Chickenhawks of the kulturkampf.
Remember the Cairo Pledges?
Back in 1994, in Cairo, the International Conference on Population and Development outlined a not-uncontroversial agenda to limit population growth by providing family planning services throughout the world. In 1999 (Y6B, apparently; I vaguely remember the news we’d passed 6 billion people, but never saw “Y6B” until just now. —Like “Y2K,” get it? How quaint), there was some evaluation and re-evaluation and negotiations (but no renegotiations) and meetings with names like the Hague Forum were held, and the impact of the ICPD’s Programme of Action were assessed, and how well countries had held up their various ends of the various bargains (the US had only ponied up about half the money it had promised, typically)—and you should maybe insert your own joke about lies, damn lies, and statistics that take several months of argument to phrase properly. Still. The report that was finally issued “outlined some of the progress that has been made in the five years since the 1994 conference and proposed further steps that should be taken around the world to promote development, gender equality, women’s empowerment and reproductive health.” Maybe there wasn’t enough money, but there never is; good work was still being done. “All but a few nations had accepted the essentials of the Cairo agenda; expanding access to reproductive health services is no longer a controversial issue; and the challenges of implementing the ambitious goals of the Programme of Action are now in the forefront.”
But that was 1999, and this is 2002, and George W. Bush is in the White House. So. What happens at the Fifth Asian and Pacific Population Conference, when more than 40 countries meet to discuss the current state of the Cairo Pledges and reaffirm their commitments? Let’s ask Eugene Dewey, the US assistant secretary of state for population, refugees, and migration:
“We have made some efforts to improve the language of the text. This has been interpreted as pulling away from the ICPD,” he added. “We are not trying to overturn anything.”
As it stands, the 22-page plan of action has large chunks of bracketed paragraphs, indicating the language in the document that Washington’s negotiators are disputing.
Among the sections with language that the U.S. is objecting to are those on “Gender Equality, Equity and Empowerment of Women,” “Reproductive Rights and Reproductive Health,” “Adolescent Reproductive Health” and “HIV/AIDS.”
The Cairo Pledges as affirmed in 1999 state that “where there is a gap between contraceptive use and the proportion of individuals expressing a desire to space or limit their families, countries should attempt to close this gap by at least 50% by 2005, 75% by 2010 and 100% by 2050.” —We are against that, now.
The Cairo Pledges as affirmed in 1999 state that adolescents have a right to information that will “enable them to make responsible and informed choices and decisions regarding their sexual and reproductive health needs….” —We are against that, now. And the bit that insisted “that at least 90%, and by 2010 at least 95%, of young men and women aged 15-24 have access to the information, education and services necessary to develop the life skills required to reduce their vulnerability to HIV infection.” We can’t have that, can we?
The Cairo Pledges as affirmed in 1999 assert a need to provide treatment to women who have suffered from illegal abortions, and “in circumstances where abortion is not against the law, health systems should train and equip health-service providers and should take other measures to ensure that such abortion is safe and accessible.” Emphasis added, but even so: this sort of language could be used to support abortion rights, and so it is too much, and so it must go.
There were controversies in 1994, and in 1999, too. As “The Bumpy Road from Cairo to Now” puts it, “the Holy See and a small number of allied delegations sought to have the document reflect their conservative views.” Those “allied delegations” included variously Argentina, Libya, Nicaragua, Sudan, and Syria. Never the US, no; we, in fact, brokered a number of compromises on language that left intact the original Cairo Pledges (which, remember, were not to be renegotiated) while preserving some rhetorical wiggle room around such controversial topics as adolescent sexuality, women’s empowerment, and abortion.
But that was 1999, and this is 2002, and George W. Bush is in the White House. And we stand alone.
The US delegation called for a vote on the plan [17 December], an almost unprecedented move at a United Nations (UN) conference, which normally make decision by consensus. The US was the only dissenter in votes to remove the phrases and insert a stronger focus on abstinence in the section of the plan dealing with adolescent sexual activity, according to Agence France Presse.
Iran was one of the participants at this Fifth Asian and Pacific Population Conference. Iran thought we were going too far. Iran voted us down.
The US delegation, led by Assistant Secretary of State Gene Dewey, argued that reaffirming the Cairo plan would “violate [US] principles” and “constitute endorsement of abortion” in a speech at the conference on Monday, according to the Jakarta Post. Dewey further stated that “the United States supports the sanctity of life from conception to natural death,” according to the New York Times.
The Philippines, the largest Catholic country in attendance, did not agree with us. The Philippines voted us down.
