WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”
What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.
The Bush republicans. The Family Values voters. The Religious Right. They wanted to take back America. They wanted to remake it in their own image. They have.
As Grant Cogswell pointed out in his feature piece last week, there once was a man called Anton LaVey, and Anton LaVey, whilst he lived, tried really, really hard to be The Evilest Man Who Ever Was. Mostly he was just bald and vaguely douche-bag-ish: Like a martini-sipping Fu-Manchu in a priest suit who looked like he had to crap a walrus. But still. He tried really, really hard.
Indeed, Anton wanted to be evil, seriously evil, so he did the only evil thing an evil person in his evil position could do: He poured himself a stiff drink, sat down, and thought really really hard about, well, evil.
…
His conclusions and the crux of his Satanic philosophy ran thusly: We humans are, in every sense, rotten, rude, paranoid, and less than fresh. People are wicked and untrustworthy animals. All so-called “virtues” and “good deeds” are self-delusive ego-kicks, hip, hip, hooray. That’s the whole thing in a devilicious nutshell.
Sound familiar? Well…yeah actually. Ryan points us to a Colbert interview of George Will, who obligingly goes on just as he’s done for decades now about the difference between liberals and conservatives…
That’s right. Straight from the horsey mouth of the “leading pundit of conservatism in the nation”: The difference between conservatives and liberals is that liberals are fools who believe in the goodness of human nature and the basic equality of all people. Like in the, uh, Declaration of Independence and junk. (And, if you’ll pardon the expression, “The Bible”.) They believe misguidedly that “something straight” can be made out of the “crooked timber” that is humanity. Man is clearly rotten and selfish by design. There can be no myth of equality…um….it only translates to “mediocrity”, and…uh…Satan? Is that you? It’s me, George Will.
Of course you could argue that conservatives would strongly disagree with LaVey that this broken human nature means we should just go ahead and give in to our basest nature. On the contrary, we need a strong government based on strong moral values to keep our base nature in check. Well…actually…Your base nature. You. The common folk. The rich and powerful are another story. What Reagan and Bush have made pretty clear is that They get to indulge their every selfish greedy, crooked, broken desire to their heart’s content. After all…they’re on top. And isn’t that pure LaVey after all?
1. Blessed are the strong, for they shall possess the earth. Cursed are the weak, for they shall inherit the yoke!
2. Blessed are the powerful, for they shall be reverenced among men. Cursed are the feeble, for they shall inherit the yoke!
3. Blessed are the bold, for they shall be masters of the world. Cursed are the righteously humble, for they shall be trodden under cloven hoofs!
4. Blessed are the victorious, for victory is the basis of right. Cursed are the vanquished, for they shall remain vassals forever!
5. Blessed are the iron handed, for the unfit shall flee before them. Cursed are the poor in spirit, for they shall be spat upon!
-Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible, The Book Of Satan, Chapter 5.
…and so on. Yes, I have a copy…bought back in the early 70s just out of shear curiosity. It never dawned on me until now to really look at how closely this guy’s ideas map to Ayn Rand’s and the greed is good conservative movement she spawned. And if you think Rand would have been outraged at being compared to the likes of LaVey, you’re probably right. She often claimed that her philosophy regarded predators as parasites, whereas the truly selfish man did not simply take from the weak, but rather created his own wealth. But Rand was hardly averse to stealing outright from the weak. In point of fact, she really did believe that was the prerogative of the powerful…
On the 125th anniversary of the Dred Scott decision, Ayn Rand — who surely would have approved of its fearless pronouncements on inequality — died at the age of 77. The right-wing cult philosopher and high priestess of tedium somehow managed to sell millions of copies of her nearly unreadable novels from the 1950s onward, including paperweights such as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. On 6 March 1974, following a speech to the Army cadets at West Point, Rand was asked about the dispossession of American Indian land. In short, she approved of the idea.
They didn’t have any rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using . . . . What was it that they were fighting for, when they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their ‘right’ to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, but just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or a few caves above it. Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right to take over this continent.
Blessed are the strong, for they shall possess the earth. Cursed are the weak, for they shall inherit the yoke! When they talk to you about morality, and Christian values, laugh in their face. They don’t want to get government off your back, so much as get it out of the way so they can put a leash around your neck and a brand on your forehead and call you their own. They are less Christ, then LaVey.
We are not devils. We are not angels. We are not destroyers, we are not creators. We are not lords nor are we peasants. We are human. We are all of these. There is no dark, there is no light, there is simply what we are. The abyss isn’t our destiny any more then heaven is. But the path to oblivion is paved with lies. We neither sustain ourselves nor make a future possible by throwing ourselves into the arms of gurus who tell us we are something that we are not. Ask the shades that walk the battlegrounds on this poor earth, where we killed each other by the thousands to appease the bottomless greed of the few and their hatred of everything fine and noble a human being can be. Blessed are they who question, for they will wear no chains.
