MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog - Social Issues and Political Commentary: October 7, 2007

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October 12, 2007

Update: Blackwater Quit Trade Group to Avoid Scrutiny

This is an update to my recent piece on Blackwater's withdrawal from the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA), a private military industry trade group. Earlier today, the IPOA issued a press release, explaining that Blackwater's sudden departure from the organization, announced yesterday, may have been intended to quash an IPOA investigation of the firm's conduct in Iraq, specifically relating to the September 16 shootings in Baghdad, which killed 17 Iraqi civilians and wounded 24 others. According to the press release:

On October 8, 2007 the IPOA Executive Committee authorized the Standards Committee to initiate an independent review process of Blackwater USA to ascertain whether Blackwater USA's processes and procedures were fully sufficient to ensure compliance with the IPOA Code of Conduct.

Yesterday, I spoke with Doug Brooks, the IPOA's founder and president. He assured me that Blackwater's decision to withdraw from the organization had not been the result of an internal IPOA disciplinary process. He went on to praise Blackwater for its cooperation, saying "they've been quite open with us."

Nevertheless, Blackwater's decision appears to have had the intended effect: According to a source with knowledge of the IPOA's internal deliberations, the group's investigation of Blackwater's conduct has now been cancelled.

Barney Frank Gets Heat from LGBT Advocates

Gay rights supporters are confronting an unlikely foe—Rep. Barney Frank. Frank, who is gay himself and has been a longtime champion of gay rights, is getting heat from civil rights advocates for supporting a job discrimination bill even though it omits transgender people.

The legislation, which would be the first to protect gays, lesbians, and bisexuals in the workplace, is a compromise that was reached to move the bill forward. A poll done by a popular gay news site shows that its readers are divided on the issue, with one-third supporting Frank's position, one-third opposing it, and one-third saying gay and transgender people shouldn't be lumped together in the first place. At a press conference yesterday, Frank blamed the tension on the "ideological purity that plagues American politics, that holds liberalism back in a number of areas."

As much as I think transgender people should be protected, Frank has a point. The Bush administration's failure to give an inch on everything from Iraq to civil liberties over the last seven years has left our country deeply divided and the population completely disillusioned with government. It's time to let our Democratic leaders lead us in the right direction, even if it takes a while to get to our final destination.

—Celia Perry

Da Vinci Decoded: Vatican Publish Knights of Templar Papers

Get ready fans and foes of Dan Brown: The Vatican has "discovered" a cache of documents from the Knights Templar. For those of you who were spared the bad movie and worse prose (via AP):

The military order of the Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon was founded in 1118 in Jerusalem to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land after the First Crusade. As their military might increased, the Templars also grew in wealth, acquiring property throughout Europe and running a primitive banking system. After they left the Middle East with the collapse of the Crusader kingdoms, their power and secretive ways aroused the fear of European rulers and sparked accusations of corruption and blasphemy.

The documents in question "reproduces the entire documentation of the papal hearings convened after King Philip IV of France arrested and tortured Templar leaders in 1307 on charges of heresy and immorality," which includes "a 14th-century parchment showing that Pope Clement V initially absolved the Templar leaders of heresy, though he did find them guilty of immorality and planned to reform the order, according to the Vatican archives Web site."

AP continues: "Historians believe Philip owed debts to the Templars and used the accusations to arrest their leaders and extract, under torture, confessions of heresy as a way to seize the order's riches."

Okay, this is all juicy stuff but what I love best is this:

Only 799 copies of the 300-page volume, "Processus Contra Templarios," - Latin for "Trial against the Templars" - are for sale, said Scrinium publishing house, which prints documents from the Vatican's secret archives. Each will cost $8,377, the publisher said Friday. An 800th copy will go to Pope Benedict XVI, said Barbara Frale, the researcher who found the long-overlooked parchment tucked away in the archives in 2001.

The Da Vinci Code book was published in 2003. The movie came out in 2006. So the entire stupid "is the Da Vinci Code right or wrong" industry could have been, I dunno, at least arguing over the facts for the past four years had only the Vatican released this earlier.

And, though this isn't strictly relevant, before he became Pope Benedict, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, known until 1908 as the Holy Office of the Inquisition.

Black Ministers Get Religion About HIV/AIDS

It's about damned time.

It's only been in the last two weeks that the black church came to Jesus about AIDS. Let us pray that it's not too little too late.

Having long ignored the alarms about the AIDS epidemic decimating an already ravaged community, blacks' most prominent ministers officially joined elected officials, the National Medical Association (formed when the AMA was segregated) and other groups in moving past their homophobia and brimstone to reality: blacks must do something about the cultural underpinnings that feed the flames of AIDS. Not since the 60s has the black church so thrown itself behind a community issue.

Read this for a snapshot of the crisis and news about the group's first meeting, but the bottom line is this: black refusal to deal with its attitudes about male privilege, sex, drugs, homosexuality and superstitions (please don't mention Tuskegee again) was threatening us with near extinction (AIDS is the number 1 cause of death for black women 25-34). Blessedly, last week's meeting was a success, complete with action plan:

"Following a two-day conclave, over 150 African American leaders proposed the National HIV/AIDS Elimination Act, which they plan to introduce to Congress as early as January. The act calls on the federal government “to declare the HIV/AIDS Crisis in the African American community a ‘public health emergency’” and urges “the Secretary of Health and Human Services to use his emergency authority to redirect resources to address this emergency.”

The group plans to hold the presidential candidates feet to the fire on AIDS as well. Officially at least, the taboo on acknowledging homosexuality from the pulpit (therefore in black life generally) will be lifted, however grudgingly. There'll be community education, outreach to homosexuals and relationships established with social services organizations which serve the AIDS community. Great. But something's missing.

What about confession and a request for forgiveness? As they've all no doubt preached, atonement, without a confession, is mere charity, a duty. Not a problem you helped create.

Many of these ministers only grudgingly admit that the black church had anything to do with the black AIDS epidemic denying, a la Ahmadinejad, that blacks would ever be gay, then sermonizing that homosexuality was an abomination, either ex communicating gays or forcing them onto the down low. (I'm amazed to realize in retrospect how many in my Southern Baptist congregation were total flamers. But as long as they stayed in their sham marriages and helped dog the 'queers' and 'bull daggers', they remained church leaders.) Several quoted ministers were at pains to deny that the church was overwhelmingly homophobic and saw AIDS as the wages of sin (though some saw the light early). But we don't have to look far for evidence, just to our HBCUs (historically black colleges and universities).

With 100-plus campuses, HBCUs are notorious for their conservatism; they routinely censor campus newspapers, squash rallies and flyer-distribution of flyers for campaigns like HIV/AIDS awareness, and even protests of the Iraq war, a position uncontroversial among blacks. In particular, young black gays trying to assert themselves on HBCU campuses find themselves stymied by their colleges’ administrators and alumni (many of whom are also ministers); few have been granted the student group charters required to officially exist on campus. The entrenched black religious, political and educational establishments see themselves in a battle for the soul of the black community and thus believe it is they, not black homosexuals, who are under fire for their beliefs; it'll be awhile before they get this new memo. Recently, black gays at Hampton University in Virginia tried, and failed, to establish a campus group for gays;

"You've got to recognize the history of HBCUs," said Larry Curtis, vice president for student affairs at Norfolk State University, where students recently formed a gay-straight alliance. "Most of them were founded by religious organizations."…

On historically black campuses, those tensions make life uncomfortable for gay students. "It's kind of hard to be out on campus and still be successful," said Vincent Allen Jr., head of Safe Space at Atlanta's Morehouse College. "As an out gay man, if I wanted to pledge [a fraternity], that door is pretty much shut to me. That's just the way it is."

But just as gay students can rightfully request campus inclusion, so too can black college administrators deny it, argued the Rev. William Owens, an HBCU graduate and head of the Coalition of African-American Pastors in Memphis, Tennessee. Those administrators may cite the Bible, or simply personal beliefs -- and they don't have to be politically correct, Owens said.