We did end up joining the consensus in reaffirming the Cairo Pledges, submitting a non-binding document outlining our various objections to teaching adolescents what they need to have healthy sex lives and to empowering women to choose where and when and if they will have a family and to ensuring that contraceptives and abortions are available on demand and without apology. —But the Bush Administration was threatening to back out of the Cairo Pledges entirely back in November, to take our ball and hold our breath until we turn blue if we didn’t get our way. Consensus, schmonsensus; given our contemptuous (and contemptible) track record of late as regards multilateralism and keeping our word, I think it’s safe to say that the pledged Programme of Action won’t be getting the $6.1 billion total budget the world thought it would need by 2005.
In 1999, while world governments and NGOs were hammering their way through the Hague Forum to reaffirm the work of the Cairo Pledges, then-candidate George Bush gave a speech to the Council For National Policy. No press was in attendance, but the speech was caught on a tape that few have heard:
The media and center-left activist groups urged the group and Bush’s presidential campaign to release the tape of his remarks. The CNP, citing its bylaws that restrict access to speeches, declined. So did the Bush campaign, citing the CNP.
Shortly thereafter, magisterial conservatives pronounced the allegedly moderate younger Bush fit for the mantle of Republican leadership.
The two events might not be connected. But since none of the participants would say what Bush said, the CNP’s kingmaking role mushroomed in the mind’s eye, at least to the Democratic National Committee, which urged release of the tapes.
“Partly because so little was known about CNP, the hubbub died down,” says that ABC piece. Well, crank up the hubbub. The Mighty Casio has dug up some ugly dirt: a decent plot of links, CNP tax returns, and evidence of links with Christian Reconstructionists and with electronic voting machine manufacturers. —Plus, their friends and fellow travelers.
These, ladies and gentlemen, are the chickenhawks of the kulturkampf. They meet in secret and conduct high-level debates that they never talk about and they refuse to discuss their intents and purposes. They hold firm to their beliefs, like the segregationists and the neo-Confederates, but—like the segregationists and the neo-Confederates, and their reprehensible ideas regarding race—they realize their “nativism, xenophobia, theories of racial superiority, sexism, homophobia, authoritarianism, militarism, reaction and in some cases outright neo-fascism” won’t find much acceptance in the general culture. (Of course, the general culture has been seduced by a liberal media run by New York and Hollywood.) They know their idea of what God and Judeo-Christian morality ordains for us does not square with scientific research and reason and public opinion. (Of course, scientists are all secular humanists who lie and dissemble to deny God’s word.) They know that if they fight openly for what they believe, they will lose.
And so, like access capitalists and safety-net entrepreneurs, they do deals in back alleys and smoke-filled rooms. Like the chickenhawks in the war against Iraq, they lie and distort and propagandize and ignore or dismiss the dire warnings of experts in the field. And—as with the segregationists and the neo-Confederates—the Republicans pander to them, speak at their functions and funnel money their way, and in return for votes in primaries and get-out-the-vote efforts in general elections, the kulturkampf chickenhawks get their agenda imposed by fiat, circumventing public debate and the democratic process. Vital health information is removed from the public sphere. Scientists are replaced by theocrats who allow agendas to dictate facts. Churches are allowed to discriminate on the basis of religion in their use of federal money. Money is withheld and promises are broken for the most spurious of reasons. And we turn our backs on the rest of the world and walk away from hard-fought incremental but nonetheless valuable gains in the fight for health and individual autonomy and education and population control.
Promises were made in 1999. Our delegates sent to reaffirm the Cairo Pledges and move forward on its Programme of Action promised to fulfill our commitments to family planning and reproductive health services, and, as Hilary Clinton stated in her keynote address to the Hague Forum, to recognize that we “are called upon to make investments in the human and economic development of people, particularly girls and women.”
But it’s 2002, and George W. Bush is in the White House. We do not know what promises he made in 1999 to the CNP, or implied, to secure the imprimatur of conservative solons; the speech is secret. There is no text to quote, no public record of his words.
His actions, though, speak loudly enough. And so will the consequences. —We know what promises he’s keeping.
Straw; camel’s back—
InstaPundit links to this quiz. You can go look at it if you like, but you already know what all the questions are about, and what all the answers to the questions are.
Now. Do you want to go tell these insultingly obscurantist cracker-ass fuckwits where all those “Democrats” fled to? Or do you want to keep watching them screw this up, over and over and over again? (It’s okay. I’m from Alabama. I can say “cracker-ass.”)
Good news.
Somewhat and sort of. Via Barry: Thanks to massive protests and lawsuits filed, they’re starting to let the detainees go.
Or, if you feel like blaming the victim, you can quote the INS party line:
“Our objective was to hold people only until we had completed confirmation of records checks,” the I.N.S. official said. “But a staggering number of people showed up on the last day and we couldn’t keep up.”