When Vito J. Fossella Jr., the soon-to-be boy congressman, stood beside the young girls of a cheerleading squad at the Excelsior Grand catering hall in 1997, it seemed a particularly vivid version of Staten Island pageantry. Mr. Fossella — 32 and with Al Pacino looks — was on his way to becoming the sole Republican in New York City’s Congressional delegation at a spirited party billed as an evening of “pasta and politics.”
George H. W. Bush and Senator Bob Dole were there that night, strolling past the steaming trays of ziti and charging donors $1,000 each to pose for pictures. Sonny Bono was on his way from California to stump with them the next day. Mr. Fossella, the man of the hour, raised his hands, quieted the crowd, then launched into a rousing speech on cutting taxes and championing school choice.
…
Mr. Fossella, victorious with 62 percent of the vote, was so intent on getting to Congress that, according to The Staten Island Advance, he flew to Washington from Newark carrying the morning papers proclaiming his own victory only 10 hours after it was announced.
Once there, he established himself as a reliable member of his party. He voted to impeach President Clinton, followed President Bush’s war policies in Iraq, voted to eliminate financing for Planned Parenthood and supported a constitutional amendment against gay marriage.
And yet many of his Democratic colleagues did not regard Mr. Fossella as an ideological warrior…
Vito Fossella built a career as a staunch "family values" pol, polishing his image in his predominantly Catholic district with a string of anti-gay votes.
He even shuns his gay sister, Victoria Fossella, refusing to go to family events if she and her partner attend, a source close to the family said.
…
As congressman, Fossella voted to prohibit any funding for joint adoptions by gay couples.
He has voted for the Marriage Protection Amendment, a federal prohibition on gay marriage.
He also demanded housing funds be held back from San Francisco unless it repealed its domestic partnership law.
Nice family republican values kinda guy wouldn’t you say?
Oh yes…definitely…
In the nine days since the 43-year-old Mr. Fossella, who has served five terms in Congress, was arrested and charged after running a red light in Alexandria, Va., things have gone from not-so-good to pretty bad, with only a slender thread still staving off the worst.
Within days of his admitting that he was on his way to visit “some friends in Virginia” when he was stopped by the police, the New York tabloids began raising questions about the woman who came to retrieve him from custody, a former Air Force lieutenant colonel named Laura Fay. Then, on Thursday, he released a clipped statement from his office, saying that he had fathered a daughter, now 3, in an extramarital affair with Ms. Fay.
Democratic and Republican Congressional officials are reportedly looking into Fossella’s mysterious and expensive trip to France in 2003 with his mistress, Laura Fay.
It was called a fact-finding mission to La Hague’s nuclear fuel reprocessing plants, according to the Daily News.
However, the Staten Island Republican was the only lawmaker authorized to go. And according to one committee member, it may have been less about nuclear power and more about fueling his relationship with the Air Force legislative liaison officer, the retired colonel who subsequently bore the congressman’s love child.
Should Fosella repay taxpayers for his travel expenses if investigators find he mixed pleasure with business?
Listen for the right wing ‘phobes who bellyached about Tammy Baldwin’s domestic partner being allowed to fly with her, to blast Fossella for flying with his mistress to France on the government’s dime in, 3… 2… 1… Never.
If you have time to manage you’re neighbor’s personal lives it probably means you aren’t paying enough attention to your own. Well adjusted heterosexuals don’t seek validation by trashing the lives of their gay neighbors. When you see someone going on a crusade against homosexuality it’s probably because the stench of their own intimate lives has become too terrifying for them to contemplate. Nobody goes looking for scapegoats if they don’t need any.
The False Positive Wasn’t The Drug Test…It Was The Police Exam…
Do you take vitamins? Did you ever travel with vitamins? Oh, well… if you take a lot of vitamins, and they’re not the kind that says "Joe’s Vitamins" on the side "the plain-looking vitamins" and you have a whole lot, and you don’t the whole big jumbo thing on the road, you take as many as you need – and they’re not marked. And the jar you put them in isn’t marked. If a policeman really wants to give you a hard time, he can hold you overnight while they check the vitamins. That’s why I travel with Flintstones vitamins!
-George Carlin
Unfortunately…that’s not a plan that works anymore…
SARASOTA — When the police stopped him one night in Sarasota, Villis Sanders told officers that the small blue pills in his car were Aleve, an over-the-counter medicine for his aching wisdom teeth.
A patrolman used a drug kit to verify what the pills were.
The test said the tablets were amphetamines, Sanders was jailed and his car was impounded.
But it turns out that the test was wrong. Prosecutors took the pills to a laboratory before Sanders’ trial and found out that they were Aleve, after all.
In typical fashion, the DA’s office never bothered to tell Sanders that the charges were dropped because…well…he was innocent. He found out when he went to court and they told him to go back home.
Experts say that "false positives" are rare, but when the police department tested additional pills — including an Aleve tablet provided by the Herald-Tribune — the results were the same: Aleve shows up as amphetamines.
No one knows why the test keeps getting it wrong.
The manufacturer said that officers might not have been properly trained, or that Aleve might contain a compound similar to one found in amphetamines.
Officials from Bayer Health Care, which makes Aleve, did not immediately respond to questions.
