to Interrogations Behind Barbed Wire

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

Posted to Interrogations Behind Barbed Wire

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

Posted to 8 Reasons to Close Guantnamo Now

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

Posted to 8 Reasons to Close Guantnamo Now

Gott