To be fair, we shouldn’t blame the INS (wholly):
An agency official in Southern California said that Justice Department officials in Washington dictated the rules of the program and gave local authorities little leeway to determine who should be detained or released. As a result, hundreds of men with minor visa violations were handcuffed and locked up for days while officials sorted through mountains of paperwork and bail applications.
Ladies and gentlemen: again, John Ashcroft.
Hug your local librarian.
Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) held a press conference a couple of hours ago, apparently, to announce plans for legislation that would appeal some portions of the USA PATRIOT Act that “undermine Americans’ constitutionally protected right to read and to access information without government interference”; legislation prompted by a letter from the Vermont Library Association. Nothing on Google News about it yet (as of 11ses PST on a brightening Friday), but I’m sure it’ll be top-of-the-fold on cnn.com as soon as they stop wrangling about whether the homphobic bigot or the soulless corprocrat will take over from the unintentional racist, who quit just in time to secure a committee chair. (Will he keep his promises? Let’s watch and find out!)
But this was supposed to be a brightening Friday. The count is up to 20, now, and the Portland Bill of Rights Defense Committee reports some concrete progress with the City Council; yay, team. (I should maybe go sign the petition, already.) Inch by inch by whatever means at hand.
In the meanwhile, check to see if your local library is sporting these signs. Inch by inch…
Neimöller time.
Shut the fuck up. Don’t tell me I’m overreacting and don’t tell me it’s hyperbole and don’t tell me I’m dishonoring the memory of thus-and-so. And don’t you dare tell me it was illegal and they were just following the letter of the law, or I’ll pull Nuremberg out, too, and smack you silly. At a time like this, when somebody does something this monumentally stupid and it’s purportedly in my name and in yours, you damn well better believe I’m going to get purple in the face and pull all the rhetorical tricks I can muster out from up my sleeve and speak up. We are all going to speak up, dammit.
They came for the Muslims whose papers weren’t in order.
The ones who came to this country because they like it. The ones who came over to our side from that “Islamofascism” we are supposedly in a death struggle with. The ones who are trying to play by the arcane and convoluted and outdated rules. The ones you shot at and spat at and smeared in your newspaper columns, the ones you berated over and over again because they didn’t immediately apologize for something they did not do and could not imagine and would never condone. —And with the dying gasp of our INS, the first breath of our nascent Department of Homeland Security, right on the cusp of a war most of us do not want, these Muslims from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Syria are rounded up in mass arrests and detained—in your name, in my name—for paperwork violations. (They started to round up the Armenians, too. Then someone remembered that Armenians have some political clout and they stopped.)
Atrios is all over this one; if you know of any defense funds being raised to help these folks, please pass the word along. —And among the other links I swiped, Atrios is recommending this piece by eRiposte; read it. Now.
All I can add is outmoded history, but if you’ve read this far and you still aren’t incensed (and yet, you’re still reading), then maybe you need a refresher course in how badly the INS has handled stuff like this on a routine basis. The executive summary, from the lead article:
In a four-month investigation, The Oregonian found that the INS:
- Holds 20,000 people in a secretive and poorly monitored network of prisons and county jails that often subjects them to abuse, loses track of them and sends them from jail to jail—often far from their families and lawyers.
- Jails youthful victims of sexual abuse and other vulnerable children alongside criminal offenders—violating legal agreements to move them to safer, less restrictive facilities.
- Breaks up families by jailing or deporting relatives of U.S. citizens for minor offenses or decades-old crimes.
- Mistreats some asylum seekers, who flee persecution in their homelands only to be jailed in the United States or sent back to life-threatening situations without regard for the dangers that await.
- Tolerates racism and sexual abuse in its ranks and has one of the highest rates of misconduct among federal law-enforcement agencies.
- Allows district directors and sector chiefs such as Portland’s Beebe to run their 57 jurisdictions as fiefdoms, applying the law unevenly.
- Overworks its employees, whose low pay, grueling work conditions and difficult mission demoralize officers and invite abuse.
- Bungles immigration cases, including those of U.S. citizens who are wrongly deported and imprisoned.
And: the Oregonian’s Pulitzer notwithstanding, the Mercury would like humbly to remind you they were on the case months earlier.
Now. All this happened two years ago. The aforementioned Director David Beebe resigned after an uproar over the strip-search and detention of Chinese citizen Guo Liming, who’d been flying through Portland on a business trip. And reforms—some sparked by the Oregonian and its dam’ Pulitzer—have been attempted both locally and nationally. Though they’re rather on the back burner thanks to 911 and the birth pangs of Homeland Security. —The lesson to take from all this, then?
