An Update From The Silence

Your Bloguero took a blog hiatus back on October 8, 2012. Why? As your Bloguero stated in his TTFN message:

Well, I'm going to go off and have an adventure or two, and do some different things for a while, and so I probably won't be seen around here for a month or so. Maybe longer. I'm fine. There's nothing wrong. Everything is good. It's just that it's time for a new adventure. Or two. In the material world.

Yes, your Bloguero did break his silent running a few times. For what he thought were things too important or too odd to omit. Things he just had to write. But in general, he's maintained his silence. And he's pursued his adventures.

Your Bloguero is also aware that long silences are often the sure sign that the blog (or its Bloguero) has passed on to other things, that it's finished. Nevertheless, the rumors (are there any yet?) of this blog's death are entirely exaggerated. The blog continues.

With a change. Because of your Bloguero's adventures, which include the changes he is making in his everyday working world, he can no longer write about politics. Other topics, yes. Politics, no. Just not permissible. And he probably shouldn't be commenting about politics either. That too is verboten.

Your Bloguero will doubtless continue here. Other places, particularly where your Bloguero posted only pieces about politics, no. Can't. He will have to say good bye cruel world in each of them. It's a part of the current adventure. A small price to pay.

My Head Asplode!!

It's almost funny. Here comes a bus. Soon my fellow progressives and I will be thrown unceremoniously under it. The last ten days it's almost as if the purpose of going to a bus stop is to be run over by oncoming omnibuses: climate change, health care, Afghanistan. You name it. Name a progressive cause and it's been squished in the past two weeks. And if it hasn't, if you can think of one that is not now looking like a beer can reconfigured by an oncoming locomotive, just wait tell next week.

I could react with anger to these developments. Certainly not with surprise. For example, I almost reacted in anger just a few moments ago when I read this in the New York Times:

Independent Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman says he expects to support the Democrats' health care legislation as long as any government-run insurance plan stays out of the bill.

Lieberman has been a question mark on the health care legislation for months. To win him over, Senate leaders said late Monday they were backing away from a Medicare expansion Lieberman opposed. They already had dropped a full-blown government insurance program.

Lieberman told reporters Tuesday that if the Medicare expansion and government insurance plan are gone, ''I'm going to be in a position where I can say what I've wanted to say all along: that I'm ready to vote for health care reform.''

Senate leaders need Lieberman's support to secure 60 votes necessary to advance the legislation in the 100-member Senate.

Isn't that great? We somehow went from single payer universal health care (that could never pass, they said) to a robust public option (that could never pass, they said) to a weak tea public option for the select few all of whom live down the block (that could never pass, they said) to a medicare buy-in (that could never pass, they said), to nothing (which evidently Uncle Joe approves and which can easily pass because, well, because it's nothing and nothing is what we have now so it's easy to pass).

Remind me if you can why I voted in 2006 and 2008 for Democrats? Remind me, if you're really creative, why 70% of the population wants health care and they're just not gonna get it. Maybe I'm forgetful. As I said, I almost got angry about this.

I also almost got angry last night when I heard two Democratic Senators on Maddow and Keith explain how much progressives had helped with the HCR bill and how even if it didn't have a public option or a medicare buy in or anything else of any value to people who actually need health care and insurance, it was still an enormous victory because, get this, it will provide a foundation for the future. And in the future we can build upon the foundation (if you like this metaphor). And soon on this foundation there will be a 1700' tall, glistening sky scraper, a beacon to the nation if not the world, called Universal Health Care and you, my dear friends, can even go in an visit the lobby of this edifice. Soon, of course, is a term of art. It means a time between now and the next, distant ice age. You can visit the magnificent structure for which you have provided the foundation if you can live to be 200 years old without adequate health insurance. I personally am not taking this as a bet. Are you kidding me? This is truly a case in which legislative nothing is claimed to be governmental something. So I was almost getting angry. And thinking of things I could do to get even (I'm like that. I don't apologize for being like that). I'm a Buddhist, but revenge did cross my mind and perch on my eyebrows like a carrion vulture.