"They can say 'no' and I don't think they have to give a lot of reasons," said Owens, who joined other black pastors worried that, along with dismal marriage rates, socially accepted homosexuality "is a threat to the black family."

In 2002, the issue of gays on black campuses grabbed the attention of the Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy group that organizes annual "coming out" days. "We would send out information to all the colleges and universities about getting national coming out packets, and for some reason the only institutions they were not hearing back from at all were the historically black colleges," said the group's diversity manager Brandon Braud, who began calling campuses.

He learned of gay groups at two historically black schools: Washington's Howard University, and Spelman College, in Atlanta. Administrators elsewhere denied having gay students (emph added), or said that while gays attended, "they're very underground," Braud said.

You can read the whole thing here, but it seems clear that it black religiosity and cultural conservatism have everything to do with the AIDS problem. We can't fight one without fighting the other, and on multiple battle grounds.

At 2006’s high profile right wing Values Voter Summit, Rev. Dwight McKissic attacked as “insulting, offensive, demeaning, and racist” any consonance between gay rights and civil rights. He derided homosexuals as “comparing their sin to my skin” and who “can’t reproduce so they have to recruit.” While the Civil Rights movement sprung from righteousness, the gay rights movement springs from “the pit of hell itself” and is a “satanic anointment,” birthed from the anti-Christ who is himself homosexual. Black ministers like McKissic aver that the fight against homosexuality is the most pressing issue facing blacks, seconded even by liberal black ministers like civil rights activist Rev. Willie Wilson of Union Temple Baptist Church in southeast D.C. who sermonized in 2005:

“Lesbianism is about to take over our community ... I ain't homophobic, because everybody here got something wrong with him,' he said. 'But ... women falling down on another woman, strapping yourself up with something, it ain't real. That thing ain't got no feeling in it. It ain't natural. Anytime somebody got to slap some grease on your behind and stick something in you, it's something wrong with that. Your butt ain't made for that. "'No wonder your behind is bleeding,' he said. 'You can't make no connection with a screw and another screw. The Bible says God made them male and female.'

"The congregation can be heard shouting its approval in the background during Wilson's sermon."

Whether the black church is conservative and gay-panicked because its community is, or vice versa, the result is the same: an AIDS epidemic. It's enough that the most powerful cultural strand in the black community has joined the battle. It would actually be Christian for it to humbly ask for forgiveness.

October 11, 2007

TSA Starts Using New 'Strip Search' X-Ray Machines

As of today, Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport has begun using a new kind of x-ray to search passengers for possible weapons. The radiation-free x-ray, called a "millimeter wave," scans a person's entire body. In the process, it creates a blush-inducingly graphic image of the person being scanned. The TSA blurs the face in scans, and only allows a remote screener to see the final scan. But for some, that isn't enough: "If you want to see a naked body," ACLU director Barry Steinhardt told the Associated Press, "this is a naked body."

The millimeter wave is just one of a few kinds of advanced technology (AT) x-rays being tested by the TSA. Another kind of AT x-ray has received similar outcry (it's been called a "virtual strip search"). In response, the TSA altered the machine, but so much so that it obscured the very weapons it was supposed to find, as we reported in our July/August issue. The technology was initially developed for use in prisons and courthouses.

Despite privacy concerns, the TSA seems determined to roll out AT x-rays across the nation: they recently awarded more than $30 million in contracts to the companies that produce the machines and have used them at several airports including New York-Kennedy, Los Angeles International, and Regan National. So far, the machines have been voluntary, as an alternative to a pat-down in secondary screening. And, the TSA says, it has disabled the "save" function so that images cannot be stored or distributed. However, with the TSA's history of violating passengers' rights, I wouldn't bet on it.

Tutu, Part Two

Last week I noted that the University of St. Thomas had rescinded a speaking invitation to Archbishop Desmond Tutu because administrators deemed Tutu's previous criticisms of Israel to be "hurtful" to some Jews. This morning, Scott Jaschik of InsideHigherEd has some good news: St. Thomas' president has reversed his decision and will invite Tutu to campus after all.

The twist here is that Anti-Defamation League director Abe Foxman wrote a letter to St. Thomas objecting to its decision to cancel Tutu. This is an unusual outburst of sanity from Foxman and the ADL, which Glenn Greenwald has been pounding in recent days for seeming to apply "its outrage practices selectively and politically" and marching in lockstep with the right on issues like Iran. While Foxman still indulges in his annoying tic of describing people in terms of whether they are, in his opinion, "a friend of Israel"—in the letter, he deems Tutu "not a friend of Israel" simply for voicing a criticism of an Israeli policy—the ADL deserves credit here for standing up for free exchange on campus. Maybe the group is taking Greenwald's criticisms to heart.

—Justin Elliott

Army to Expand Numbers, Time in Iraq

Military leaders said yesterday that they plan to accelerate the Army's expansion, adding 74,000 soldiers by 2010, not 2012 as originally planned. The goal, they say, is to relieve the strain on troops currently serving while maintaining the numbers necessary to continue the war effort.

Sounds great, right? Hire more soldiers, give the troops on the ground a much-needed break. But where are they going to get these people? Defense Secretary Robert Gates specified that the recruiting needs to be done without forcing anyone to stay or loosening entry standards. That might be tough, considering how much the Army has already had to widen its net to meet recruiting goals. In addition, a big part of the plan involves retention—convincing servicemen and women not to leave the Army at the end of their tours. While in a perfect world this might mean rest between deployments, practically speaking, it probably means more time in Iraq.

To top it all off, last time I checked, General Petraeus had announced plans for a troop drawdown beginning next spring. Bush endorsed the plan provided he saw evidence of progress. But given the Army's current numbers, a troop reduction is inevitable. Does the expansion push mean there won't be a drawdown after all? More likely that even with the departure of 30,000 soldiers, we're still planning for the very long term.

—Casey Miner

Telephone Industry's Comical Consolidation

Surfing wikipedia can lead to wonderful things. Check out this neat chart we found showing the evolution of telephone company consolidation. Click the box to see a larger version.

Old AT&T; really knows how to be persistent.

Update: Stephen Colbert has a typically awesome take on this.

BP and Chevron Go Virtual and Green

What do Chevron and BP have in common, besides being leading members of Big Oil? Computer games, apparently. Yesterday, the New York Times reported on BP's latest rebranding move—a "collaboration" with the video game company Electronic Arts. To learn more about these companies' quests into unknown territory, read the rest of this post on Mother Jones' environment and health blog, The Blue Marble.

Empire State Building to be Lit for Muslim Holy Day

New York City again shows that ~~the~~ as one of only two American ~~city~~ cities* actually attacked by Islamic terrorism, it is the one perhaps most willing to embrace Muslims, immigrants, and its own rich cultural diversity. From Newsday:

The Empire State Building will be illuminated green this weekend to mark the Islamic holy days of Eid-al-Fitr (EED-ALL-FEET-er).

The joyous "Festival of Fast-breaking" marks the end of Ramadan, a month of intense spiritual renewal.

This year is the first time the famous skyscraper will be aglow for the Islamic holiday. A spokeswoman for the building's owner says it will be an annual event, in the same tradition of the yearly skyscraper lighting for Christmas and Hanukah.

In Islam, the color green symbolizes a happy occasion and the importance of nature.

* I am a complete idiot. Thanks to melissa in the comments.

Rudy Giuliani Out Flubs the Republican Field

I've blogged before about how much I love factcheck.org. They come through again with some real treats on the Republican debate in Dearborn, Michigan.

Former Sen. Fred Thompson got the facts straight for his GOP debate debut Oct. 9. But former Mayor Rudy Giuliani added to a lengthening string of exaggerations and misstatements:

Giuliani claimed Sen. Hillary Clinton once called the free-market economy "the most destructive force in modern America." She didn't say that. She quoted another author who said free markets were "disruptive." She also said free markets bring prosperity.

The mayor falsely claimed Clinton proposes to give $1,000 to "everybody." Her proposed subsidies to workers' retirement accounts would be for couples making up to $60,000 a year and would be $500 for those making up to $100,000.