Speaking out works. Sort of. Provisionally. You have to keep doing it, for it to have any effect. And reforming a giant bureaucracy is hard work even if you ice a figurehead or two. But!
They came for the Muslims whose papers weren’t in order, and we spoke up, and they backed off and stopped their idiocies and remembered what it is about this country that’s supposedly so great, and if they tried a bit too hard to spin their retreat as a win-win, well, we decided not to hold it against them. Though we kept our eyes peeled for the next un-American power grab.
—Hmm. Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, somehow. Nonetheless: Email. Fax. Call. Get this on the news and get people talking about it. Spread the word. Go!
Round up a posse and head ’em off at the pass.
David Brin has written about how we’re on the cusp of another age of amateurs: how coming advances in technology and information management (and coming variations on current technology and information management) will make it easier and cheaper and better for impassioned amateurs than detached professionals to do whatever it is you want to get done. And we’re seeing that already to be sure in fields such as music distribution, where the RIAA is busily trying to prevent impassioned amateurs from muscling in on their market. (Yes, that’s a heavily slanted and opinionated assessment of the situation. So sue me.)
More interesting, I think, at the moment, is what’s happening in the field of news and reporting and punditry. To put it bluntly: the amateur schmoes are cleaning the pros’ clocks.
We’ve seen the handwriting on the wall rendered loud and clear in the Trent Lott Imbroglio, and now we’re seeing a curious side effect in its aftermath, as various pros scratch their heads and ask each other, “Who was that masked man?” They’re trying to pin this scalp on one of the pros, moonlighting as the pseudonymous Atrios over at the Mighty Middle C, because the alternative is (as yet) unthinkable: that, as Mr. Capozzolla says in that Rittenhouse Review piece, “a man with a full-time job and career aside from his weblog—i.e., Atrios—has done so much to outshine the purported ‘professionals’ of our punditocracy.” —And as for the job the pros themselves are doing: well. The Daily Howler is as usual doing an incomparable job of showing just how far below the fold they’re falling, these days. (To name but one example.)
It’s hardly as simple as that (it never is); some of the amateurs are also pros and some of the pros are acting like amateurs and as far as the Affaire d’Lott goes, everyone who is in a position to know where it all began agrees that The Note kicked it all off with their squib on Thurmond’s birthday. But in an age that sees ethics burnished by a century or so of professional journalism rapidly brushed aside in the name of higher ratings and bigger market shares and headlines that don’t “impact” the bottom line, you’re going to have to depend more and more on the unpoliced, unwashed, unshackled schmoes to kick up the ruckuses that need kicking. (Rucki?) —Certainly, if anyone ends up claiming this scalp, I’m betting it’ll be some part-time “amateur” like Hesiod or Dwight Meredith, and not a member of our once-proud, ever-more-compromised Fourth Estate.
Goddam.
Jeanne d’Arc has a killer, must-read piece on Trent Lott and Lady Day and how it is you mean the words that come out of your mouth. —The only thing I’d add (presumptuous cretin that I am) is how maybe we should take a close look at Lott’s heir presumptive and maybe start singing “Oklahoma Goddam,” too.
Are you feeling lucky, ducky?
Read the lips of an administration that promised to “take down the tollgate on the road to the middle class”:
Lindsey compared the Social Security tax to a deposit in a neighborhood bank’s Christmas Club. In such clubs, periodic deposits are returned in a lump sum during the holiday season, and Lindsey said no one would consider such deposits a tax.
Rush Limbaugh is after your paycheck. So is the Wall Street Journal. And now the Mayberry Machiavellis are “working up more sophisticated distribution tables that are expected to make the poor appear to be paying less in taxes and the rich to be paying more.” —What is it about the tenor of the times that makes naked class warfare seem a sane, sensible, politically driven approach?
The game of us and them.
And, finally, as we know, Democrats have had plenty of harsh words about Trent Lott’s remarks at Strom Thurmond’s birthday party. But Bill Clinton got in a more light-hearted dig.
Our Jonathan Karl reports that the former president offered this line at a benefit last night at the Robert Kennedy Memorial—quote. Mr. Clinton, he said: “When Robert Kennedy ran for president, we supported him. We’re proud of it. And if he had lived and been elected, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years.” —Judy Woodruff, Inside Politics.
Well, anyway. It’s hoot-worthy line. Thanks, Atrios.