Then I recalled some recent pacifying remarks by Pinche Tejano. His remarks were to the effect that it was all just a computer game and should be treated as such (his analysis was far more eloquent and intelligible than this very basic boil down of his very subtle and correct idea). So I began to think about all of this electoral politics as just a game. I couldn't get mad about a game that was obviously rigged so that I couldn't get to the next level, so that I would have an EPIC FAIL. What's to get mad about that? It happens all the time. Especially to people like me with no game skillz. No game cred. In a word, losers. Suckers. I'm used to being pwned by games. I don't like losing, but I don't get mad about it. It beat the hell out of being almost angry about politics. Yeah. All of a sudden all of this electoral politics and senate politics and astroturf movements and Joe Lieberman made sense. It was all just like son of Pac Man. It was finally sensible. Even to me.

And that's when my head asploded.

It's just like this:



How did I know that Strongbad was so prescient? How did I know that Home Star Runner was really equipping me for the future of politics? My head asploded.

Starting Over: Pontifications From A Nobody

Yesterday, I put up a diary at GOS decrying how our writing had become so completely predictable, so formulaic, so prosaic. It was derivative, and it was funny. But it was also extremely sad. In many ways it was a commentary on the powerlessness of progressive bloggers: we can yell louder, we can scream, we can write explosive rants. But you know what? It isn't changing anything. And frankly, I'm tired of our dogged, persistent pursuit of something that's not working. And, I suspect, isn't going to work.

Maybe you're lucky and can write face blistering essays on this site and you can have readers tell you how right on you are. How smart, how important, how clear. But if you're poor and without a job, or if you're sick and you don't have insurance, or if you're running out of unemployment benefits and the next job isn't in sight, or if your kids are in trouble and you don't know how to help them out, or if you are overdue to retire and you don't have the funds and have to work, or your wage slave pay isn't going to bail you out unless you win Megamillions and you're not too big to fail, or your kids are in the military, these essays aren't going to help you. Not at all. They're just going to highlight how you have somebody's boot on your neck. And you cannot get it off. And they're bound to inform you, if you don't know it already, about how very weak you are and how very powerless we as a group (I'm talking about progressives) remain.

Look. I'm just a writer. I'm mostly anonymous (though I have a web presence). I have my opinions. I have some ideas. I have my private life. I have my work. I wish, I really do wish, we could all be free from suffering and illness and hatred. I wish progressives had some real power. I wish we had influence. I wish we'd all wake up tomorrow morning and be covered by Medicare. I wish the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan would be over. I wish unemployment would be extended until the economy turns around. I wish foreclosures would be stayed. I wish we'd all have enough to eat, adequate shelter, first rate health care, decent education, a whole shopping basket of safety net programs. I wish we would have something that resembled a moderate, socialist European government. But we don't. And despite the electoral win this past November, we're not going to get those things. Ever.

We may have thought, in our desperation and gullibility, that our lives would change. But here we are, October, 2009, and if your life is better than it was in October, 2008, I'll be amazed. In other words, it's the same old same old and it's now time to see it for what it really is. It's the same if not worse than it was a year ago. The fantasy of structural, fundamental change was just that, a fantasy. The illusion that the Government would help is was just that, an illusion. There are still homeless people. Sick people without insurance. Unemployed people in foreclosure. And the prospect of a change for them, a change they can believe in, well, it just doesn't exist. It's not happening this year. Or next year. It's probably just not happening.

Strange as it may seem, I'm not discouraged. To me all of this means that I was making a mistake in what I thought was happening, so now I need to revise my thinking. I'm a writer. I revise all the time. I'm good at editing. I'm good at rewriting. I've spent far more time at that than writing first drafts. So I suggest to my friends who are writers, blogger@s, that we forget about starting to write chapter 2 and go back immediately to rewrite chapter 1. Put another way, we need to rethink all of our expectations, our hopes, our dreams, our demands. We need to remember that the change we can believe in was something we could be believe in, but, alas, it was just another dream. It was not real. And when we woke up, poof!, it was gone.