Giuliani falsely claimed that more than 2 percent of the nation's gross domestic product is spent on "frivolous" lawsuits. The figure is from a study about the cost of all lawsuits.

Another Reason to Suck It Up and Buy a Minivan

One of the great enduring myths created by the American auto industry is that SUVs are safer than regular cars. The Ford Explorer rollover scandals in 2000 helped pierce this image a little, but Americans still seem to believe that an SUV is a safe place to store a family on the road. (The Frost children, in fact, who've been attacked by right wingers during the SCHIP debate were nearly killed when the family SUV slid off the road and hit a tree.)

The data, however, continue to show that most people would be safer in a Mini Cooper (or a minivan) than a Chevy Trailblazer. The latest news comes from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, whose new crash tests show that most SUVs perform poorly when hit from the side, even though they're much higher off the ground than other cars.

"People often think they're safer in one of these vehicles, but many cars hold up better than some of these midsize SUVs in this test," David Zuby, the institute's senior vice president, told the Associated Press.

You can watch the crash videos here.

October 10, 2007

Candidates' Kids Can Blog Better Than This

By now, you may have heard some of the buzz surrounding McCain Blogette, the new blog put out by John McCain's daughter, Meghan, and her friends (including "political fashionista" La-Toria Haven, thank goodness). The second family campaign blog this cycle, McCain Blogette is more of a shameless self-promotional vehicle than, say, a shameless pander for family-values votes like the Romneys' Five Brothers. But this new genre has real potential. Here are some other efforts we'd like to see:

Chelsea Clinton—McKinsey Confidential: Chronicling an ambitious young woman’s quest to make it in the all-boys club consulting world
Grace and Christina Dodd, Malia and Sasha Obama, Emma Claire and Jack Edwards, Jenna Brownback—The Playpen: Influential group blog for intelligentsia of the under-10 set
Randy Tancredo—Minuteman: Liveblogging the immigration fight, straight from the borderlands
Caroline Giuliani—My Obama Girl: Caroline signs on as occasional guest blogger at fan site
David Huckabee—Huck’s Heart: Online community service clearinghouse, part of court-ordered restitution for animal cruelty incident, weapons charges

Readers, let's see what you can come up with! There's a Beau Biden gag just begging to be made here.

—Justin Elliott

Lieberman Says No To Investigating Blackwater

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee, says that he has no intention of investigating Blackwater USA and other government contractors who have been accused of criminal action.

Lieberman said he gets "angry when I hear about fraud or corruption in the spending of American dollars," but "You've got to set your own priorities, and it was clear to me that other committees were going to pick this up."

Where I come from, the alleged murder of seventeen people is not classified as "fraud" or "corruption," but Lieberman sees it another way. His counterpart in the House of Representatives, Rep. Henry Waxman, is holding hearings on the Blackwater incident.

Halo 3: Now You Can Kill Mother%#$@#s in Church

Halo 3, the violent video game that made Microsoft hundreds of millions of dollars in its first week on store shelves, is now being used to attract young men to church, the New York Times reports today. "Teens are our 'fish,'" one youth pastor wrote in a letter to parents. "So we've become creative in baiting our hooks."

The headline of the article is "Thou Shalt Not Kill, Except in a Popular Video Game at Church," which seems to be trying to paint church leaders as hypocritical for using Halo parties to get kids in the door, and then selling them the gospel. Sure, being against violent media and then using that same media to recruit churchgoers is hypocritical. But even though the author mentions evangelical opposition to violent games, he never presents an example of a pastor who condemned violent games and then used them for outreach. Without that, there is no evidence of hypocrisy. There are just some pastors disagreeing with other pastors about what is appropriate.

Simply believing in the 10 Commandments and then playing a violent video game is not hypocritical. Killing virtual aliens is not equivalent to violating the 5th (sometimes 6th) commandment, and it's insane for the Times to imply that it is. Most religious scholars agree that killing animals doesn't violate "Thou shalt not kill." Why would killing imaginary characters be prohibited?

But even if the author didn't want to hunt down actual evidence of hypocrisy, there were still plenty of other interesting questions left unasked. As I wrote in an article two weeks ago, the Halo games have always been an online playground for bigots of all stripes. Homophobia, racism, and antisemitism are rampant in the smack talk that is a staple of the multiplayer game. So it's especially interesting to learn that some of the young men (they're almost all men) who are playing Halo are doing it at church. Are they shocked to hear what other players say? Do their pastors insist that they play with the mute button on? Or, more disturbingly, are some of these young Christian soldiers and the hate-spewers one and the same?

Let's Hope the Clinic Showed Baywatch Reruns

The missing mayor of Atlantic City has officially resigned after spending a week in a psych hospital. Robert W. Levy may have been in a little over his head as mayor. Before getting elected, he had served for decades as the city's chief lifeguard...

Che-nniversaries

Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the killing of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. World Hum has the stories behind the popularity and endurance of the Che image, and Gridskipper has a list of all the places in San Francisco you can go to talk about The Motorcycle Diaries and sip mocha frappa whatevers. As they put it: "Oh socialist politics, you are so delicious when you're co-opted for a capitalist enterprise." Viva La Revolucion!

Want Health Insurance? Call Us Back When You're Homeless

Does living in a house worth $250,000 in Baltimore make a family of six rich? That's what conservatives seem to think.

After 12-year-old Graeme Frost helped Democrats lobby Congress to pass a bill expanding the State Childrens Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), conservatives vilified his family, claiming they were too affluent to qualify for the program. The state health insurance program helped pick up the tab when Graham and his sister were injured in a car accident that left them both in comas and hospitalized for five months. Because, among other things, they live in a house assessed at $263,000 (originally bought for $50,000) and make a little under $50,000 a year, critics seem to believe that the Frosts and their four kids were living high on the hog (and were apparently just too cheap to buy private insurance).

"Bad things happen to good people, and they cause financial problems and tough choices," Mark Steyn wrote on the National Review Online. "But, if this is the face of the 'needy' in America, then no-one is not needy."

The implication, of course, is that before getting any help from the government, the Frosts should have sold their home and everything else they own to pay the medical bills first. Aside from being highly irrational—a quarter-million dollars will barely buy a parking space in some parts of D.C., much less cover five months of hospital bills for catastrophic head injuries—what good is government-sponsored health insurance if you first have to become homeless and bankrupt before you're worthy enough to use it? The vicious attacks on the Frosts seem like a harbinger of things to come, unfortunately, should any democratic president actually succeed in getting some sort of health care reform off the ground.

Thomas Friedman Wants You to Be More Radical!

Friedman, from today's column:

I've been calling them "Generation Q" — the Quiet Americans, in the best sense of that term, quietly pursuing their idealism, at home and abroad. But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country's own good.

He's right to call for activism and political engagement, but it's pretty ripe that a war supporter as influential as Thomas Friedman is criticizing young people for being the "Quiet Generation." The Iraq war didn't happen because too few students were marching in the streets. It happened, in large part, because trusted liberal public intellectuals like (gasp!) Thomas Friedman supported it. They legitimized the Bush administration's story and worked as cheerleaders for intervention. Just because it happened behind the TimesSelect paywall or on Charlie Rose doesn't mean we don't remember. The saddest part is that Friedman's still such an influential figure that many people in his generation will pick up on this convenient, self-absolving narrative: "It's all the kids' fault. They didn't protest enough." Don't be surprised if you hear your parents spouting this to you two weeks from now. But that's a pretty big glass house to be throwing stones from, sir.

Lynching Losers

I've been saying loud and long that, post-Imus, -Jena 6 - post-everything - we don't need a 21st century civil rights movement centered around protests and marches. That doesn't mean we shouldn't ever take to the streets, however, and engage in some heavy duty symbolizing and grievance redressing. This heinous, however cowardly and childish, event ought to certainly produce some mass Negro indignation.

A noose was discovered this week on the office door of an African-American professor at Columbia University, school officials and the New York Police Department said. The noose was found in a building at Columbia's Teachers College, said Joe Levine, executive director for external affairs at Teachers College. The noose apparently was placed on the 44-year-old professor's office door sometime before 9 a.m. ET Tuesday, Levine said.