Let X = the number of Music Products purchased at full price between 1995 and 2000—
It’s not that I don’t think class-action lawsuits are a good idea—flawed though they are, they’re frequently the only way a wronged class of individuals can take on the armies of lawyers that cool their heels in the halls of large corporations. (While we’re all up in arms over judicial nominations and Total Information Awareness and the ghosts of the Ford Administration come to exact their due, we should also keep an eye out for what the RNC has planned by way of “curbing civil liability”—a somewhat more honest term than “tort reform,” methinks. [“You should not have a local judge in a county issuing a ruling that affects hundreds of millions of dollars in business across the country,” says the chief lobbyist for our US Chamber of Commerce. —Why on earth not?])
No, this rubs me the wrong way because these guys are getting away with year after year after year of price-gouging (going back much further than the stipulated date of 1995) by paying out no more than $20 to each and every qualified member of the class—and all without admitting any wrong-doing whatsoever. (As for not engaging in this practice in the future—why are you laughing? What’s so funny?)
“Continued litigation would only consume millions of dollars of company resources at a time when (Universal’s) executive energy and business focus are better spent providing consumers with compelling music,” said multinational corporation Universal regarding the settlement. Yeah, whatever. Fill out a claim form if you like, but if you get your check, I’d suggest blowing your $20, or your $10, or your $5 on a symbolic gesture. Get some music from Janis Ian, maybe. Or go see some local kids, as yet unsigned. Or hell—buy a book.
—via MetaFilter.
Why shouldn’t we talk to ourselves.
These days it’s not so much, “If you aren’t outraged, you aren’t paying attention,” it’s, “If you aren’t outraged, you’re on another planet entirely.” —Got to thinking after whipping off that quick’n’dirty screed against landmines yesterday—what about, you know, the nukes? The depleted uranium shells? The fact that getting all huffy about use of landmines is in a weird sort of way conceding that there will, at some point, be an invasion? (Which point I am stubbornly unwilling to concede as yet—darkest before the dawn and all that—but I am a fool.) Speaking out against landmines—which, unlike nukes, will almost certainly be used (iff); which, unlike depleted uranium, poses a much more direct long-term threat; which will pose a threat to American servicefolks during the course of the war and Iraqi people for decades thereafter—still, it seems almost misguided. A reed in the storm. Whistling the wrong way entirely as you march past a graveyard in the dark.
Or from there to the Trent Lott imbroglio: it is nice watching him squirm, yes, and it’s bleakly funny watching everyone pile on now that it’s “safe” to do so, but it doesn’t change the fact that anyone who’d been paying attention had known this about Lott for years and years and it didn’t matter one whit.That, as Slacktivist puts it, “the GOP is not segregationist because Trent Lott is its majority leader. Trent Lott rose to become majority leader because the party is segregationist.” And removing him from nominal power while satisfying will do nothing in the long run to the much larger problem of which Lott is merely a symptom. Come 2004, there’ll still be fliers passed out in Maryland and Louisiana and Mississippi and elsewhere letting black voters know that if the weather sucks on that November Tuesday, why, heck, they’ve got a week left to turn in their ballots, unless, of course, they were late in paying a bill in the past year, and Sean Hannity and E.D. Hill will still be reminding their wannabe dittoheads that the Democrats were segregationists too, back in the day, and what about that Georgia state flag?
A couple of weeks ago over at Body and Soul—one of the few blogs which should be on everyone’s morning must-read list—Jeanne d’Arc posted the back and forth of an intriguing email conversation she’d had about liberal communication that wasn’t backs-to-the-wall knives-out-and-rats’-teeth defensive (all too rare, these days), and while you should read it through if you haven’t already, but I want to muse on something d’Arc said, parenthetically, in this letter, right here: “I mean, fundamentally, it’s the quintessential feminist demand: Let us tell and interpret our own stories.” And yes—yes, it is.
Yes, but.
Thing is, telling our stories isn’t the problem. (Or interpreting them; interpretation is another way of telling a story.) You get up on your soap box (wherever it might be) and you open your mouth and you speak.
The trick is getting people to listen. To pay attention.
Because other people have bigger soap boxes and louder voices and insist on telling your stories for you and getting them all wrong, and even then the people you’re all talking to have their own ways of reading this story or that story and interpreting it for themselves, and, well. And it’s frustrating because the truth is out there and attention must be paid and so you stand tall and tell your story—and yet. They’re all yammering about John Kerry’s fucking haircut, instead.