So I suggest that we retrench slightly, that we retreat, that we pull back. Only for a few moments. I suggest that we stop acting like the Government gives a hoot about what we think or say or write. It clearly doesn't. And I suggest that we go back to basic, modest, local things we can actually improve. That we stop being all puffed up and making believe we're powerful, and recognize that all of that, that dream, that illusion, that hope, wasn't real. No, it wasn't. We need to recognize that the struggle for a progressive America is still ahead of us in the future.

For me this means no more money to politicians or political parties. None. Nada. Zilch. I'm giving the money to local programs that help people who need help (the local co-op, the food bank, e.g.). I'm going to try directly to help people whose suffering is not being addressed.

For me this means no more acting like the national Government is influenced by what I say as opposed to those people who can and have written fat checks to the incumbents and the PACs and the political interest groups. Just look at the health care debate. I want a single payer plan. And I have insurance and in a few years I'll have medicare. It's not my personal battle, as if I would battle for a 5% "public option" anyway. I want all of us to be safe and to have appropriate care. But this debate isn't even about health care any more. Now the Administration refers to it as "Health Insurance Reform." Jeebus. But I digress.

For me this means no more acting like people read what I write on blogs and just by reading it, it changes their views. Only the trolls disagree with what I write, and we all know they suck. The rest of us, those who agree with me, are great and wonderful people. But I'm just preaching to my own choir. I like the choir, really I do. But our singing doesn't matter. Here's an example. I've been writing about Honduras. People who are for democracy agree with me. Golpistas and Republicans don't. There are lots of "Democrats" who don't understand and are so anti-Chavez that they support the golpistas. Who are these people and why are they tormenting me in the comments? If they're not being paid by the Golpe de Estado or Republicans to troll what I write, they need to get a life. And by the way, so do I. Another digression.

For me, what I'm saying means that it is time to get down to basics. Does our writing change anything? I suspect it might if we were talking about something modest, something smaller. If we had good ideas. If we had action steps that were simple. If we had a real plan. If we had command of what was wrong and what had to be done, and it didn't involve enormous, structural changes of the national legislature.

Does what we write have an effect on national or international stories? I doubt it.

What about our fame as writers? Certainly, it's not about the money (which for me has been nonexistent). What about our being recommended, making the recc lists, being "up" for days on end, being famous, being named as famous, being cited? Yeah, that's all really, really nice. And maybe some of us are in it for that, but to be frank, I'm not. I like all of that, don't get me wrong, but that's not what it's about. It's about something else. It's about being heard and having that make some changes in thinking and actions. Does that happen? I doubt it.

For me this means I'm now going to get back to basics. I've taken down the hit counters on my blog. I'm going to stop posting at Naranja. I'll continue here and at my blog and at the other small blogs that I like.

I'm going to try to break out of the formulaic box. I'm going to try to find ways we can actually make a difference. I do hope you'll all join me in that. Our present way of "doing business" is a road to persistent irrelevance.

If it's true that the keyboard is mightier than the sword, and sometimes I have my doubts about that, we need to use it for what it can do rather than as a paperweight.

New York's Circus McGurkus

Dr. Seuss had it right about the New York Senate in If I Ran The Circus.

The plot summary of Dr. Seuss's classic story:

Behind Mr. Sneelock's ramshackle store, there's an empty lot. Little Morris McGurk is convinced that if he could just clear out the rusty cans, the dead tree, and the old cars, nothing would prevent him from using the lot for the amazing, world-beating, Circus McGurkus. The more elaborate Morris' dreams about the circus become, the more they depend on the sleepy-looking and innocent Sneelock, who stands outside his ramshackle store sucking on a pipe, oblivious to the fate that awaits him in the depths of Morris's imagination. He doesn't yet know that he'll have to dispense 500 gallons of lemonade, be lassoed by a Wily Walloo, wrestle a Grizzly-Ghastly, and ski down a slope dotted with giant cacti. But if his performance is up to McGurkian expectations, then "Why, ladies and gentlemen, youngsters and oldsters, your heads will quite likely spin right off your shouldsters!"