This only happened yesterday, so we don't know much, like why this individual was targeted or who the likely culprits (you know there was more than one cowardly lowlife involved; it takes a gaggle of them to equal one real man. And yes, I'll bet they were male) are since they made sure to avoid surveillance cameras. Still, doesn't matter. Nothing, anyone did justifies hanging a noose on his door; it's a terror tactic no matter who the subject is though it's worse for blacks given our history.

The question is the proper response. There are those, black and not, who will say ignore it and rob it of its power. I tried that on for awhile, but, nah. A noose mean something whether you ignore it or not and they affect those around you even if you've got it in you to simply toss it in the trash. Yesterday's hastily organized demonstration is a great start. Here's hoping it grows and grows, with stalwart university support. Unlike Jena, this is a protest I'd inconvenience myself to attend, knowing the little I know right now. Also, I'm thinking: nooses made of something with in-your-face-*&^hole symbolism hanging from every campus door and a sizeable reward for information leading to the capture of these morons.

There's no doubt that nooses are more a reflection of some whites' sense of waning superiority in the racial hierarchy than of actual threat (without knowing more) but then so can rape and sexual harassment be. The bastards have to be locked back in their cages.

Republicans Go Green on CNBC

There was a surprise winner at yesterday's Republican presidential debate in Dearborn, Michigan: the environment. The candidates — joined for the first time by Law and Order star Fred Thompson — came out nearly universally in favor of increased research on renewables and a decreased dependence of foreign oil. But their motivations weren't of a Save-the-Whales strain.

"This is a matter of national security," said Rudy Giuliani. "You've got to support all the alternatives. Hydroelectric power, solar power, wind power, conservation — we have to support all of these things. We've got to support them in a positive way. And this is an area in which the federal government, the president has to treat this like putting a man on the moon." And just in case you forgot, he added, "It is a matter of national security."

And while Sam Brownback made it clear he would drill for oil in Alaska and off the coast of basically every American state if it meant the United States imported less oil from the Middle East, he also challenged the automakers who had welcomed the candidates to the Detroit area. "We've got to get more electricity involved in our car fleet," he said. "They've got hybrid cars; they've got flex fuel cars. I think that's a big part of the answer. I'd like to see us move forward with getting those first 20 to 30 miles off of electricity that you plug into at night."

When asked if oil companies should use their record profits to fund renewables research, John McCain sounded just a little like Al Gore. "I would not require them to, but I think that public pressure and a lot of other things [might cause them to do so voluntarily]. Including a national security requirement that we reduce and eliminate our dependence on foreign oil and [that] we stop the contamination of our atmosphere." Climate change, he said, "is real and is taking place."

But no matter how green-friendly the field got, they couldn't separate their rhetoric from the overly-simplistic black-and-white nature of their foreign policy vision. Governor Mike Huckabee, for example, expressed frustration with the slow pace of renewables development ("We keep talking about 15-, 20-, 30-year plans; that's nonsense. If we don't start saying we'll do this within a decade, we're never, ever going to get there.") but then drowned it out with the sound of rattling sabers. "We're in a race for our lives against people who want to kill us," he said. "And a lot of the reasons that we are entangled in the Middle East is because our money buys their oil, that money ends up coming back to us in the way of Islamo-fascism terrorists."

But liberals and environmentalists may just abide the tough talk of Huckabee and his Republican brethren, because the end result is one they can embrace. Said Huckabee, when he closed his thoughts on the subject, "Everything is on the table: nuclear, biofuels, ethanol, wind, solar — any and everything this country can produce."

(Transcript of the debate available through the Wall Street Journal.)

October 9, 2007

Who Will Hack US Elections?

At an e-crime summit at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh last week security experts predicted voters will increasingly be targeted by internet-based dirty tricks campaigns. And that the perpetrators will find it easier to cover their tracks, reports New Scientist.

Dirty tricks are not new. On US election day in 2002, the lines of a "get-out-the-voters" phone campaign sponsored by the New Hampshire Democratic Party were clogged by prank calls. In the 2006 election, 14,000 Latino voters in Orange County, California, received letters telling them it was illegal for immigrants to vote. But in those cases the Republican Party members and supporters were traced and either charged or named in the press. Online dirty tricks will be much less easy to detect, security researchers say.

Spam email could be used against voters, experts say, by giving the wrong location for a polling station, or, as in the Orange County fraud, incorrect details about who has the right to vote. . . Telephone attacks like the New Hampshire prank calls would be harder to trace if made using internet telephony instead of landlines . . . Calls could even be made using a botnet. This would make tracing the perpetrator even harder, because calls wouldn't come from a central location. What's more, the number of calls that can be made is practically limitless.

Internet calls might also be made to voters to sow misinformation, says Christopher Soghoian at Indiana University in Bloomington. "Anonymous voter suppression is going to become a reality." Manipulation can also happen in more subtle ways. In 2006, supporters of California's Proposition 87, for a tax that would fund alternative energy, registered negative-sounding domains including noon87.com and noonprop87.org and then automatically routed visitors to a site touting the proposition's benefits.

The summit's conclusion: the problem will happen. The only unknowns: when and by whom.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent. You can read from her new book, "The Fragile Edge," and other writings, here.

Abuse of Presidential Power and the Ghost of Nixon

The Supreme Court today refused to hear the appeal of German citizen Khaled El-Masri, who was contesting a March decision by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss his lawsuit against the CIA. El-Masri alleged that in 2004 he was kidnapped by the CIA and rendered to a secret prison in Afghanistan, where he was tortured.

The Court's refusal to hear the case affirms the decision of the Appeals Court, which ruled against El-Masri on the grounds that allowing him to seek judicial redress would expose state secrets. The court's opinion relied heavily on the precedent of United States v. Reynolds—the 1953 case that legally enshrined the State Secrets Privilege. Though not based in the Constitution, the Reynolds precedent allows the government to withhold evidence from a legal case if its disclosure would endanger national security—a privilege most notably invoked by Richard Nixon and George W. Bush.

In Reynolds, the Court held that the widows of three Air Force contractors who died in a 1948 crash could not be compensated, because litigating the case would expose military secrets. But in 2000, the documents related to the crash were declassified, revealing that what the military sought to conceal was not in fact a state secret, but instead evidence of the Air Force's culpability in the men's deaths. The Court ruled without ever seeing these documents, since they were, at the time, classified.

Anyone else see the legal Catch-22 here? The El-Masri decision is less about national security than it is about the President's right to invoke the privilege of state secrets. Without judicial process, we'll never know if that claim is legitimate or lawful. Before dismissing El-Masri's case, the Court might have looked to another old opinion, also cited in the March ruling of the Appeals Court:

Neither the doctrine of separation of powers, nor the need for confidentiality of high-level communications, without more, can sustain an absolute, unqualified Presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process under all circumstances.

That was United States v. Nixon—the famous Watergate decision in which the court ruled unanimously to limit Presidential power.

—Casey Miner

Pakistan Election a Big Sham, No Surprise

This past Saturday, Pakistan held its presidential election. It's no surprise that the good General came out on top. In Pakistan, presidents are chosen by an electoral college, consisting of the Senate, the National Assembly, and the Provincial Assemblies and these governing bodies were elected in 2002 during a rigged election. Musharraf's re-election was a guarantee.

Musharraf now needs approval from the Supreme Court, which will look at the legality of his re—election beginning on October 17. Under the Pakistani constitution, one is prohibited from running for president while still acting as an army chief. Most argue that it's unlikely the Supreme Court will rule against Musharraf.

The White House commented that "Pakistan is an important partner and ally to the United States and we congratulate them for today's election." This response doesn't raise eyebrows: the U.S. stands behind Musharraf quite often and has even helped broker the recent "power—sharing deal" between former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and Musharraf. This partnership will allow Musharraf to remain in power for another five years, as her support stands to legitimize Musharraf's rule.

No wonder the British publication, the Independent called the election a "charade masquerading as democracy."