All of which reminded me of a book I still haven’t read. (Yes, Sara. It’s on the list.) But it’s a basic concept I’m familiar with from having read pop-science books on chaos theory and the like, so I’ll pontificate out here on a limb for a moment: I think one of the things blogs do, or try to do, is seek out and cultivate tipping points. About this, that, or the other. In an attempt to build momentum and talk it up enough until (sort of like a laser, bouncing back and forth inside its ruby echo chamber until it’s powerful enough to punch out) attention is paid. It’s not the cleanest of metaphors (though it’s better than meme, I think), and the way it progresses from echo chamber to echo chamber is weird and hard to track: Trent Lott’s remarks last week were the tipping point leading to a bubbling of outrage among the cognoscenti over the views we’re known he’s had all this time, the views we’ve known his voters and his party have more or less tacitly supported, but it was a simmering fed by the one newspaper to break the news within a couple of days of its occurence. And yet it was Al Gore’s remarks on Monday that seemed to signal the tipping point for the broader mediasphere, triggering the long-delayed comments of commentators and politicians—does Gore read Atrios? —Of course, without the pressure brought to bear by the simmering blogs of the cognoscenti, it’s questionable whether Gore’s remarks could ever have tipped it. (If you feel that Lott’s half-assed apology was the tipping point, it’s questionable whether he would have felt the need to say anything had the cognoscenti not already been set to simmering. Who tipped what first?) —And now, of course, a week later, other people in my office are pissed off about something blogtopia was on top of a week ago. But how, and why, and who’s responsible? —Those, I don’t think, are even the right questions. Tipping points.Smart mobs. Flocking behavior. The divine madness of crowds. Talking to ourselves. Preaching to the choir. Fisking in the echo chamber, yo.
(And we still haven’t solved the problem.We’ve just noticed that when you say the same things over and over again in concert other people are more likely to pick up on it, which, hell, the right wing learned a long time ago. We still can’t guarantee that anyone will listen. That “our” story, my story, your story will be heard. That attention will be paid.)
(And the whole time, the heart beats more quickly. The teeth clench more tightly. “Blood pressure,” says the Spouse. But attention must be paid.)
For your consideration, then, another tipping point, or not: from Helen Thomas to the watch to Body and Soul to me to you:
Admiral Poindexter’s Total Information Awareness Program will snoop into bank records and credit card records and track purchase histories and travel patterns but it won’t violate the holy sanctity of the records of gun buyers.
It’s just there’s so fucking much. And more of it, every day—
Let’s open with a joke.
Because it’s all going downhill from there.
Cast your mind back to the 1999 Darwin Awards, when this runner-up got tagged as “Fatal Footsie”:
Decades of armed strife has littered Cambodia with unexploded munitions and ordnance. Authorities warn citizens not to tamper with the devices.
Three friends recently spent an evening sharing drinks and exchanging insults at a local cafe in the southeastern province of Svay Rieng. Their companionable arguing continued for hours, until one man pulled out a 25-year-old unexploded anti-tank mine found in his backyard.
He tossed it under the table, and the three men began playing Russian roulette, each tossing down a drink and then stamping on the mine. The other villagers fled in terror…
Now: scoot forward in time to 1 January 2001, when the world had not yet become A Different Place, and the various signatories to the Ottawa Covention banning the use of landmines had their second meeting, in Geneva, to discuss how things had been going thus far. There was some discussion of the fact that the US hadn’t signed as yet:
In practical terms, campaigners admit that an American signature would make little change to their current use of mines. With the exception of the North Korean border, the U.S. has not manufactured or used banned mines for the last three years. However, few people doubt the symbolic significance of a positive gesture. “It would make a very important difference if America signed. There is some international stigma in being one of the pariah states that hasn’t signed up,” says Rachel Harford, Joint Coordinator of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade.
And though we may not have had the best reasons for not signing, we still had good reasons for not using landmines (outside of the North Korean border). After all, a GAO study of the 1991 Gulf War determined that the use of landmines by allied forces impeded us and didn’t necessarily impede the Iraqis. Moreover:
...even with clear-cut rationales for using landmines commanders were fearful of fratricide and decreased battlefield mobility caused by landmines and their usage. These concerns were based on “the obsolescence of conventional U.S. mines and safety issues with both conventional and scatterable landmines…and concern that reporting, recording and, when appropriate, marking the hazard areas created by the placement of self-destruct landmines or dudfields were not always accomplished when needed.”
And yet.
And yet, and yet, and yet.
The Pentagon is preparing to use anti-personnel land mines in a war with Iraq, despite U.S. policy that calls for the military to stop using the mines everywhere in the world except Korea by 2003.
Outrage. Anger. Fury. Channel it all into emails and faxes and letters to your Congresscritter now, people. Then CC it to Senator Patrick Leahy. Give him the mound of mail and the bursting letterbags he needs to go to the White House and the Pentagon and say with all our voices, “No. Way. In. Hell.”
—Of course, I realize I’m merely assuming you’re outraged at this news. It’s presumptive of me, I know. But hey—bygones.