And Sarasota police officials questioned both the kits and the compounds in Aleve — but say that they did everything they could to figure out what Sanders was carrying that night.
Well…not quite Everything…
In this case, both of the tablets found in Sanders’ car were blue and oblong, and each was stamped with the word "Aleve."
I’m waiting for the day when I read a news story about a man who was arrested and jailed and had his car impounded for possession of a quarter pound of cocaine that turned out upon further examination back at the lab to be a Quarter Pounder With Cheese. Well the test said it was cocaine so we arrested him…
AoTP: You very seldom, if ever, write about gay and lesbian issues per se. Yet discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation directly affects where you live, since you and your domestic partner — who is Brazilian — cannot be together on any regular basis in the U.S. Do you hold strong views about anti-gay laws in your own country?
GG: The state of American law with regard to same-sex couples is an ongoing disgrace. America is one of the very few countries in the world — along side countries such as China and Yemen — to continue to ban HIV-positive individuals from immigrating. And the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government from extending any benefits (including immigration rights) to same-sex couples means that we put our gay citizens whose partners are foreign nationals in the excruciating predicament of being forced either to live apart from their life partner or live outside of their own country. That is reprehensible.
Most civilized countries, even those that don’t yet recognize same-sex marriage, refuse to put their citizens in that situation. Brazil was a military dictatorship until 1985. It has the largest Catholic population of any country in the world. And yet I’m able to obtain from the Brazilian government a permanent visa because my Brazilian partner’s government recognizes our relationship for immigration purposes, while the government of my supposedly “free,” liberty-loving country enacted a law explicitly barring such recognition.
The difference between a nation with a large protestant fundamentalist population and one with a large Catholic one. The pope can be a raving Nazi bigot and the flock can still know what it feels like to have a human heart.
But it won’t just be the bi-national couples leaving the USA if same sex couples must remain strangers in the eyes of the law…
A new study shows that many lesbian and gay youths, much like their heterosexual peers, expect to have long-term committed relationships and raise families in the future, according to an April 23 press release from Rockway Institute.
The study questioned about 133 gay New York City youths on various topics, including long-term relationships, family, and adoption. Researchers found that "more than 90% of females and more than 80% of males expect to be partnered in a monogamous relationship after age 30." About 67% of males and 55% of females expressed the desire to raise children. In terms of adoption, 42% of males and 32% of females said they were likely to adopt children.
"We seem to be witnessing the mainstreaming of lesbian/gay youth, with many of them wanting exactly what heterosexual youth have always wanted — the whole American dream complete with kids and the minivan," Robert-Jay Green of the Rockway Institute said in a statement. "Most agree that the primary issue is whether these youth will be given the equal legal rights to realize their couple and family aspirations just like their heterosexual peers."
…which they won’t be able to achieve here in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave if the religious right has its way. But they will elsewhere in the civilized world. And this is a generation raised on the Internet. The world is, literally, their oyster. They’ll go where they have the opportunities they need. They may always call themselves Americans. They may always think of themselves as Americans. But if they can’t find their American Dream here in America, they’ll go live where they Can find it.
My generation fled the sticks for the urban centers. In the future, they’ll speak of the gay American diaspora…
Moral Judgements Are Easy When God Is Always On Your Side
On Box Turtle Bulletin I had a very brief argument with someone named David who could not believe that a fundamentalist crackpot once told me on Usenet that the Golden Rule gave him the right to harass gay people. David assured me that he had argued with them over on BeliefNet over the course of many years and never once encountered such an argument and asked me to provide him with an example. Which I did after a very quick scan of my Usenet archives.
The fundamentalist’s argument went something like this: "If I was engaging in self destructive behavior I would want someone to rescue me from it, even if I fought it at the time because I would thank them later." David assured me that such a stupid argument was "easily refuted". And yes, it is. But if fundamentalists were willing to listen to reason and logic we wouldn’t still be arguing over evolution in this country, let alone the human status of gay people. That David could find it "easy" to refute a fundamentalist about anything made me wonder how often David every really argued with any.
I was thinking about that reading This Story over at the New York Times about an atheist soldier who is currently suing the department of defense over violations of his religious freedom by officers and other soldiers. This follows years of horror stories of military personnel being subjected to forced proselytizing by evangelicals in the ranks. Not all of the victims, as the Times story notes, are atheists. In fact most of them are other Christians who were deemed to be not Christian enough for their tormentors…
In an e-mail statement, Bill Carr, the Defense Department’s deputy under secretary for military personnel policy, said he “saw near universal compliance with the department’s policy.”
But Mikey Weinstein, a retired Air Force judge advocate general and founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said the official statistics masked the great number of those who do not report violations for fear of retribution. Since the Air Force Academy scandal began in 2004, Mr. Weinstein said, he has been contacted by more than 5,500 service members and, occasionally, military families about incidents of religious discrimination. He said 96 percent of the complainants were Christians, and the majority of those were Protestants.
