Thinking Out Loud

Confessions of a bottom-feeding blogger

2008-04-17T18:27:00.000-07:00

I took several days off from blogging, ostensibly to plant a vegetable garden. However, the garden was planted several days ago, the drip irrigation system is working, and I haven’t been posting.Is it because I’m finding the greatest joy being with my grandchildren, with whom I spend a couple of days a week? If I’m honest with myself, the reason I haven’t been posting is because I’m not sure I’m adding any value to the world of information. I describe myself as a “bottom-feeding blogger” because I rely on what others write. I described this in my March 27th post, "How important are newspapers?" “With blogging in mind, each morning I check The New York Times and The Washington Post. Then I check four well-known blogs, Juan Cole’s Informed Comment, Glenn Greenwald’s Unclaimed Territory. Scott Horton’s No Comment, and Steve Clemons’s The Washington Note.... I, in turn, rely on these and other bloggers to help me understand what’s going on. Then I attempt to distill what I learn into a few paragraphs for my blog.”

The following describes the sequence of events that prompted me to examine the time it takes to post almost every day when I'm home:

1. On April 6th, I read The New York Times article, "In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop." The article described the death of two bloggers who were working for pay. I’m working for fun and for free. However, blogging almost every day creates stress, which is not good for my health as I turn 68 on Sunday.

2. April 9th was a stunningly beautiful day. In the late afternoon as I hunkered over my computer pulling together my post "Fear for Iran," I kept looking outside, wondering what I was doing inside.

3. On April 10th, I was shocked to see that one of my favorite bloggers, the most prolific blogger I’m aware of, Scott Horton, posted "Is There Life After Blogging?", noting the Times article about bloggers dropping dead and announcing that he would no longer be blogging daily.

I can’t answer the question of whether or not I add value by blogging. I know I miss the discipline of finding something every day worth a post. However, I’m pleased to report that while I was “away,” I explored two new blogs:

1. South Jerusalem: Gershom Gorenberg and Haim Watzman, described as “A Progressive, Skeptical Blog on Israel, Judaism, Culture, Politics, and Literature”;

2. Best Guess Commentary: “Commentary and Analysis on Current Events in Politics, Business, Foregin Affairs and More."

Now that Scott Horton isn’t posting each day, I’m taking the time I used to spend reading his blog to check:

1. Tony Karon’s blog, Rootless Cosmopolitan. I highly recommend his April 9th post, "Healing Israel's Birth Scar";

2. Ken Silverstein’s Washington Babylon.

Lastly, I want to recommend Dan Froomkin’s Monday through Friday post for The Washington Post, White House Watch. I’ve been reading it each workday for many, many months.

I still can’t answer the question “Am I adding value?” But I enjoyed pulling this post together.

(photo of my garden taken this afternoon; photo of my grandchildren from a week ago)

Standing up against torture

2008-04-12T08:35:00.000-07:00

This will be my last post for a few days.

This afternoon at 4 pm, I will be showing up at a busy street corner in my small town, Healdsburg, with my sign protesting our country’s use of torture.

Last Sunday I and others had a positive experience standing up against torture, as reported by Ann Carranza in her article "Small Community Protests Torture," which didn’t make it into our local newspaper.

This week, even the mainstream media has been covering the torture issue. This morning The Washington Post reported "Bush Approved Meetings on Interrogation Techniques": "President Bush said Friday that he was aware his top national security advisers had discussed the details of harsh interrogation tactics to be used on detainees.”

I hope others will join me this afternoon or make signs protesting torture and stand up in their communities.

I need a blogging break so I can help plant my garden this year.

(photos of last week’s anti-torture vigil, courtesy of Anna Carranza, and last year’s garden)

Fear for Iran

2008-04-09T19:12:00.000-07:00

Below is a hodge-podge of links to articles about the U.S.’s targeting Iran. My fear that the U.S. will attack Iran keeps me awake at night. I’m not sure I can make sense of the following comments and opinions, so I hope you can.