The people beg to differ.
Well, this one does, anyway.
“This proposition has been presented to the Supreme Court on a number of occasions and repeatedly rejected by the court, we hold that the continued opportunity to exonerate oneself throughout the natural course of one’s life is not a right so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental,” the appellate judges wrote.
—From the New York Times, via the incomparable TalkLeft (here, and also here).
We do, indeed, have a fundamental right to challenge our own deaths, as ordered by a system that has been demonstrated time and again to be fundamentally flawed if not actively corrupt. The idea that this right is not “so rooted” in my traditions or conscience, or yours, that it at some point runs out because it is too expensive or too tiresome or too embarrassing to allow it to be pursued, that proof of guilt is a procedural point satisfied by properly filled out paperwork, and not our best, most strenuous, most exacting efforts to find out fundamentally what happened, and how, and why—that, in a word, is insulting. Somebody really ought to step up to the plate and do something, take a stand in favor of life over process, justice over expediency, getting it right over getting it done…
There he goes again for the very first time.
First, read Barry’s righteous repudiation of Lott’s 96-hour-late apology for how we the people misinterpreted what it was he’d had to say (careful of the bile still dripping from that hideously neutral word, “discarded”); if every Democrat and moderate Republican had done the same thing to this wilted, diseased, insulting attempt at a high-hand, I’d feel marginally better about the current political discourse. (If every journalist on the White House beat peppered Ari Fleischer with repeated questions about his boss’s support of an unreconstructed segregationist until he tossed them all out and briefed an empty room from then on; if every journalist on Capitol Hill kept asking every Republican Senator what they felt of their elected leader’s views until they cracked and said something altogether unscripted—well, it’d still be only marginally better, but it’d be a nice, comfortable margin.)
Second—and oh, I know, you already know, you Drudge-skimmer, you Marshall-mashee, you habitué of the Times. But allow me a simple pleasure, won’t you?
After a fiery speech by Mr. Thurmond at a campaign rally in Mississippi for Ronald Reagan in November 1980, Mr. Lott, then a congressman, told a crowd in Jackson, “You know, if we had elected this man 30 years ago, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today.”
—Yes, this is hardly news for those who’ve been watching Lott and his associates for years. But the fact that outrage is sparking in some highly visible watchfires, that it’s starting to catch in wood we’d never thought would burn, that this man will be made to feel even if only a little still uncomfortable (or more; or more) for having profited so egregiously by winking and nudging at his own hate and fear—that’s news. Or at least some tasty schadenfreude.
A snapshot of a time and place.
Ann Coulter thinks these folks should still be in jail, despite all evidence to the contrary, and the opinion of the District Attorney. “The odds of an innocent man being found guilty by a unanimous jury are basically nil,” says Coulter. —No footnotes are provided for this assertion
This man—who said this was a good idea—is still the leader of the Party of Lincoln in the Senate. —Moreover, he faces no tough questions over his remarks. (Or where he does his hair, for that matter.)
A large number of people feel government-sponsored racism is not necessary; that diversity in education is not a compelling state interest, and is, furthermore, insulting to minorities; and anyway, in a couple of generations this whole dominant racial majority crap will be a thing of the past, so why bother? (Myself, I agree with Barry that Ignatz hit it on the nose:
(...if you’ve got a test or series of tests that tends to suggest that white folks are disproportionately “deserving of” or “suited to” a college education, then the test clearly isn’t measuring what it ought to be measuring, because I take it as a basic truth that white folks in fact do not disproportionately deserve the good stuff that society has to offer; and correcting for that flaw in the testing system is commendable rather than invidious.)
Meanwhile, six frat members are not to be criticized by their frat for putting on blackface to look like the Jackson 5 or Louis Armstrong for an air guitar contest. —And altogether elsewhere, Sinter Klass is still beating Zwarte Pieten.
::
Update! Be sure to check out the MetaFilter comments on this topic for a defense of Lott. (He wasn’t talking about segregation, you see. He’s upset about the partition of Israel, which occurred during the Truman administration. Had we voted Thurmond into office, none of this mess in the Middle East would ever have happened.)
For the record, then.
Yes, it is true that I used to get my hair cut by Joey, at—I cannot recall the name of the establishment at this time. Yes, the one on Hawthorne.
I cannot recall the amount I paid per cut off-hand, no. I tipped five dollars, though, which I think is customary.
Yes, I did at some point last year make the switch to Bishop’s, across the street. When it first opened. I do not recall the exact date, no.
Yes, I am aware that Bishop’s offers a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon while you’re waiting. For free, yes. That may have been a factor in my decision to switch, yes. But also, and I want to stress this—their cuts are cheaper in price. That would have been the primary factor, yes. Not the Pabst. I want to stress this.