Please consider the New York State Senate the empty lot, filled with the rusty cans, the dead tree, and the old cars. The worst house of the worst state legislature in the United States. Inaccessible. Unapproachable. Worthless. Corrupt. Please consider me Little Morris McGurk, your humble, scribbling bloguero, thinking, nay hoping that the New York State Senate might be able to do wonderful things, things like legalizing gay marriage, and might become an example of open government and transparency. And please consider my fellow New Yorkers as Mr. Sneelock, standing outside our houses sucking on a pipe (a tobacco pipe, though a tail pipe might be more appropos), oblivious after all of these years to how very dysfunctional New York's State Senate really is, so resigned to this farce, so shackled by bad government that we don't even notice its fetters any more.

Let's face it. If you live in New York, and you don't live in the company town of Albany, or you're not interested in the bizarre party politics playing in the company town, you never hear very much about the wonderful New York State Senate. In fact, if you're not in the area covered by WAMC, you probably hear nothing about it. If you're in New York City, the silence about it is deafening. The fact is the Senate meets 130 miles away from New York City in Albany, there's little media coverage of their antics, and the rate at which incumbent pols are returned over and over and over again is astonishing, especially in light of the lack of any public examination of just what they have done, especially in light of the enormous amount of campaign funds that flow to incumbents and make running against them a bad idea. A very bad idea. What do these Senators do while we're not watching? Mostly they provide pork to their districts. Lots of pork. And favors. Lots of favors to donors. And they fight the kinds of Bizantine, internecine political battles that have culminated in this week's remarkable clown show.

Yesterday a judge addressed the two competing factions, democrats and republicans. The Republicans claimed a majority of the Senate in a legislative coup d'etat earlier this week with the assistance of two turn-coat democrats, Pedro Espada (D-nominally from the Bronx, but not living full time in his district, under investigation for extensive campaign finance misbehavior) and Hiram Montserrate (D-Queens, indicted for assault of his partner). The Democrats thought they had 32 votes in January at the start of the term and have tried to lock the doors to prevent the Senate from convening after the coup, claiming that the session in which the vote occurred had been gaveled to a close. Said the judge to the two combatant sides, "Work it out."

[Justice Thomas] McNamara told the attorneys -- in court and privately -- of the need to work things out away from the courtroom.

"There are three coequal branches of government," the judge said from the bench. "We have our job, the Senate has their job, and the governor's office has their job. The courts certainly do, on occasions that are appropriate, venture into other areas -- but there is a reluctance to do that. And it would be in everyone's best interests if the Senate over the weekend got together and with calmer heads resolved (the dispute) among yourselves."

If the factions don't "work it out" by Monday, the Judge threatens that he will rule. But what's the big threat? One of the parties won't like the ruling, so it will appeal. Meanwhile, the clowning will continue, probably to the end of the session, which is scheduled to close in two weeks.

And what clowning it is! The democrats locked the chamber and refused to provide a key to the republicans. The New York Post sent someone to the Senate dressed as a clown. The republicans showed up with a "magical key." The session ended before anything could be done because Mr. Montserrate, for reasons that seem to stem more from his desire for the spotlight than any other consideration, left the chamber, leaving the coup members with no quorum. And on it will go from here.

What the republicans have done is recruit two of the worst democrats. You wouldn't have known about them, I certainly didn't, until the present fiasco began. Then you could suddenly read all about them, their troubled legal histories, their flouting their constituents, the backroom deals, the coup, the wrangling to keep the coup in place, the deals on top of deals. In short, awful politics. Corrupt politics practiced by egomaniac, valueless hacks. And the more you follow it, the more it's clear that Dr. Seuss had it right. The Senate is really a vacant lot, replete with rusty cans, the dead tree, and the old cars. And you, the Mr. Sneelocks of the world, need to do something about it. You need to dispense the 500 gallons of lemonade, be lassoed by a Wily Walloo, wrestle a Grizzly-Ghastly, and ski down a slope dotted with giant cacti. You need to vote all of these bums out. All of them. Every last one. And if you don't, "Why, ladies and gentlemen, youngsters and oldsters, your heads will quite likely spin right off your shouldsters!"