First is Tony Karon’s April 7th post at Rootless Cosmopolitan, "The Perils of a Banker's War on Iran." Tony believes that “The neocons are not going to get their war with Iran….They’ve lost the Pentagon, and it’s abundantly clear that neither the uniformed brass nor Defense Secretary Gates have any interest in starting another catastrophic war….Nor is there any significant support (outside of Israel) among U.S. allies for a confrontational path.”

However, Karon observes that there’s a “privatized” war against Iran going on, one that isn’t covered in the mainstream media, and is being handled by the U.S. Department of Treasury through its Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN):“[D]edicated to fighting the ‘war on terror’ via the international banking system.” On March 20th, FinCEN issued an “[A]dvisory warning [to] the international banking community that doing business with any Iranian bank, or bank that does business with an Iranian bank, runs the risk of falling afoul of the U.S. Treasury’s expansive interpretation and enforcement of UN sanctions and of anti-terror money laundering regulations adopted under the post-9/11 USA Patriot Act.”

Second: General Petraeus’s comments today and yesterday before Congressional committees about Iran’s involvement in the war in Iraq:

A. On April 7th, Gareth Porter posted "Petraeus Testimony to Defend False 'Proxy War' Line." “Based on preliminary indications of his spin on the surprisingly effective armed resistance to the joint U.S.-Iraqi "Operation Knights Assault" in Basra, Petraeus will testify that it was caused by Iran through a group of rogue militiamen who had split off from Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and came under Iranian control. “

B. Yesterday, Gary Kamiya, who blogs for Salon.com posted "The Iran boogeyman is back - Gen. Petraeus is reportedly going to blame Iran for why we need to stay in Iraq. If he does, it'll be destructive propaganda." “It's blame-blame-blame, blame-blame Iran. We've heard this song before. The Bush administration warbles it every time it needs to justify its failed Iraq policies and rally a skeptical public. Evil Iran, our archenemy, a charter member of the Axis of Evil, is killing American troops, and we can't leave Iraq, or Ahmadinejad and his cronies will take over the whole country. It's an updated version of the Cold War ‘domino effect’ argument, with Iran taking the place of the communist menace….

“There's just one problem with this story: It's nonsense.”

C. Were Porter and Kamiya right? Yes, according to David Ignatius, who wrote today in his Washington Post opinion column, “The language that Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker used yesterday to describe the Iranian role in Iraq was extreme -- and telling. They spoke of Tehran's 'nefarious activities,' its 'malign influence' and how it posed 'the greatest long-term threat to the viability' of the Baghdad government.

"Iran was the heart of the matter during Senate testimony on the war. With al-Qaeda on the run in Iraq, the Iranian threat has become the rationale for the mission, and also the explanation for our shortcomings. The Iranians are the reason we're bogged down in Iraq, and also the reason we can't pull out our troops. The mullahs in Tehran loom over the Iraq battlefield like a giant Catch-22….

"Fighting a war against Iran is a bad idea. But fighting a proxy war against it in Iraq, where many of our key allies are manipulated by Iranian networks of influence, may be even worse."

Third is Scott Ritter, who spoke before a group at Middlebury College in Vermont last week, as reported by the Rutland Herald. Ritter believes there is an 80 percent chance of war with Iran. He ticked off the reasons why:

“Preemptive strikes against the two groups most likely to erupt ifthe United States invaded Iran, Hezbollah (unsuccessfully attackedby Israel) and Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army (unsuccessfully attackedin Basra by Iraq's central government)….

”Recent visits to Middle Eastern allies by high officials, ostensiblyf or other purposes, but really to prepare them for the effects ofsuch a war.

”The appearance of the ‘miracle laptop,’ as Ritter called it, a thousand pages of technical documents supposedly from a stolen Iranian computer, which dubiously had just the sort of information the administration needed to support a hard-line stand on Iran.

”Congressional supplementary funding for more ‘bunker-busting’ bombs, with a contract completion deadline of April.

”Congressional supplementary funding for the extra bombers to carry those bombs, with a contract completion date of April.