Emphasis mine. When faith has degenerated into certainty you have lost all your brakes. You have become God’s own right hand and gods don’t feel shame. Or to put it another way…
After his run-in with Major Welborn, Specialist Hall did not file a complaint with the Army’s Equal Opportunity Office because, he said, he was mistrustful of his superior officers. Instead, he told leaders of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, who put him in touch with Mr. Weinstein. In November 2007, Specialist Hall was sent home early from Iraq after being repeatedly threatened by other soldiers. “I caution you that although your ‘legal’ issues are yours and yours alone, I have heard many people disagree with you, and this may be a cause for some of the perceived threats,” wrote Sgt. Maj. Kevin Nolan in Specialist Hall’s counseling for his departure.
Though with a different unit now at Fort Riley, Specialist Hall said the backlash had continued. He has a no-contact order with a sergeant who, without provocation, threatened to “bust him in the mouth.” Another sergeant allegedly told Specialist Hall that as an atheist, he was not entitled to religious freedom because he had no religion.
Emphasis mine. This is the mindset by which the Golden Rule becomes a license to do whatever you damn well please to your neighbor. This is the mindset by which putting a knife into the hopes and dreams of gay people becomes a form of love. There is no reasoning with this. It’s not that God is on their side, it’s that God is the face in the mirror. Good is whatever you decide it is. Evil is other people.
The US army doubled its use of "moral waivers" for enlisted soldiers last year to cope with the demands of the Iraq war, allowing sex offenders, people convicted of making terrorist threats, and child abusers into the military, new records released yesterday showed.
The army gave out 511 moral waivers to soldiers with felony convictions last year. Criminals got 249 army waivers in 2006, a sign that the demand for US forces in Iraq has forced a sharp increase in the number of criminals allowed on the battlefield.
The felons accepted into the army and marines included 87 soldiers convicted of assault or maiming, 130 convicted of non-cannabis-related drug offences, seven convicted of making terrorist threats, and two convicted of indecent behaviour with a child. Waivers were also granted to 500 burglars and thieves, 19 arsonists and nine sex offenders.
SANTA BARBARA, Calif., April 21 (AScribe Newswire) — New information released today by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee shows that in 2006 and 2007 Americans who were convicted of serious crimes including sexual offences, manslaughter, "terrorist threats including bomb threats", burglary, kidnapping or abduction, aggravated assault and sexual assault were allowed into the military under moral waivers granted by the services.
According to the data given to the committee by the Department of Defense, the Army allowed the most waivers in 2006 and 2007. During this period, moral or felony waivers were given to 3 soldiers who had been convicted of manslaughter. One soldier was allowed in following a kidnapping or abduction conviction, 11 were convicted of arson, 142 convicted of burglary, 3 who were convicted of indecent acts or liberties with a child, 7 who were convicted of rape, sexual assault, criminal sexual assault, incest or other sex crimes and 3 who were convicted of terrorist threats including bomb threats.
So…let me get this straight. Letting gay people serve will harm the moral and readiness of our armed forces…but allowing child molesters and rapists to wear the uniform won’t. Look at this. No…really look at it. The leaders of the armed forces of the United States of America would really rather be saluted by rapists and child molesters then by a homosexual.
Well…this explains why Iraq is pretty much FUBAR doesn’t it? It wasn’t just Rumsfeld and Bush. They had help running our military into the ground from all the country club thugs in the pentagon executive suites. And it explains all this too…
All the culture warriors, all the fine culture warriors who fought to keep gay people out of the armed forces… All the righteous men and women of high moral standards and values… And in the end they turned out to be nothing more then a pack of street thugs, dragging America into their gutter…into that open sewer they call virtue…
Sometimes a news article just jumps off the screen and laughs in your face. Via Box Turtle Bulletin… If you have any doubts about the depth anti-gay hate in this country, read this:
The General Assembly yesterday approved a resolution calling for expanded opportunities for Kentucky public schoolchildren to learn about the Holocaust and other acts of genocide.
House Joint Resolution 6 is named after the late Ernie Marx of Louisville, a Holocaust survivor who made a life’s mission to spread education about the horrors he witnessed.
It passed the Senate on a voice vote and the House by a vote of 83-12. It now goes to Gov. Steve Beshear.
The resolution would direct the Department of Education to make curriculum materials available for optional use in public schools by March 2009.
The material would be part of the Kentucky Program of Studies, which has state approval but is not required.
The resolution reflects four years of efforts by middle-school students at St. Francis of Assisi School in Louisville, where Fred Whitaker offers instruction on the Holocaust and takes students to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
He said the pupils began lobbying for legislation that would give students in public schools access to opportunities to study the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.
"These middle school students really knew something we should all know," Whitaker said. "They really knew there was something powerful that (happens) to anyone when they study the Holocaust and genocide."
Not powerful enough for some, apparently…
The Senate deleted a clause in the House version that cited other people the Nazis deemed "undesirable" because of their "race, nationality, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, religion, and political ideology."
Whitaker said he received indications earlier in the session that the reference to sexual orientation was a "red flag" that could have endangered the bill.