—Neha Inamdar

A Label of One's Own

If he's not careful, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson is going to end up in the racial rogue's gallery right next to me, misunderstood and villified by those too blinded by America's moribund racial discourse to know that they're in violent agreement with us. In fact, Robinson's own words show that he, too, suffered from the same myopia from which he seems now to be in the early stages of recovery.

In a now infamous column written earlier this year, I pointed out the obvious: Barack Obama isn't black. He's an immigrant black, or a la Stephen Colbert either a nouveau black or a 'late to the scene' black...call him what you will, just don't call him black and think you've conveyed any useful information. But neither should you think you've conveyed a put down. Just consider it a community service to have bothered to define your terms.

The point isn't that immigrant blacks aren't 'authentic' or that they haven't suffered through the slavery experience and are therefore unworthy of blackness, concepts which I reject as puerile and unworthy. The point is that the term 'black,' in the American socio-political context, simply doesn't make room for them. It leaches them of all context except an inapplicable one - descent from American slaves and the legacy of Jim Crow. Other than skin color, 'black' doesn't tell you anything you need to know about immigrant blacks - the function of a label, if I'm not mistaken - and in fact misleads you with false information. Be honest: when someone is described to you as black or African American, doesn't it make a difference to learn that their parents came here from Jamaica or that they recently arrived from Ethiopia and speak only Amharic? Trick question, because if it doesn't it should; there's no reason to assume a political or cultural consonance between immigrant blacks and the slave-descended. So why use the same term? Labels ought to illuminate more than they obscure, a test which the label 'black' fails pretty abysmally in 2007. We don't need yet another word for blacks (colored, Negro, Black, African American - a person could get dizzy.) What we need is to interrogate the label wherever we encounter it until 'black' or 'African American' means what Asian, for example, does: not much until you have more information. Are they Viet Namese, Korean or Tibetan? Now those are labels that actually illuminate a few things whereas 'Asian' only gives you over-broad physiognomic hints. If 'Asian' matters in any particular situation - quick! what's the Asian attitude toward affirmative action? - you can't procede until you know which flavor, which region of America. Ironically, if only to me, many of the hundreds of insulting emails I received in the wake of that column began something like "I'm from Ghana. You are a m(*&^..." or "My parents came from Trinidad and your mama is a m(&^..." If black skin is all that counts, all it takes to helpfully occupy the same term, why mention their homelands? How odd, their insistence on minimizing what is surely more important to their identity than the cotton my ancestors picked. How odd, to help keep whites' racist essentializations alive and well. Eugene Robinson, who criticized my take on Obama, is beginning to agree though he isn't fully 'there' yet.

In his latest column, he wrote, "black America" is an increasingly meaningless concept -- nearly as imprecise as just plain "America." ...Let's start by opening our eyes and recognizing that if there ever was a monolithic "black America" -- absolutely and uniformly deprived and aggrieved, with invariant values and attitudes -- there certainly isn't one now."

It isn't new for blacks to point out that their community isn't an affirmative action-supporting, 'hood-living, OJ-supporting one-note wonder. Unfortunately, though, that's usually a Potemkin village erected only to highlight white disinterest in black complexity; any black who stray off the plantation (Clarence Thomas, Sec. Rice), intermarry or offer internal critiques of the party line are swiftly punished and ex-communicated. So much for diversity. What is new is an apparent willingness for a leading thinker to follow that train of thought to its logical conclusion - a redefinition of the term 'black' and a possible wholesale realignment of the politics of blackness. The piece deserves a read.

Unfortunately, Robinson, like most blacks, ignores entirely the existence of immigrant blacks, a glaring omission in a discussion of black diversity and suggests that it might best be those immigrants who lead the charge for a label of their own. Their quiescence is a testament to both the strangle hold that traditional blacks enjoy on the race discourse and, one has to believe, an immigrant buy-in to that discourse such that it needs its consciousness raised as to its own marginalization. What must they think when they read reports like this one (emphasis added):

'Any black student will do'

A disturbing report shows some African Americans are being squeezed out of the US university population. Joanna Walters reports.

When Shirley Wilcher went to a reunion at her prestigious alma mater, Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts, she got quite a shock. The number of black graduates whose parents were born outside the US seemed to have grown dramatically compared with those whose families had been in America for generations - back to the times of slavery - like herself. She suspected that, in the process of becoming more diversified, top universities had recruited more black students but, increasingly, they were not those from post-slavery African-American US backgrounds who were supposed to be the main beneficiaries of the civil rights movement and controversial policies such as affirmative action.

Wilcher demanded data from reluctant admissions officials and her suspicions were confirmed: student recruits from what is termed the native, or domestic, US African-American population had been dropping. Not only were blacks overall still under-represented, but within the black student population African-Americans were being squeezed out.

"It's shocking. Awfully short-sighted, at best. I'm disappointed," she says.

Wilcher is the executive director of the American Association for Affirmative Action, which promotes policies that discriminate in favour of black students in an effort to correct the long legacy of racism in the US. And there was wider confirmation of her informal research to come.

A report just released shows African-Americans losing out at selective colleges across the country, particularly at elite universities, and their places being taken by first- or second-generation American immigrants, at least one of whose parents was born in the Caribbean or Africa.

The joint University of Pennsylvania-Princeton report found that although immigrant-origin black students make up only 13% of the black population in the US, they now comprise 27% of black students at the 28 top US universities surveyed.

And in a sample of the elite ivy league universities the figures were even more dramatic. More than 40% of black students in the ivy league now come from immigrant families.

"Immigrant and second-generation blacks are over-represented at these schools, while overall black students are still too few," says Dr Camille Charles, sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the report's co-authors, "which means the problem of access for African-Americans - that group which has the longest history of oppression in the US - is of even greater concern than we thought."

My, oh my. Where to begin with such madness?

Let's just say that the above is what I mean by the way 'black' and 'African American' are used on the socio-political ground, whatever its politcally correct definition. When those terms are not meaningless they're worse; they're tools for silencing immigrant blacks even as blacks fight to keep their 'brothers' in their place.

Come on over to the dark side, Eugene. But don't forget your flak jacket.

Making a Killing: A Blackwater Timeline

An investigation ordered by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki into Blackwater's September 16 shooting in Baghdad, in which 17 civilians were killed and another 24 were wounded, has determined that the company's operators opened fired indiscriminately and without provocation. The official Iraqi report on the incident demands that the U.S. government pay $8 million in compensation to each of the victims' families and sever all Iraq-based contracts with Blackwater within the next 6 months. It also demands that the Blackwater operators involved in the shootings be handed over to Iraqi authorities for possible prosecution in Iraqi courts.

It's unclear if the U.S. government will comply and perhaps even more unclear if it could meet the Iraqi government's demands even if it wanted to. Civilian employees of the State Department rely on Blackwater for protection. If the company were banished from Iraq, U.S. diplomatic operations would be paralyzed, at least until another private contractor could be hired for the job. Even if this were to happen, it's doubtful that booting Blackwater would make much difference. More than likely, its operators would quickly find work with competitors like Triple Canopy and DynCorp, who would have to fill the Baghdad security void in Blackwater's absence. The private security sector is a small one after all. Even Andrew Moonen, the Blackwater operator who got drunk in the Green Zone last Christmas Eve and murdered one of the Iraqi vice president's security guards, found a new job with Combat Support Services Associates, which put him back to work in Kuwait just two months after the shooting.

So, will Blackwater survive this latest scandal? It's impossible to know for sure, but there's little reason to believe otherwise. The company, which started as a small-scale provider of firearms training in 1998, has grown into a billion-dollar Goliath, complete with an army of lobbyists and sympathetic politicians to press its agenda on Capitol Hill. Guided by its reclusive founder, Erik Prince, the company, over its short history, has deflected controversy with ease, all the while simultaneously expanding its reach into new markets and generating ever more profitable government contracts. What follows is a timeline that documents Blackwater's rise and its history of misconduct in Iraq and Afghanistan.

1965
Prince Corporation is founded in Holland, Michigan, by Edgar Prince, father of future Blackwater founder Erik Prince. The company specializes in auto parts.