”Cheney's order to send a third aircraft carrier battle group close to the Persian Gulf, a necessary bolstering of forces for a war with Iran.

”Admiral William Fallon, the first admiral to be head of Central Command, said that level of naval forces was unnecessary and blocked the move.”

But wait! We haven’t read what Paul Woodward at War in Context has to say. Yesterday he wrote "Who's really special?" asking the question, “Is George Bush, ever so slowly, inching towards détente with Iran? If so, it’s probably something he won’t brag about. But what on earth could hint at such a possibility?

Consider these few things…”

If you’ve made it this far, I highly recommend you read Larry Beinhart’s April 6th article, "Report from Iran: Should We Really Bomb These People?"

I guess I have lived with the illusion that in a democracy, we citizens wouldn’t have to guess about whether or not our country will launch a war against another country. I guess I’ve been wrong all along.

(Persian miniature: Mirror.org - click on it to enlarge)

Briefly noted: The Washington Post wins a Pulitzer Prize for Gellman and Becker's series on Cheney

2008-04-08T18:11:00.000-07:00

Last June when I read Barton Gellman (photo) and Jo Becker’s four part series on Vice-President Cheney, I said to myself and others, “This is prize-winning journalism.” The first article was published on June 25th, which I posted about here.

This morning, I wasn’t surprised when I read that The Washington Post won a Pulitzer Prize for the 30,000 word “Angler – The Cheney Vice Presidency” by Gellman and Becker.

From today’s article: The series “…[E]xamined how Cheney ‘has shaped his times as no vice president has before,’ including his impact on the U.S. anti-terrorism effort, tax and spending policies and environmental regulation.

"’I resisted this assignment for a while because I thought it was too hard,’ Gellman said. ‘I thought the guy is just going to be too tough to crack.’” Thank goodness Gellman and Becker stuck with it. Given what is going on today regarding:

1. The U.S.’s “anti-terrorism efforts,” which include torture, warrantless eavesdropping, and beating the war drums for an attack on Iran;

2. “Tax and spending policies,” as our country goes into deep debt for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and slides into a recession; and

3. “Environmental regulation,” as global warming is largely ignored and scientific studies about how serious it is are repressed,

this series is as timely as it was six months ago because Cheney continues to exert tremendous influence over President Bush.

(Photos of Barton Gellman and Cheney from The Washington Post)

How I spent my day

2008-04-07T19:41:00.000-07:00

This morning I set up my backyard for my twin grandchildren, including the two tents you see in the background. They were here all day. By the time I cleaned up and reorganized my yard and house, I didn't have any energy left to post about any of the issues I care about. Of course, when I'm with them, the "woes of the world" fade away, so I actually don't have anything I feel compelled to write about this evening. I think that's good news.

United We Stand...Against Torture

2008-04-06T18:10:00.000-07:00

This morning, I headed for the plaza in my hometown, Healdsburg, population 11,000, in northern California’s fabled wine country.

I was met by my friend, Caroline. We held up our “Torture R US” signs and our breath, not knowing how we would be received. Soon we were joined by my blogging buddy, Chris (The Democratic Activist); and my friend, Ann, who showed up with her camera and legal pad with the goal of submitting an article about our efforts to our newpaper of record, the Healdsburg Tribune. I handed out my flier.* By the time we split up, there were about 10 of us.

What an experience! People stopped, asked what we were doing, and ended up staying and talking with us. Ann interviewed numerous people, including a Canadian who had been a translator for the US Army in World War II; an English businessman who was willing to talk with us (but didn’t us to use his name out of fear that his traveling from country to country could be curtailed); a 23 year old man from Lake County who wondered what we were doing; and a woman, new to Healdsburg, who had just joined the Healdsburg Peace Project. All were opposed to our country’s use of torture. In an hour and half, we only talked to one person who regretted that the US doesn’t torture more.

What I learned today:

1. Our “Torture R US” signs provoked questions, but there are better slogans. For right now, I like “United We Stand…Against Torture.”

2. None of the three presidential candidates oppose the use of torture by our country on their websites, Obama, Clinton, and McCain. I urge you to contact your candidate and ask him/her to take a position on our country’s use of torture.