Dig it. It took them Four Years, just to get the Kentucky statehouse to agree that school kids should probably learn something about one of the greatest human catastrophes of the twentieth century…Maybe. We’ll suggest they learn about it, but not require it. And then someone spies a clause in the bill suggesting that school kids learn that there were other victims besides Jewish folk, and that would have been fine too except for the homosexuals. You know…these guys…
But the republican majority leader tut, tuts, any suggestion that they wouldn’t have been fine…really…with including the gay victims of the holocaust in their Completely Optional Curriculum…
But Senate Majority Leader Dan Kelly, R-Springfield, said in an interview that was never an issue for Senate leadership.
He said he had no problem with curricula discussing homosexual victims of the Holocaust as long as it’s "age-appropriate."
Whitaker said that, even without the language on other victims of the Nazis, "you can’t study the Holocaust and not also come across pink triangles," the insignia that homosexual prisoners were forced to wear.
You know goddamned well you can. For decades after World War Two nothing, Nothing was ever said about the pink triangles, until gay scholars started digging into it based on rumors and stories they’d heard from survivors. I started learning about the Holocaust in Junior High schools (middle school these days) and it figured in every lesson on that period of time for the rest of my grade school years and Not Once did I ever hear mention of the pink triangles, or how the Nazis had toughened Germany’s seldom enforced anti-gay laws, even before they enacted the brutally antisemitic Nuremberg laws, or how when the death camps were finally liberated, the surviving Jewish prisoners were released, as well as the gypsies, the Slavs, the intellectuals, the opposition party members…hell, even the communist prisoners were let go…but not the pink triangles. They were considered vermin by both the Nazis, and the American liberators.
Yes Mr. Republican Majority Leader Sir, you can goddamned well teach about the holocaust and not once mention the fact that gay men were rounded up by the Nazis too and shoveled into the death camps. That was the status-quo all during both our school years wasn’t it? And you’d like very much to go back to that status quo wouldn’t you? Because you know most of your voter base doesn’t think the Nazis did anything wrong when it came to exterminating homosexuals don’t you? And you know goddamned well you’ll loose votes if you do anything to suggest otherwise don’t you? If you have no problem with curricula discussing homosexual victims of the Holocaust, then why didn’t you have that line put back into the bill?
The Holocaust museum says the Nazis arrested about 100,000 men as homosexuals and that an unknown number died amid brutal conditions.
Marzian said she could accept the Senate changes.
"You have to compromise in legislation," she said.
You did a great job of putting the knife into it Kelly. You had your boys whisper that the bill Whitaker and Marzian worked on four four years was dead unless they deleted the line about gay victims of the Holocaust and they did it and now you can look at the cameras and claim you’re shocked, shocked, that anyone would bother caring about all that. This is why you’re majority leader isn’t it. You could have had it fucking put back in and insisted to your caucus that it stay there and you didn’t, and make no mistake, everybody knows who ripped that little page out of the history books and why.
And one other thing they’ll always know… In 2008, over sixty years after World War Two, Kentucky school children still aren’t routinely taught about the Holocaust, and won’t be because after four years of trying all the Kentucky state house could do was pass a bill that suggests they learn about it. That was about as far as you could go without loosing the bigot vote, wasn’t it Kelly? And now you get to play civilized man for the cameras.
Whitaker said he regretted that Marx, who died last year at age 81, didn’t live to see passage of the bill.
If it’s too much to ask that your schools teach about what happened to six million Jews I suppose it’s way too much to ask that it also mention the unknown thousands of gay victims too. Especially when you and your fellow republicans need to be able to gay bash for votes every few years.
Despite the fact that I still don’t have my college degree and that I struggled to make ends meet for most of my life working various low paying blue collar jobs, I suspect I could never pass myself off as "a man of the people", were it not for the shot of "Bartender’s Special" a very foxy bartender gave me once at Larry’s Lounge in D.C..
To run for president, you need to drink a lot…
I think it had Southern Comfort in it, which automatically gives me extra bonus populist points. Which is good, because I wouldn’t have touched that glass with a ten foot pool if I hadn’t been completely twitterpated by the guy who handed it to me, and having a drink with a cute guy in a gay bar penalizes me severely on populist points.
"In Paraguay we are at T-9 days to national elections. The ruling party has been in power for nearly 61 years (including more than 30 years of dictatorship). Now the state-run ADSL company is hijacking the DNS nationwide of a site that denounces the corruption in the party."
…provoked this comment…
Paraguay is a country ruled by a conservative coalition.
Which only goes to show what my old bolshie Uncle Ivan used to say. "Kid," he’d say, "nobody believes in capitalism. Nobody believes in socialism. It’s socialism for me, and capitalism for you!" Ivan may have been a red, but he was a cynic first and foremost, and that keeps you honest.
In the end, there is only one thing that really matters in any system: transparency. At least if the system is supposed to be run for the benefit of the people who live under it. You can be all for the proletariat, or all for the free market, but if you’re pulling the wool of the peoples’ eyes, you aren’t any different from anybody else running a con behind high sounding priciples.
Well I believe in a free market because I don’t think that human beings can plan an economy any better then we can plan the weather. But a free market needs a rule of law and a means of preventing the power of money from subverting that rule of law, or that free market won’t remain free for very long, it’ll degenerate into oligarchy.