I do not recall the exact amount, no. Not at this time. Not for a regular cut. I have never had my hair dyed or colored there, no. Or anywhere else. Frosted? No. Not that, either.
The last time I visited Bishop’s? I had my head shaved. Yes. Bald. They charge ten dollars for that; that amount I do recall. Since then, I maintain my hair myself with electric clippers.
Is that it? Are we done?
—via Calpundit, Daily Howler, TPM, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Think this isn’t something to take seriously? Open the can of worms and peer inside.
moneylenders : temple :: scoundrels : ?
So I read a squib in the Mercury about how Eugene’s city council had passed a resolution condemning the USA PATRIOT Act—excuse me, the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act—but how Portland’s council hasn’t yet said boo on the subject, despite an active Portland Bill of Rights Defense Committee, a burgeoning petition, and a resolution ready to go at a moment’s notice.
I resolved, therefore, to write a letter to my council members. Should fellow Portlanders feel so inclined, well, you can reach Mayor Katz and Erik Sten via email; James Francesconi has a website, but no email links, so it’s an old-fashioned fax for him (503.823.3017), and though Dan Saltzman has a form-mail page (ooh!), his .cgi thingie hiccupped when I tried to paste my letter in, so it’s a fax for him, too (503.823.3036).
Fun fact learned while browsing for some background: the ACLU thinks Oregon’s laudable state laws limiting police actions as regards people who are under no suspicion of having committed a crime are targeted for a hit in the 2003 legislative session, thanks to a vengeful Attorney General Ashcroft. These laws were passed to prevent past abuses from ever occurring again. We should maybe keep our eyes open and our ears to the ground on this one…
(Don’t live in Portland? Want to get your local city council in on the fun and games? It’s easy! Head on over to the national Bill of Rights Defense Committee website, find out if your city’s got a committee going, and if not, get right on it!)
Anyway. The letter, amended with some links:
Last year, when Portland police refused to participate in the mass interrogations of Muslim men, I was proud to be a Portlander. This city had taken a stand for the Bill of Rights, remembering that they are rights accorded to all Americans regardless of race, creed, or religion, and not merely platitudes to be discarded when they become inconvenient. And we held firm to that stand, despite the insults and invective of others around the country who, motivated by a very real fear, had forgotten this basic truth.
I am asking you to make me proud of Portland again.
Cities all over the country have with the help of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee have passed resolutions calling for the repeal in whole or in part of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, and Executive Orders that infringe on our constitutional rights. The USA PATRIOT Act, while passed with doubtless the best of intentions to keep Americans safe in what suddenly seemed to be a much more dangerous world, is nonetheless a hastily drafted, ill-conceived piece of legislation. Legal scholars and civil rights groups are nigh-unanimous in their denunciation of the law. Members of Congress admit that they had not enough time to read and study the bill before voting in favor of it. Some of its more extreme measures have faced judicial challenge and failed, utterly, most notably in the recent ruling that allows Jose Padilla a chance to confer with his lawyers.
But other, equally dangerous provisions have withstood judicial scrutiny, such as the alarming decision to allow warrantless wiretapping of American citizens in the name of protecting us from terrorism. And we cannot afford to wait for all of the various provisions of the law and the Executive Actions it rationalizes to wend their way through the courts. We are told that we can trust our current government not to abuse these powers, but this is not acceptable. It only takes one unscrupulous person to undo the best intentions our government may have for our safety, and no matter how much we may trust our current government, we cannot say the same for future administrations that would have these powers at their disposal. We must let Congress and the President know that this law must be repealed. The actions of those who would protect us must be returned to the bounds of our constitution.
To that end, 17 towns and cities throughout the country, from Berkeley, Calif. to Burlington, Vermont to Eugene, just down the highway, have passed resolutions condemning the USA PATRIOT Act and calling for its repeal in whole or in part. I read with interest Mike Harrison’s comments in the 5 December Portland Mercury, in which he ponders what effect such a resolution could have. Make no mistake: such a resolution would largely be a symbolic act. But such symbols are vital. Portland’s decision not to aid the Justice Department in its interrogation had some measurable impact in protecting the rights of Portland’s Muslims from unwarranted interrogations, but it was far more important as a symbol that prompted other cities to follow our lead. Americans in every state are coming to realize how troubling this act is, and the acts performed and contemplated under its aegis. We are looking to voice our concerns in any way we can. Please, help us. Please take up this cause. Craft and pass a resolution condemning this law and defending our Bill of Rights, and add Portland’s name to this list.
Make us proud of Portland—and our country—again.