Idiot Wind

The WaPo editorial for today calls out McSame for yet another "vile smear:

WITH THE presidential campaign clock ticking down, Sen. John McCain has suddenly discovered a new boogeyman to link to Sen. Barack Obama: a sometimes controversial but widely respected Middle East scholar named Rashid Khalidi. In the past couple of days, Mr. McCain and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, have likened Mr. Khalidi, the director of a Middle East institute at Columbia University, to neo-Nazis; called him "a PLO spokesman"; and suggested that the Los Angeles Times is hiding something sinister by refusing to release a videotape of a 2003 dinner in honor of Mr. Khalidi at which Mr. Obama spoke. Mr. McCain even threw former Weatherman Bill Ayers into the mix, suggesting that the tape might reveal that Mr. Ayers -- a terrorist-turned-professor who also has been an Obama acquaintance -- was at the dinner.

For the record, Mr. Khalidi is an American born in New York who graduated from Yale a couple of years after George W. Bush. For much of his long academic career, he taught at the University of Chicago, where he and his wife became friends with Barack and Michelle Obama. In the early 1990s, he worked as an adviser to the Palestinian delegation at peace talks in Madrid and Washington sponsored by the first Bush administration. We don't agree with a lot of what Mr. Khalidi has had to say about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the years, and Mr. Obama has made clear that he doesn't, either. But to compare the professor to neo-Nazis -- or even to Mr. Ayers -- is a vile smear.

For his part, Mr. Khalidi, an academic of the first degree, squashes McSame like a bloated cockroach and even throws the clammering, allusion-hungry masses (that would be us) a bone:

Which reminds us: We did ask Mr. Khalidi whether he wanted to respond to the campaign charges against him. He answered, via e-mail, that "I will stick to my policy of letting this idiot wind blow over." That's good advice for anyone still listening to the McCain campaign's increasingly reckless ad hominem attacks. Sadly, that wind is likely to keep blowing for four more days.

"Idiot Wind"? Definitely. That's a 1974 Bob Dylan tune:

Someone's got it in for me, they're planting stories in the press
Whoever it is I wish they'd cut it out but when they will I can only guess.
They say I shot a man named Gray and took his wife to Italy,
She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me.
I can't help it if I'm lucky.

People see me all the time and they just can't remember how to act
Their minds are filled with big ideas, images and distorted facts.
Even you, yesterday you had to ask me where it was at,
I couldn't believe after all these years, you didn't know me better than that
Sweet lady.

Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth,
Blowing down the backroads headin' south.
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth,
You're an idiot, babe.
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe.

Yes, as the song concludes, it's a wonder we can even feed ourselves. There are 4 audio versions of this wonderful song here (click on left margin), and, of course, a beautiful video from 1976:



And so, on October 31, 2008, with 3 full days before election day, McSame brings us yet another boogeyperson and demonstrates yet again that his campaign is nothing more than "idiot wind." And you thought that he had already emptied his clown car of all of the evil creatures and boogeypersons. Wrong. Doesn't he realize that we're already on fear and loathing overload, and have been for 8 long years, and that we're now averting our eyes from his parade of cardboard horrors, that we're saying, "Sorry, McSame", we're moving on? I guess not.

Waterboarding: Those Who Cannot Remember The Past

cross posted at docuDharma

Waterboarding (read: torture) is nothing new. It's been around since the 15th century, and has a long, well documented history. That history was briefly summed up by Ted Kennedy for Democracy Now:

It’s an ancient technique of tyrants. In the fifteenth and sixteenth century, it was used by interrogators in the Spanish Inquisition. In the nineteenth century, it was used against slaves in this country. In World War II, it was used against us by Japan. In the 1970s, it was used against political opponents by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the military dictatorships of Chile and Argentina. Today, it’s being used against pro-democracy activists by the rulers of Burma. When we fail to reject waterboarding, this is the company that we keep. /snip

Make no mistake about it: waterboarding is already illegal under United States law. It’s illegal under the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit outrages upon personal dignity, including cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment. It’s illegal under the Torture Act, which prohibits acts specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering. It’s illegal under the Detainee Treatment Act, which prohibits cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. And it violates the Constitution. The nation’s top military lawyers and legal experts across the political spectrum have condemned waterboarding as torture. And after World War II, the United States prosecuted— prosecuted— Japanese officers for engaging in waterboarding. What more does this nominee need to enforce existing laws?