But that’s the republican ideal, isn’t it? For decades now anyone with half a brain could see that republicans favored oligarchy over all other forms of government. They claim to believe in both free markets and the rule of law and I think seven years plus of George Bush has pretty well decisively proved otherwise. Nothing disturbs the status-quo more then free market capitalism, when it isn’t turning it upside down. Nothing. And nothing locks the human potential in chains and thereby preserves the status-quo better then crony capitalism, which is to say, republican party economics.
The state religion of Oligarchy is God Loves The Rich. Its economic theory is To The Victors Belong The Spoils. Its theory of government is Might Makes Right. Vis:
On Thursday in the National Press Club in Washington, a crowd gathered to witness the presentation of the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling to Lieutenant Commander Matthew Diaz. The story of Matthew Diaz was chronicled in this space repeatedly (also here and here). It is a story of courage, fortitude, conviction and suffering. Joe Margulies introduced the honoree with clarity:
no one can think it is fun when you sit in a courtroom as an accused, and a United States prosecutor points an accusatory finger at your chest and calls you a criminal and tells you that you have betrayed your oath and you have betrayed your country, and you have endangered the safety of the men and women that you swore to share your burdens with. And no one can think it is fun when you have to sit with your heart pounding in your chest as the jury files back into the room with a piece of paper folded in its hands, and that piece of paper holds your fate. And no one can think it is fun when that jury, your peers, pronounces you guilty. And no one can think it is fun when you have to face that same jury that will sentence you for what may be many years; many years that you will be away from your family, your life in tatters, your career ruined.
Matthew Diaz served his country as a staff judge advocate at Guantánamo. He watched a shameless assault on America’s Constitution and commitment to the rule of law carried out by the Bush Administration. He watched the introduction of a system of cruel torture and abuse. He watched the shaming of the nation’s uniformed services, with their proud traditions that formed the very basis of the standards of humanitarian law, now torn asunder through the lawless acts of the Executive. Matthew Diaz found himself in a precarious position—as a uniformed officer, he was bound to follow his command. As a licensed and qualified attorney, he was bound to uphold the law. And these things were indubitably at odds.
Diaz resolved to do something about it. He knew the Supreme Court twice ruled the Guantánamo regime, which he was under orders to uphold, was unlawful. In the Hamdan decision, the Court went a step further. In powerful and extraordinary words, Justice Kennedy reminded the Administration that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions was binding upon them, and that a violation could constitute a criminal act. One senior member of the Bush legal team, informed of the decision over lunch, was reported to have turned “white as a sheet” and to have immediately excused himself. For the following months, Bush Administration lawyers entered into a frenzied discussion of how to protect themselves from criminal prosecution.
One of the crimes the Administration committed was withholding from the Red Cross a list of the detainees at Guantánamo, effectively making them into secret detainees. Before the arrival of the Bush Administration, the United States had taken the axiomatic position that holding persons in secret detention for prolonged periods outside the rule of law (a practice known as “disappearing”) was not merely unlawful, but in fact a rarified “crime against humanity.” Now the United States was engaged in the active practice of this crime.
The decision to withhold the information had been taken, in defiance of law, by senior political figures in the Bush Administration. Diaz was aware of it, and he knew it was unlawful. He printed out a copy of the names and sent them to a civil rights lawyer who had requested them in federal court proceedings.
Diaz was aware when he did this that he was violating regulations and that he could and would, if caught, be subjected to severe sanction. What he did was a violation of law, even as it was an effort to cure a more severe act of lawlessness by the Government. Diaz violated the law in precisely the same sense as Martin Luther King reminds us, in the Letter from Birmingham Jail, that his arrest was based on a violation of law. That everything the Nazis did in Germany was lawful. And that every act of the Hungarian freedom fighters was a crime. In terms of the moral law, however, Diaz was on the side of right, and the Bush Administration and the Pentagon had, by engaging in the conduct that the Supreme Court condemned, placed themselves on the side of lawlessness, corruption and dishonor.
Diaz was charged, tried and convicted for disclosing “secrets.” For the Bush Administration, any information which would be politically embarrassing or harmful to it is routinely classified “secret.” In this fashion the Administration believes it can use criminal sanctions against those who disclose information it believes will be politically damaging. The list of detainees at Guantánamo, which by law was required to be disclosed, was classified as “secret.”
Diaz spent six months in prison and left it bankrupt and without a job. In addition to his sentence, the Pentagon is working aggressively to have Diaz stripped of his law license so he will not be able to practice his profession. The Bush Administration has sought to criminalize, humiliate and destroy Diaz. Its motivation could not be clearer: Diaz struck a blow for the rule of law. And nothing could be more threatening to the Bush Administration than this.
When republicans tell you that they love free markets and hate big government, look around:
Dean Baker has a nice rant about the disappearance of reliance on "market forces" now that the Princes of Wall Street are staring disaster in the face without government help:
What Happened to "Free-Market" Conservatives (or Neo-liberals)?: With the housing bubble in full meltdown, our political leaders are busily ignoring all the things they have said about the market over the last quarter century and looking to throw all the money that they can find to sustain the bubble. This would be comical, if it weren’t so painful.