June 6, 1969
Erik Prince is born.

1973
Prince Corporation begins marketing the "lighted sun visor" to car companies, a wildly successful innovation that nets the company billions of dollars.

February 1979
Erik Prince's older sister Betsy marries Dick Devos, CEO of Amway and a billionaire contributor to the GOP and right-wing political causes. Devos was the Republican candidate for governor in Michigan in 2006.

1988
Gary Bauer and James Dobson found the socially conservative Family Research Council, funded primarily by the Prince family. Erik Prince interns there, before moving on to an internship in President George H.W. Bush's White House.

1992
Erik Prince earns a commission in the U.S. Navy. He goes on to become a Navy SEAL and serves in Haiti, Bosnia, and the Middle East.

March 2, 1995
Edgar Prince dies of a heart attack.

July 22, 1996
Prince Corporation is sold for $1.35 billion. Erik Prince retires early from the U.S. military.

December 26, 1996
Erik Prince's Blackwater Lodge and Training Center Inc. is incorporated in Delaware.

January 30, 1997
Blackwater purchases property in North Carolina.

January 1998
Blackwater gets its first paying customer, a Navy SEAL team. The company specializes in firearms training, but soon receives requests from Spain to train presidential security details and from Brazil for counterterrorism instruction.

February 1, 2000
Blackwater wins its first federal contract and is entered into the General Services Administration contracting database for government-approved goods and services, enabling it to compete for larger, longer-term federal contracts.

October 12, 2000
After the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, Blackwater gets its first long-term federal contract to train sailors for the U.S. Navy.

2001
Blackwater's federal contracts total $736,906.

September 11, 2001
Terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, DC.

2002
Blackwater's federal contracts total $3.4 million.

2002
Blackwater Security Consulting is founded, moving the company into the private security business.

2003
Blackwater's federal contracts total $25 million.

March 20, 2003
The U.S. invades Iraq.

2004
Blackwater's federal contracts total $48 million.

March 2004
Blackwater announces it has won a contract to train Azerbaijani maritime commandos. The work is done with approval of the U.S. government, which looks to Azerbaijan as a crucial ally in the oil- and gas-rich Caspian region.

March 31, 2004
Four Blackwater operators are killed in Falluja, their burnt bodies dragged through the streets and hung from a bridge. The incident sparks a major battle in the Iraq War. The public takes notice of Blackwater for the first time.

April 1, 2004
Blackwater engages Alexander Strategy Group to do damage control. Within days, Erik Prince has private meetings with senior Republican members of Congress.

April 4, 2004
U.S. Marines lay siege to Falluja, while to the south in Najaf, Blackwater operators defend the Coalition Provisional Authority's headquarters from Mahdi Army attack.

June 28, 2004
CPA Order 17 provides private contractors with immunity from Iraqi law.

September 2004
Presidential Airways, a Blackwater-owned company, is awarded a $34.8 billion contract to transport troops and supplies in Afghanistan.

November 27, 2004
A Presidential Airways plane crashes into a mountain in Afghanistan, killing three Blackwater operators and three U.S. military personnel. A subsequent investigation reveals that the pilots were joy riding in an uncharted area.

2005
Blackwater's federal contracts total $352 million.

January 5, 2005
Families of the four Blackwater contractors killed in Falluja in March 2004 file a wrongful death suit against the company.

May 2005
A Blackwater-owned company called Greystone Limited is incorporated in Barbados. Among other things, it offers "proactive engagement teams" to conduct "stabilization efforts, asset protection and recovery, and emergency personnel withdrawal." Clients are also offered training in "defensive and offensive small group operations."

June 25, 2005
A Blackwater team fatally shoots an Iraqi man along the side of a road in Hilla. Operators do not report the incident.

August 29, 2005
Hurricane Katrina strikes New Orleans. Blackwater operators arrive within hours with weapons and combat gear. It is the company's first foray into the U.S. domestic security market.

November 28, 2005
A Blackwater convoy collides with 18 cars while driving to and from a meeting at the Iraqi Ministry of Oil. Investigations later determine that operators' accounts of the incident were "invalid, inaccurate, and at best, dishonest reporting." According to one Blackwater operator, the convoy's tactical commander "openly admitted giving clear direction to primary driver to conduct these acts of random negligence for no apparent reason." Two Blackwater employees are fired.

2006
Blackwater's federal contracts total $593 million.

May 2006
Blackwater announces plans for new combat training facilities in California and the Philippines.

February 6, 2006
Pentagon releases its Quadrennial Defense Review, classifying private contractors as a part of the Defense Department's "Total Force."

September 24, 2006
Blackwater convoy driving down the wrong side of the road ("counter flowing") in al-Hillah strikes an oncoming car, propelling it into a telephone pole. The Iraqi car bursts into flames. Blackwater contractors leave the scene without offering help to the victim, who dies in the fire.

December 24, 2006
Drunken Blackwater operator Andrew Moonen shoots the Iraqi vice presidents' security guard in the Green Zone. He is fired, fined, and flown back to the United States, but returns to Kuwait two months later with another private contracting firm.

2007
Blackwater's federal contracts total $1 billion.

February 7, 2007
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee holds hearings on the use of private security contractors in Iraq, focusing largely on Blackwater.

April 2007
Blackwater abandons plans for its Philippines' training center and instead opens a new facility in Illinois.

May 2007
Blackwater operators fatally shoot an Iraqi man who strayed too close to their convoy outside the Iraqi Ministry of Interior. The incident leads to a tense standoff with Iraqi military and interior ministry guards. U.S. soldiers are forced to intervene.

September 16, 2007
Seventeen Iraqis are killed and 24 wounded when Blackwater operators open fire in a traffic circle in central Baghdad.

No Wontons for Fred Fielding This Week

Every month, the right-wing legal group, the Federalist Society, meets at a D.C. Chinese restaurant, where they hear from an impressive array of conservative luminaries, including the occasional Bush administration official who comes to brief the faithful on various legal developments. This Friday's scheduled guest was Fred Fielding, who we now know is not Deep Throat (as had long been suspected) but who is currently the White House counsel.

This morning at 10:02 a.m., the Federalists sent out word that Fielding would be a no-show. One hour, 52 minutes later, the Washington Post uploaded a story blaming the Bush administration for blowing the cover off a private intelligence company's Al-Qaeda spy operation. The company had given the administration an advance copy of the latest bin Laden video, with warnings to keep it under wraps. Naturally, the administration leaked it to cable news outlets, allegedly destroying years of undercover work by the company. The first White House official to get the video? Yes, that would be Fred Fielding, who probably didn't need a fortune cookie to see his future this week.

Disgraced Mexican Politician Cheats on Marathon, Too

Favorite story of the week:

After a humiliating defeat in Mexico's presidential election last year, Roberto Madrazo appeared to be back on top: He'd won the men's age-55 category in the Sept. 30 Berlin marathon with a surprising time of 2:41:12.

But Madrazo couldn't leave his reputation for shady dealings in the dust. Race officials said Monday they disqualified him for apparently taking a short cut -- an electronic tracking chip indicates he skipped two checkpoints in the race and would have needed superhuman speed to achieve his win.

According to the chip, Madrazo took only 21 minutes to cover nine miles -- faster than any human can run. "Not even the world record holder can go that fast," race director Mark Milde said.

In a photograph taken as he crossed the finish line, Madrazo wears an ear-to-ear grin and pumps his arms in the air. But he also wore a wind breaker, hat and long, skintight running pants -- too much clothing, some said, for a person who had just run 26.2 miles in 60-degree weather.

Madrazo's outfit caught the attention of the New York-based marathon photographer Victor Sailer, who alerted race organizers that they might have a cheater on their hands.

"It was so obvious to me, if you look at everyone else that's in the picture, everyone's wearing T-shirts and shorts, and the guy's got a jacket on and a hat or whatever," Sailer said. "I looked at it and was like, wait a second."

Thank heavens for vigilant cameramen.

Madrazo's history of corruption and lies while in Mexico meant everyday citizens were unsurprised by the news of his marathon shenanigans. It's all in the AP article.