This essay isn't about rehashing the many legal arguments about how waterboarding is torture and in violation of US and international law. Instead, this essay recalls two recent, prominent instances in which the US itself prosecuted the use of waterboarding as a crime, as torture. It raises this simple question: how can anyone who acknowledges this relatively recent history argue that waterboarding isn't a crime and isn't torture. And how is it that our learned congresspersons haven't forcefully confronted Bushco's minions with this history?

World War II
NPR reports:

In the war crimes tribunals that followed Japan's defeat in World War II, the issue of waterboarding was sometimes raised. In 1947, the U.S. charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for waterboarding a U.S. civilian. Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.

According to this Wiki:

The United States has a historical record of regarding waterboarding as a crime, and has prosecuted individuals for the use of the practice in the past. In 1947, the United States prosecuted a Japanese military officer, Yukio Asano, for carrying out a form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian during World War II. Yukio Asano received a sentence of 15 years of hard labor. The charges of Violation of the Laws and Customs of War against Asano also included "beating using hands, fists, club; kicking; burning using cigarettes; strapping on a stretcher head downward."

The WaPo described what Asano did:

The subject was strapped on a stretcher that was tilted so that his feet were in the air and head near the floor, and small amounts of water were poured over his face, leaving him gasping for air until he agreed to talk.

And then there's the record of the conviction. And this article that provides the specifications (starting on page 18) on which Asano and others were tried. These included "water torture", which the charges described:

Specification 1: That in or about July or August, 1943, the accused Yukio Asano, did willfully and unlawfully, brutally mistreat and torture Morris O. Killough, an American Prisoner of War, by beating and kicking him; by fastening him on a stretcher and pouring water up his nostrils.

Specification 2: That on or about 15 May, 1944, at Fukoka Prisoner of War Branch Camp Number 3, Kyushu, Japan, the accused Yukio Asano, did, willfully and unlawfully, brutally mistreat and torture Thomas B. Armitage, William O Cash and Munroe Dave Woodall, American Prisoners of War by beating and kicking them, by forcing water into their mouths and noses; and by pressing lighted cigarettes against their bodies.

Specification 5. That between 1 April, 1943 and 31 December, 1943, the accused Yukio Asano, did, willfully and unlawfully, brutally mistreat and torture John Henry Burton, an American Prisoner of War, by beating him; and by fastening him head downward on a stretcher and forcing water into his nose.

And, of course, there's the testimony of victims of these crimes.

It seems clear enough that if what Asano (and others) did was not torture, Bush and Mukasey need to issue him a pardon. But, alas, Asano isn't alone. The issue arose again in Vietnam two decades later. And with the same results: waterboarding was criminal and it was torture.

Vietnam
NPR reports:

On Jan. 21, 1968, The Washington Post ran a front-page photo of a U.S. soldier supervising the waterboarding of a captured North Vietnamese soldier. The caption said the technique induced "a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk." The picture led to an Army investigation and, two months later, the court martial of the soldier.

The photo:


According to this Wiki:

Waterboarding was designated as illegal by U.S. generals in the Vietnam War. On January 21, 1968, The Washington Post published a controversial photograph of an American soldier supervising the waterboarding of a North Vietnamese POW near Da Nang. The article described the practice as "fairly common." The photograph led to the soldier being court-martialled by a U.S. military court within one month of its publication, and he was thrown out of the army. Another waterboarding photograph of the same scene is also exhibited in the War Remnants Museum at Ho Chi Minh City.

Cited source

The original WaPo article is here (pdf format, redacted).

These two cases do not involve statutory construction, a close reading of the texts of treaties, arcane principles of international law. They don't require extensive analysis. The facts are incontrovertible: in World War II and in Vietnam the US prosecuted "waterboarding" as a crime and as torture. And now, Mukasey, like Abu AG before him, and like other Bushco officials criminals have the gall to argue that "waterboarding" somehow isn't a crime. That proposition is laughable. They deserve not only our contempt. They deserve to be impeached and prosecuted.