Remember all the steel workers and autoworkers who lost their jobs due to trade agreements that were supposed to advance economic efficiency over the last quarter century? How about the workers in the airline, trucking, and telecommunications industry who lost jobs due to deregulation, which was also supposed to increase economic efficiency?
Well, it’s a new day. Nothing these people (or their economists) said matters anymore. It housing bubble support time!
For years, economic policy was supposed to be guided by market principles. If our autoworkers couldn’t compete with their counterparts in Mexico or China, who got paid $1 an hour, then it would be inefficient to have trade protection that would keep them employed here. The same applied to regulations that might keep high paying jobs in key sectors of the economy. Educated people all knew that interfering with the market was harmful to the economy, and if we ever forgot this basic truth, the Washington Post regularly ran sanctimonious editorials to remind us.
Well, it’s a new day. The housing bubble is melting down and Congress and the Fed are throwing money everywhere. After all, this isn’t about auto workers and truckers, it’s about Wall Street banks, and the politicians are pulling out all the stops to come to the rescue. In addition to the money that the Fed is throwing at the banks through subsidized loans at its discount window, it is also granting free insurance to the investment banks — a gift that is potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
Now Congress is jumping into the act. Remember way back in the fall when they couldn’t find $7 billion to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program? Well, now Congress can finds hundreds of billions of dollars to support a housing bubble. It’s a worthy goal. After all, the Wall Street crew might lose their shirts if the housing bubble continues to meltdown.
Congress will not be able to support the housing bubble indefinitely, but they might be able to do it long enough to allow the big boys to cash out and pass more of their bad loans onto the taxpayers and other suckers.
The political support for this bailout package may make it unstoppable, but if it does go through, we should be clear that there are new rules. In the post bailout world, anyone who makes claims about forcing workers or the poor to take pay cuts or do without benefits in the name of economic efficiency is simply a fool or liar.
Anyone who cared about economic efficiency would be yelling at the top of their lungs against this bailout. Anyone who can throw untold hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars at the rich to save their hides, has no concerns about economic efficiency, they just want to help the rich. In such a world, the rest of us have the right to demand the same sort of handouts from the government. And those who stand in the way are simply lackeys of the rich and powerful, who pretend to care about principles of economics.
This in my email box, from the Southern Poverty Law Center…
Last week, we asked you to take a stand against the growing number of white supremacist, neo-Nazi, anti-immigrant, anti-gay and other hate groups in our country — a staggering 48% increase since 2000.
Funny how that worked out, isn’t it? The Bush republicans take over the Federal Government, and a majority of the statehouses, and what do you know…hate groups just start springing up everywhere…
Here’s the rest of the email… Figured I’d pass it along in case any of you reading this wanted to join in…
Thousands of people of goodwill — just like you — responded by adding themselves to our map as a voice for tolerance.
It’s not too late for you to join all those who are standing strong against hate.
You’ve shown your commitment to ending injustice and racism. Now, I’m asking you to show your concern about this alarming increase in hate groups by taking a stand against hate.
We need people in every city, county and state to stand up and be counted and show that we are a nation that will not accept the hate, racism and intolerance infecting our communities, schools and political debate.
Please add yourself to our interactive map as a voice for tolerance — and find out which hate groups are active in your area.
I’m also asking that you send your friends this link and ask them to take a stand against hate.
And if they’re fortunate enough to be in an area with few hate groups, then tell them it’s important to take a stand now, before the seeds of hate take root in their communities.
Together we can make a difference.
Thank you for your commitment to ending injustice and racism.
Via Box Turtle Bulletin… Now what the hell was this supposed to accomplish…?
We commented earlier on how the mainstream media omitted all mention of Major Alan Rogers’ orientation or of his efforts to overturn the military’s ban on open gay servicemen. We told you how the Washington Post ombudsman wrote a column to repair that deliberate exclusion. Now there’s a new twist.
The user on Monday redacted details about Rogers that appeared on the online encyclopedia site. Information that was deleted included Rogers’ sexual orientation; the soldier’s participation in American Veterans for Equal Rights, a group that works to change military policy toward gays; and the fact that Rogers’ death helped bring the U.S. military’s casualty toll in Iraq to 4,000.
And while the individual responsible isn’t known,
The IP address attached to the deletion of the details and the posted comments is 141.116.168.135. The address belongs to a computer from the office of the Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence (G-2) at the Pentagon. The office is headed by Lt. Gen. John Kimmons, who was present at Rogers’ funeral and presented the flag from Rogers’ coffin to his cousin, *Cathy Long.
The factual information has been reinstated in the Wikipedia entry.
* Long is the cousin that was unaware of Rogers’ orientation and thought it should be left out of the Post article.