Another Nail in the Coffin for the Gitmo Tribunals

More evidence has emerged that the military tribunals set up by the Pentagon to review the legal status of Guantanamo detainees are nothing more than kangaroo courts. Last week, federal public defenders in Oregon filed an affidavit describing an interview with an army reserve officer who has sat on 49 Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT). The officer, a prosecutor in his civilian life, is the second to speak out publicly against the tribunals.

According to the affidavit, in at least six cases where the CSRT unanimously found the detainee did not qualify as an enemy combatant, the military ordered a new CSRT or forced the first one to re-open the case. The findings were then reversed with no new evidence, according to the officer, whose name was withheld. Tribunal members were poorly trained, pressured by higher-ups to rule against the detainnes, and despite congressional rules requiring the military to allow detainees to present evidence in their favor, the only witnesses allowed to testify on their behalf were other Gitmo prisoners. (Surely those Uighurs were a big help!)

The lawyers filed the affidavit in the case of Adel Hassan Hamad, a Sudanese father of four who worked at a charity hospital in Pakistan, where he was captured and sent to Cuba in 2002. The military actually ruled that he could be released a few years ago, but he is still languishing in captivity. It's this kind of stuff that makes it hard to imagine that the Supreme Court, conservative as it is, will rule that the tribunals are a perfect substitute for real constitutional rights.

October 8, 2007

Bad Moon Rising

Along with the esteem and credibility this administration has cost us in the world, will it also end African Americans' storied role in the armed forces? Blacks are fleeing in droves from the recruiters' offices they once thronged. According to the Boston Globe:

Defense Department statistics show the number of young black enlistees has fallen by more than 58 percent since fiscal year 2000. The Army in particular has been hit hard: In fiscal year 2000, according to the Pentagon statistics, more than 42,000 black men and women applied to enlist; in fiscal year 2005, the most recent for which a racial breakdown is available, just over 17,000 signed up.

No other groups' enlistment figures have dropped more. No wonder, with 83% of the black community opposing the war and this administration. One has to wonder about the long term implications most, though. The military, for all its racial problematics (which the article thoroughly lays out) has long been the black and working class safety valve; if you couldn't go to college, you could serve your country, be respected, and make a good living. You could help out the folks back home and make yourself much more employable after either a hitch or a career. One can only wonder how this turn of events will affect already bad black socio-economics and even crime rates because it's doubtful that the majority of those blacks who pass on the uniform will either head off for college or a high paying job. We'll all be dealing with the ripple effects of the Bush years for a long, long time.

Coffee or Microchips? Costa Rica Faces Tough Decision

The United States' war on Latin American populism has been around for decades, but this time it is being played out in the last place that the U.S. could have predicted: Costa Rica. This peaceful (they don't have an army) and U.S.-friendly country voted Sunday on whether or not to ratify the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Costa Rica is the only country in the region that has not done so.

The country is divided. President Oscar Arias won the general election last February based on a platform supporting the referendum, although he doesn't have much of a mandate; Arias beat his opposition by only 2 percent. Costa Ricans are split almost evenly between those who wish to ratify this neo-liberal agreement and those who side with the rising tide of leftist politics in Latin America. Last weekend, 100,000 Costa Ricans opposed to the agreement marched in the capital of San Jose.

The arguments for each side mirror the ideological arguments surrounding the issue in both North and South America. Supporters, including the president, say that the pact is necessary in order to create jobs and expand its fledgling technology sector. Opponents fear that it will make the rich richer, the poor poorer, and saturate the market with cheap imports from multinationals, hurting local business.

This is an ideological battle on the most general grounds as well, between privatization and nationalization. As part of the Act, the United States is demanding that Costa Rica privatize its nationalized telecommunications and insurance sectors. This might seem like a somewhat innocuous political battle in a tiny country that has little to no influence on the global economy, but symbolically this is an incredibly important decision. Costa Rica is now centrally positioned not only geographically but as a battlefield in the opposing ideologies of North and South America.

—Andre Sternberg

Marijuana Laws Cost Taxpayers Billions

A new study finds the marijuana prohibition costs taxpayers $41.8 billion a year in law enforcement, diverts $113 billion from the legal economy, and loses a whopping $31.1 billion in revenue annually. The Marijuana Policy Project reports the sad numbers. I mean, think how many wars we could fund with that kind of money. Not to mention the cost of all the enviro-damage from growing in national parks and supposedly pristine wilderness areas. Not to mention the good medicine never taken.

And—shhh—don't tell the boozers, but Lawrence Welk—or Myron Floren—was on the toke many, many moons ago. Clearly the weed's been mainstream forever. Check out the video, sans bubbles:

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent. You can read from her new book, "The Fragile Edge," and other writings, here.

It's a Curse but is it Really That Bad?

I'm not sure my eyes are working properly. Can it really be that a British mom wants to give her severely disabled 15 year old daughter a hysterectomy to "save her the pain and discomfort of menstruation"? One can only imagine how difficult caring for such a disabled child must be but major surgery to avoid four or five days each month?

The mom defends her decision (which is far from settled) saying,

"Katie wouldn't understand menstruation at all. She has no comprehension about what will be happening to her body. All she would feel is the discomfort, the stomach cramps and the headaches, the mood swings, the tears, and wonder what is going on."

If Katie doesn't understand menstruation, I doubt she understands defecation, the flu she's probably gotten lots of in sunny old England or the conversations going on around her either. I know this sounds cruel and cavalier but there seems a big difference between this case and the "pillow angel" case from earlier this year. In that case, the brain damaged child was immobile; having her reach full growth would certainly have made it much harder for her parents to include her in activities, especially outside the home. I don't know what the right answer was, but choosing to stunt her growth can certainly be seen as the best of only bad options. That one didn't seem nearly as disturbing as this one where they have the option of just dealing with her periods along with the myriad other issues already burdening them.

Given the mother's word choice, Katie hasn't begun to menstruate yet; why not at least wait to see if she has easy periods or the kind that send women round the bend?

Trading Unqualified Support for Qualified Skepticism

Amidst all the outrage expressed after last Thursday's new torture revelations (for those who missed it, the New York Times reported more ex post facto legalization of abhorrent practices and the continued operation of secret overseas prisons), Glenn Greenwald's excellent essay on Salon was one of the only media responses to point out that "outrage" is hardly an acceptable emotional response to something you've known about for years. "None of this is new," he writes. "And we have decided, collectively as a country, to do nothing about that." Our indignance at the front-page announcement of each new atrocity seems based less on our objection to the policies themselves than on our annoyance at being left in the dark.

If anything, our representatives have eagerly sought to legalize broad swaths of moral gray area, offering not only future endorsement but retroactive immunity to the perpetrators of crimes for which other countries enact Truth Commissions. Eager to demonstrate patriotism during wartime, we fail to notice how the doubt sown by secrecy gradually shifts our assumptions away from rational discourse. This cycle represents the Administration's greatest psychological triumph. Each new layer of secrecy imposed on the "War on Terror" has made it easier to believe that we, the people, don't understand what's at stake, don't realize how dangerous the situation is, and therefore, don't have the expertise to devise a democratic way to deal with it. Demanding answers doesn't just show respect for American values; it proves we respect ourselves as skeptics and patriots alike.

—Casey Miner

Swiss Elections Unmask Bigotry

For most of us, Switzerland evokes images of green hillsides, rotund dairy cows, and Julie Andrews, not rock-throwing protesters and tear gas. But that was the scene in Bern this weekend when demonstrators from the country’s ultra-right wing party clashed with counter-protesters and riot police.

Tensions in Switzerland have been escalating in the run-up to the October 21 general elections. At the center of the debate are the country’s immigration policies. A campaign poster for the powerful right-wing Swiss People’s Party shows three white sheep kicking away a single black sheep, with the caption, "To Create Security." Twenty percent of Switzerland’s population is foreign born (many newcomers are from war-torn countries like Kosovo and Rwanda), and a staggering 70% of its prison population is as well. The Swiss People’s Party, which holds the most seats in the country's Parliament, claims these figures are an indication that immigrants are prone to criminality and should be kicked out of Switzerland. But this simplistic logic brings about a chicken-before-the-egg question: Is the bigotry that is fueling Switzerland's current political climate also what is sending an inordinate amount of its immigrants to jail?