3. Even though torture is a serious subject, it’s possible to enjoy taking a public stand against it, especially when others join in.

I hope you will pick a slogan opposing torture, make a sign and handout*, encourage a few friends to join you, and find a street corner in your town to spread the word. I plan to show up a couple of times a week until our country stops torturing.

* Here's my handout:

Why I’m protesting our country’s use of torture

1. This is a democracy. We citizens are responsible for what our government does. I believe that torture is wrong in all circumstances and refuse to remain silent in light of our government’s ongoing insistence that it has the right to use torture.

2. Memos produced by Department of Justice to justify torture have recently been released. These memos confirm that elected officials and their lawyers approved, even encouraged, the use of torture.

3. On March 8th, President Bush vetoed a bill which would have specifically banned the following: Forcing a prisoner to be naked, perform sexual acts or pose in a sexual manner. Placing hoods or sacks over the head of a prisoner, and using duct tape over the eyes. Applying beatings, electric shocks, burns or other forms of physical pain. Waterboarding. Using military working dogs. Inducing hypothermia or heat injury. Conducting mock executions. Depriving a prisoner of necessary food, water or medical care.

Gail Jonas, Attorney at Law, resident of Healdsburg for 42 years, http://gailjonas.blogspot.com/, Gail@GailJonas.com, 707.431.8451.

(photo thanks to Ann Carranza - double click to enlarge)

Taking a public stand against our country's use of torture

2008-04-05T09:07:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow morning I’m heading with my “Torture R US” sign to the plaza in my hometown, Healdsburg. It's a small town described as ”Nestled in the heart of Sonoma's County's wine country, Healdsburg offers relaxation, fun, and adventure for people of all ages. The natural beauty, friendly attitudes, and a cosmopolitan flair suggest the perfect backdrop for a splendid vacation.” I will stick out like a sore thumb.

On March 18th, I posted "Torture R Us" - What do you think? and received comments both discouraging and encouraging me about going public with this message. Given the news this past week about the recently released torture memos and the “torture team,” (the lawyers who advised Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc.,) it feels like the right thing to do.

I’m also mindful that it isn’t just “unlawful enemy combatants” that are being tortured. Read Scott Horton’s post yesterday morning, "...Pentagon Moves Ahead on Contractor Accountability," which opens with “Today, The Nation’s Karen Houppert reports on a gruesome rape case out of Iraq. The victim is a young American woman given the pseudonym ‘Lisa Smith’.

“It was an early January morning in 2008 when 42-year-old Lisa Smith, a paramedic for a defense contractor in southern Iraq, woke up to find her entire room shaking. The shipping container that served as her living quarters was reverberating from nearby rocket attacks, and she was jolted awake to discover an awful reality. 'Right then my whole life was turned upside down,' she says….”

My previous posts about torture:
April 3rd: David S. Addington - The man in the torture shadows
March 30th : Whom do you believe? Murat Kurnaz or Bryan Whitman?
March 22nd: Exposure - Bush's refusal to give up torture*
March 21st: From the kingdom of fear....
March 18th: "Torture R US" - What do you think?
March 16th: How could you have done what you did?
March 13th: No Torture. No Exceptions*
Feb. 7th: Letter from Jack Balkin to Senator McCain
November 20th: Our humanity has been compromised

*Posts most worth reading

(stick figure: my friend Pat Denino, who blogs at Wandering Wonderings)

"Running the Numbers" - Revisiting Chris Jordan

2008-04-04T19:37:00.000-07:00

This evening I checked Chris Jordan Photographic Arts. I previously posted about Chris Jordan’s work on May 11, "Chris Jordan captures consumerism,"and July 23, "Visions of excess."

Currently Jordan is featuring a series titled, “Running the Numbers, An American Self-Portrait":

“This series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 410,000 paper cups used every fifteen minutes. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. The underlying desire is to emphasize the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming."