Alan Rogers’ was a soldier and a gay man. He was dedicated to equal rights for gay soldiers. He kept his sexual orientation at least partly in the closet, so he could continue to serve. That is the devil’s bargan Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell demands of gay soldiers. He could have easily avoided the FUBAR that George Bush made of Iraq by coming out of the closet and getting his discharge. He didn’t. Whatever you think of Bush’s splendid little war, Alan Rogers’ was obviously proud of his service to the United States. While in uniform, bearing arms for the sake of his country, he made the ultimate sacrifice for his country. The least his country could do, is be proud of him too.
And I think his country Is proud. Even the piss ignorant jackasses who still believe in Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Some of them anyway. Probably not James Dobson or Sally Kern. But I think even louts like Charles Krauthammer would salute this man’s memory, just as he was. Maybe. However, as you can see, it is still far too much to ask of the stars and bars in their comfortable air conditioned pentagon offices, that they be proud of All their fallen heroes.
The organization collecting signatures for a proposed amendment banning same-sex marriage in California says it is close to meeting the requirement.
Protect Marriage says it has collected 881,000 of the 1.1 million signatures needed. The deadline for turning in the petitions to county registrars is April 21.
Registrars are then required to take a random sample of signatures to verify. If that sampling shows at least 10 percent more valid signatures than required the petitions will be certified and the measure will be placed on the November ballot.
"The numbers are good, solid," Ron Prentice, a spokesperson for Protect Marriage told The Christian Examiner, a conservative Christian publication.
"We are well toward our goal. There are thousands more yet to be counted with a steady stream still coming in."
Among the major donors to Protect Marriage are a group of San Diego County businessmen. Developer Doug Manchester alone has contributed $125,000 prompting gays to urge a boycott of his properties. Manchester owns the Manchester Grand Hyatt and the San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina.
Mission Valley developer Terry Caster has donated $162,500, Carlsbad car dealer Robert Hoehn gave $25,000, and La Jolla businessman Roger Benson has given $50,000, according to state records.
It would just break my heart if the land of my birth did that to me. I’ve noted before that the only reason I can travel freely around the United States is that I’m single. If I had a spouse, there are many states in this so-called union that we simply could not set foot in because if one of us had a sudden health problem, or there was an accident, it would become a nightmare for both of us. Even with a so-called durable power of attorney, we could be denied the right to simply be with each other in a hospital…even with a medical directives document…we could be denied the power to make medical decisions for each other should one of us become suddenly incapacitated. Some state constitutional amendments, like Virginia’s are so stringently and thoroughly crafted to ostracize same sex couples from the protections of the law, that they can even be read to deny same sex couples the right to hold a joint checking account.
There are simply not that many people in this country who hate us enough to want to do that to us. The problem, like it was for another hated minority group over in Europe back in the 1920s and 30s, is that the rest of the nation doesn’t care enough to tell them to stop it. So when these amendments are put up to a vote, they stay home and allow hate to have its way. These are the people who say later, "We heard the rumors, but we didn’t believe them…"
Once upon a time I planned to move back to California after mom passed away. Then I got the job I do now, and my little Baltimore rowhouse, and I stayed in Maryland. But even now I think sometimes that when my time to retire comes, if it ever does, I’d like to spend the last years of my life back there where I was born. It’s a lovely state. It would break my heart if the day ever came that I couldn’t even visit California again.
I have a book on my desk waiting for me to read, titled, The Lavender Scare, about the persecution of gay government employees during the height of the cold war. So this story, via Talking Points Memo, caught my attention…
The Department of Justice’s inspector general continues to conduct its wide-ranging investigation of the U.S. attorney firings and the general politicization of the Department under Alberto Gonzales. And as we reported back in August of last year, one area of focus by investigators is allegedly political hiring practices by Monica Goodling. The inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility sent out a questionnaire to anyone who had interviewed for a job at the DoJ during Gonzo’s tenure. One thing investigators wanted to know about was whether the interviewer had asked about the applicant’s sexual orientation.
NPR today provides some more evidence that Goodling and her associates might have decided that being gay was a disqualifier. Leslie Hagen was the liaison between the Justice Department and the U.S. attorneys’ committee on Native American issues until her contract was suddenly discontinued in October of 2006.
And from NPR…
Justice Department e-mails obtained by NPR show that Gonzales’s senior counsel Monica Goodling had a particular interest in Hagen’s duties….
The Justice Department’s inspector general is looking into whether Hagen was dismissed after a rumor reached Goodling that Hagen is lesbian.
As one Republican source put it, "To some people, that’s even worse than being a Democrat."
Several people interviewed by the inspector general’s staff said investigators asked whether people drew a connection between the rumors and Hagen’s dismissal….
Someone who worked in Hagen’s office says that in a 2006 meeting, senior officials were told that Hagen’s contract would not be renewed because someone on the attorney general’s staff had a problem with Hagen. The problem, it was suggested during the conversation, was sexual orientation — or what was rumored to be Hagen’s sexual orientation.
One person at the meeting asked, "Is that really an issue?" But the decision had been made.
"To some people, that’s even worse than being a Democrat." The party of hate. It’s not always about cynical manipulation of people’s fears. A lot of them really do hate us that much.
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