The U.N. has condemned the inflammatory poster and the Swiss People's Party proposal to deport foreign-born criminals and their families. All of this is set against the backdrop of pristine perfection for which Switzerland is famous. Zurich and Geneva rank first and second for cities with the best quality of life worldwide.

—Celia Perry

Bill Kristol Says We Should Bomb Burma. Seriously

Bill Kristol is the editor of a major magazine, a regular guest on weekend talk shows, a columnist for a major newsweekly, and generally considered to be one of the most influential conservatives in Washington. Because of all that, he's invited to write op-eds for major newspapers where he writes crazy things like this:

What about limited military actions [in Burma], overt or covert, against the regime's infrastructure -- its military headquarters, its intelligence apparatus, its rulers' lavish palaces? Couldn't such actions have a deterrent effect, or might not they help open up fissures in the regime?

I'd like to make sure no one misses the hilarious neocon habit of suggesting regime change not based on local factors in the countries they would like to strike, but instead based on whenever they happen to start paying attention. The ruling junta in Burma has been in power for 19 years — they didn't get nasty three weeks ago. If Kristol is going to advocate military action against Burma, doesn't he have a responsibility to keep track of the situation in that country before and after it hits American newsstands?

But more than that, I'd like to echo something Kevin Drum points out: "Why is it that a guy who thinks U.S. military action is always the answer is any more credible than the peacenik who thinks it never is?" He's completely right. Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul* will never be regular panelists on major weekend talk shows. They aren't getting a column in Time. But they are Bill Kristol's functional equivalents.

While we're on the topic, here's why Kristol bugs me more than almost any other conservative or neocon. Most of that crowd doesn't take seriously enough the repercussions of military action. They see a simple moral calculus: the few lives lost in the course of our military actions are worth the freedom and liberation we bring to hundreds of thousands of people. But there are innumerable repercussions in the region and around the globe that are never taken into account: the fact that a neighboring country that is even nastier may suddenly become empowered; the fact that the tumultuous period between the fall of one stable government and the erection of the next is a gift to terrorists and other evil-doers; the fact that WMD capability and intelligence is suddenly on the loose and possibly on the black market; the fact that we can get bogged down and then be less responsive to more dire threats; the fact that we can't control who takes over after we leave.

Because of the Iraq War, many hawks in Washington have to come to appreciate these factors. But not Bill Kristol. He wants war in every international hot spot. Eventually, there would be nothing to distinguish our freedom-spreading efforts from World War III, the one where it's everybody versus us.

* Someone put out the Ron Paul bat signal and I'm getting hit in the comments for misconstruing his stance on the use of the military. I probably should have just stuck with Kucinich; his philosophical opposition to the use of force is the best mirror to Kristol's philosophical preference for it.

Jenna Bush: Her Mother's Daughter?

Jenna Bush has finally grown up — so claims the American Prospect in its recent review of Jenna's new book, Ana's Story, the biography of an HIV-positive teen mother the president's daughter met while working for UNICEF in Panama. It would be easy to rustle up familiar stories from Jenna's sordid youth or quote from the book's supply of less-than-elegant prose, as others have, but the Prospect instead chose to focus on the incongruity between W.'s policies and those of his more enlightened daughter:

As her father threatens to veto the entire $34 billion 2008 foreign aid budget just because congressional Democrats have finally snuck in loopholes providing condoms and abortion services to women in the developing world, Jenna is on a nationwide book tour and media blitz, spreading the message that safe sex and education are some of the most important tools in fighting disease.

Good for Jenna! I wonder if she inherited a progressive streak from her mother. Laura was a Democrat before marrying a Bush and even veteran leftist Alexander Cockburn once called her "the frail hawser linking G.W. Bush to reality." In Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack, Laura is seen obliquely voicing misgivings about the Iraq war. And just this summer, the First Lady publicly broke with her husband when she told CNN that condoms are "absolutely essential." Like mother, like daughter.

—Justin Elliott

2.2 Million People in Prison: Who's Going To Do Something About It?

I don't have much to add to this article on prison reform by Bradford Plumer at The New Republic. It's excellent — check it out.

If you're wondering, the only senators with the guts to do something about America's prison problem are Jim Webb (D-Va.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), and maybe Barack Obama (D-Il.). For more on how we became an incarceration nation — we lock up 750 out of every 100,000 people, murdering the world average of 166 per 100,000 — check out Mother Jones' special package "Debt to Society."

Give the Nuclear Power Industry Credit for Creativity

Nuclear energy companies, salivating over the prospect of millions of dollars in new federal subsidies, are eager to launch a construction boom of new power plants. In the past, nuclear power plant construction has been hampered by such nettlesome things as construction permits and public hearings on the construction's environmental impact. To fix that problem, Bloomberg reports, the Nuclear Energy Institute successfully lobbied federal regulators to redefine what they meant by "construction."

Now, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says such bulldozer-heavy activities as excavation, road building, and the erection of new cooling towers no longer count as construction under permitting rules. The change comes over protests from the agency's own environmental oversight official, who believes that the change will allow 90 percent of the environmental impact of new power plants to escape federal oversight.

It took the NRC 11 years to come up with new rules for drug-testing plant workers, but the new industry-friendly construction reg sailed through in a mere six months. Of course, the industry had a ringer in the regulatory agency. One of the NRC commissioners who voted for the new regs, Jeffrey Merrifield, cast his vote while looking for a new job. He now works for a company that builds nuclear power plants.

(H/T Center for Media and Democracy)

The Best Bad Option for Iraq?

If the U.S. can't achieve reconciliation of Iraq's national political parties, is our best option government by warlord?

I think it's very possible that in five years Iraq will be ruled by a Saddam Hussein clone. At least we know what Gulf War III will look like under President Giuliani.

National Reconciliation is Impossible, Say Iraqi Leaders

National reconciliation? What national reconciliation?

After months of hearing from everyone from General Petraeus to President Bush that the ultimate goal in Iraq is reconciliation of the country's three religious sects, we hear from high-level Iraqi politicians that national reconciliation is impossible and most decidedly not one of their objectives.

"I don't think there is something called reconciliation, and there will be no reconciliation as such," said Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, a Kurd. "To me, it is a very inaccurate term. This is a struggle about power."

Humam Hamoudi, a prominent Shiite cleric and parliament member, said any future reconciliation would emerge naturally from an efficient, fair government, not through short-term political engineering among Sunnis and Shiites.

"Reconciliation should be a result and not a goal by itself," he said. "You should create the atmosphere for correct relationships, and not wave slogans that 'I want to reconcile with you.'"

You can read more at the Washington Post.

If you're wondering, yes, national reconciliation was the point of the surge. President Bush has said, "[The surge] is aimed at helping the Iraqis strengthen their government so that it can function even amid violence. It seeks to open space for Iraq's political leaders to advance the difficult process of national reconciliation, which is essential to lasting security and stability."

Update: Joe Klein at Swampland points out that even the administration admits there is no military victory to be had in Iraq; it is a war that must be won by Iraq's politicians. Considering their unwillingness to come together, Klein wonders what the point of our continued commitment is.

So remind me again, what's the mission at this point? I mean, seriously: What specifically are the metrics of success? What is the military goal--if not providing the space for reconciliation? What is the political side of the plan? This seems like basic stuff, but we haven't heard it from the Administration. This sort of strategic focus has to come from higher than Petraeus- and Crocker-level operatives. The incompetence, the lack of rigor is mind-boggling.

Fred Thompson Gets Skewered, SNL-Style

This Saturday Night Live spoof nails all the negative stereotypes that are quickly solidifying about Law and Order star and presidential candidate Fred Thompson. "How do you campaign when you don't like hard work and people make you sick?"

As for Thompson repeatedly begging for applause, the origin of that is this New York Times article.

(H/T The Caucus)

October 12, 2007

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