I picked the accompanying photo, a portion of the image of nine million wooden ABC blocks equal to the number of Ameican children with no health insurance coverage in 2007, because I took care of my twin 14 month grandchildren today. It would break my heart if either of became sick and couldn’t get adequate medical care because he or she lacked health insurance.

(photo: Building Blocks, 2007. 16 feet tall x 32 feet wide in eighteen square panels, each sized 62x62": Chris Jordan Photographic Arts)

David S. Addington - The man in the torture shadows

2008-04-03T08:15:00.000-07:00

Last June, I posted Who is "the most powerful person you've never heard of"? and Cheney's Cheney about David S. Addington, Vice-President Cheney’s chief of staff and former counsel.

As I continue to read the most recent crop of articles about the recently released torture memos, the number one member of the “torture team” appears to me to be David S. Addington.

In the May issue of Vanity Fair, "The Green Light" by Philippe Sands is a must-read if you want to understand the cast of high-level official characters responsible for our country’s use of torture.

There are numerous references to Addington in Sands’s article, including:

1. The authors of the torture memos “were assisted in the drafting by David Addington….”;

2. “The fingerprints of the most senior lawyers in the administration were all over the design and implementation of the abusive interrogation policies. Addington, Bybee, Gonzales, Haynes, and Yoo became, in effect, a torture team of lawyers, freeing the administration from the constraints of all international rules prohibiting abuse.

3. “…Addington, Haynes, and Gonzales all objected to Geneva.”

4. “This memo [referring to one of the torture memos] is believed to have been written by Addington, presented a ‘new paradigm’ and described Geneva’s ‘strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners’ as ‘obsolete.’ ”

For me, the most significant piece in Sand’s article is this: “ On September 25, [2002] as the process of elaborating new interrogation techniques reached a critical point, a delegation of the administration’s most senior lawyers arrived at Guantánamo. The group included the president’s lawyer, Alberto Gonzales, who had by then received the Yoo-Bybee Memo; Vice President Cheney’s lawyer, David Addington, who had contributed to the writing of that memo….. They were all well aware of al-Qahtani [the tortured detainee described in the article]. ‘They wanted to know what we were doing to get to this guy,’ …‘ and Addington was interested in how we were managing it.’….

“Beaver [a military lawyer present at Guantanamo when the torture team appeared] confirmed the account of the visit. Addington talked a great deal, and it was obvious to her that he was a ‘very powerful man’ and ‘definitely the guy in charge,’ with a booming voice and confident style.” [emphasis mine]

I’m a lawyer. I’m wondering when Addington will be disbarred. And will he be susceptible to charges of war crimes if he travels to another country that believes in upholding the Geneva Conventions?

(photo of Addington: Associated Press)

Action Alert: Save the Internet!

2008-04-02T17:58:00.000-07:00

Most of the time I concentrate on the message: torture is wrong, telecom immunity is wrong, an attack on Iran is wrong, global warming is wrong, etc.

However, for me the time has come to focus on the medium, i.e., the way I get information on the issues I care about and how I spread the word about these issues. That medium is the Internet.

If, you, too, value access to the Net, please do the following:

1. Go to The Fight for Internet Freedom Comes to Stanford. If you need to know more about Net Neutrality, watch the four-minute video clip. Then follow blogger Chris Borland’s recommendations.

2. If you live in the Bay Area, are you willing to take a day to help save the Net? Join me at Stanford University on April 17th, where the Federal Communications Commission will be holding its West Coast hearing on Net Neutrality. If you’re concerned about your carbon footprint and want to use public transportation, go to Transit 511 Trip Planner to help you figure out what you need to do. For me, it will involve taking the bus from Healdsburg to San Francisco and the train to Palo Alto, an eight hour round trip.

3. Only have time to sign one online petition? Go here and let your Congressional representative know you support H.R. 5353, the “Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008.”

(banner: Fantastic Realties)

What Democrats can do from now until November 4th

2008-04-01T18:11:00.000-07:00

I understand that the contest between Obama and Clinton needs to run its course. That’s out of my hands. However, this morning Glenn Greenwald, who blogs for Salon.com at Unclaimed Territory, confirmed what I think we Democrats should be doing from now until the presidential election on November 4th. As Greenwald put it in this morning’s post, “…[I]f you want John McCain to not win, you have to start hitting him now, because the default position of the press toward John McCain is so positive that unless other candidates are actively and specifically going after him all the time, his free ride takes him right to the White House.”

Heck, if “other candidates” are supposed to go after him, shouldn’t we be doing that, too? Greenwald agrees, because he states that “…[A]nybody who has an interest in John McCain not becoming president, whether or not you support Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or Ralph Nader or anybody else in the race…” should “start hitting him [McCain] now.”

Fortunately, Greenwald has written a new book to help us. Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics. I ordered it this morning. In today’s post, Greenwald states, “An aggressive campaign to demonstrate how absurd and destructive are these right-wing leaders, how deceitful is the media's personality-based glorification of them, is absolutely necessary. The Right's militarism, authoritarianism, and moral preening are reflective of and are grounded in sickly weakness, not upstanding strength, and that case can be easily made if there is an effort to make it.

“That's the objective of this book-- to put these right-wing leaders under that same microscope and to apply the same standards to them -- the ones used successfully by them and their media allies to mock and destroy the personality and character of their opponents in order to win elections. Having the Right subjected to those same standards, and examining the media's central role in this process, is what is virtually never heard in the establishment press. A book about these themes which ends up succeeding and being widely read can force those arguments into the wider public discourse, which is where they need to be in order to be truly effective." [emphasis mine]

I already have 45 articles in my McCain computer folder. After I read Greenwald’s Great American Hypocrites, I’ll be ready to do everything I can to help prevent John McCain from being our next president. .

(book jacket from Amazon.com)

Bicycling and a break from blogging

2008-03-30T10:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I took a wonderful bike ride with my friend and political ally, Janie Sheppard. It felt so good to be out of my self-imposed "prison," the room where I spend so many hours at my computer.

This afternoon I'm heading out to the ranch where my son and his family live and won't be back until late tomorrow. The last time I was there he and I took his infant twins in baby packs and hiked down to the creek that runs through the property. As you can see, it's beautiful in the spring. I hope we go again tomorrow.

I'm not likely to post anything until Tuesday. Blogging breaks are good for the spirit.

(photo of Janie in orange and me in pink)

Torture: Whom do you believe? Murat Kurnaz or Bryan Whitman?

2008-03-30T07:34:00.001-07:00

This evening on CBS's "60 Minutes" Murat Kurnaz, a German resident held by the U.S. for almost five years, will describe the many ways Americans tortured him. When he was first captured, he claims he was hung from the ceiling for five days.

The March 29th Washington Post article, "Ex-Afghanistan Detainee Alleges Torture by U.S." reports that Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said, “The abuses Mr. Kurnaz alleges are not only unsubstantiated, they are implausible and outlandish." [emphasis mine]

If you don’t know much about Bryan Whitman, go to this January 16th, 2008 article "Bogus Iran story was product of Pentagon spokesman.” Excerpt: “…[I]n an apparent slip-up, however, an Associated Press story that morning cited Whitman as the source for the statement that US ships were about to fire when the Iranian boats turned and moved away - a part of the story that other correspondents had attributed to an unnamed Pentagon official."

Since Kurnaz’s alleged torture occurred several years ago, you may conclude that the U.S. has changed its ways. Not according to Scott Horton, who blogs for Harper's Magazine at No Comment posted his remarks delivered on March 28th at the City [New York] University Law Review Symposium “Preventing Torture”here. It’s worth reading. The final paragraph: “The torture policy of the Bush Administration is a policy of, by and for torturers. It marks a radical departure from prior U.S. policies of honorable compliance with the Convention [against Torture]….”

I hope you’ll watch "60 Minutes" this evening and decide for yourself whether or not you think Kurnaz is telling the truth about what happened to him.

(photo of Kurnaz: CBS News)

How to be a quiet crusader for Net Neutrality - meet Ben Scott

2008-03-29T07:38:00.001-07:00

In January, my blogging buddy, Chris Borland, and I decided Net Neutrality is the most important issue and that we would collaborate on keeping it at the top of the heap of all the issues we both care about. It hasn’t been that easy because we both care about many, many issues.

But the time has come to focus on what we can do to keep the Net from a corporate takeover that leaves citizens with a greatly diminished opportunity to be active participants in the political process.

And it’s hard for the government to shut down Net news, unlike the print media. On March 27th, Dan Froomkin, who blogs for The Washington Post, commented on The New York Times’ December 2005 publication of the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program, which the Bush administration tried to stop in after successfully delaying it for a year. In “The White House and the New York Times” section of the post (available by scrolling down here): “…[T]he White House ‘had considered seeking a Pentagon Papers-type injunction to block publication of the story’ led editors to ‘post it on the Internet the night before. . . . The administration might be able to stop the presses with an injunction, but they couldn't stop the Internet.’" [emphasis mine]

I’m motivated to DO SOMETHING to help save the Net.

Thank goodness, the path to effective citizen activism on this issue is already in place, thanks to FreePress.net. Yesterday’s Washington Post article, "Net Neutrality's Quiet Crusader - Free Press's Ben Scott Faces Down Titans, Regulators in Battle Over Internet Control" has provided the inspiration and how-to: “Bearing video cameras, laptops and cellphones, a small army of young activists flooded into a recent federal meeting in protest….The tech-savvy hundreds came to the Federal Communication's hearing at Harvard Law School last month [where Comcast was caught packing the public seating with sleepy seat warmers] to push new rules for the Internet….

“A soft-spoken 30-year-old PhD candidate, Ben Scott has become an operator in multibillion-dollar battles involving corporate titans, regulators and consumers debating policies over who controls the media and the Internet….

“…Scott is no bombast. He doesn't interrupt people. When he speaks -- whether it's about media ownership or low-power radio -- he does so with a studied economy of words, and in a voice that makes people crane to hear him.”

What to do? On April 17th, there will be a FCC Public Hearing on Broadband Network Management at Stanford University, a mere two hours drive from my home. This is the West Coast version of the Harvard hearing, where the FCC will hear from expert panelists regarding broadband network management practices and Internet-related issues.

I’m going, hopefully with my blogging buddy, Chris. I will remain soft-spoken and not interrupt. I’ll work on “studied economy of words.” This should be easy because the public will not be given an opportunity to speak. I’m taking my laptop so I can live blog, my camcorder, and my cellphone so I can call John Nichols (my son and I met him on The Nation cruise in November of 05), co-founder of FreePress.net, in case I need help. Just kidding, John!

(photo of Ben Scott: FreePress.net)

How important are newspapers?

2008-03-27T19:48:00.000-07:00

Last night I read "Out of Print – The death and life of the American newspaper" in the March 31st issue of the New Yorker. It’s by Eric Alterman, who, among other things, is a columnist for The Nation, a fellow of the Nation Institute, and blogs at Altercation.

"Out of Print" is a great read. The bottom line:”Few believe that newspapers in their current printed form will survive. Newspaper companies are losing advertisers, readers, market value, and, in some cases, their sense of mission at a pace that would have been barely imaginable just four years ago.”

Do we need newspapers? Alterman thinks so, and I’m inclined to agree with him. With blogging in mind, each morning I check The New York Times and the The Washington Post. Then I check four well-known blogs, Juan Cole’s Informed Comment, Glenn Greenwald’s Unclaimed Territory. Scott Horton’s No Comment, and Steve Clemons’s The Washington Note. All of these bloggers are frequently “in the field,” and share what they learn first-hand. However, I’ve observed that they also rely on the newspapers to learn what’s going on. Often they don’t agree, but they use newspapers as a springboard for their posts. I, in turn, rely on these and other bloggers to help me understand what’s going on. Then I attempt to distill what I learn into a few paragraphs for my blog.

Virtually all of the actual reporting is done by reporters for newspapers, who have the financial and logistical support to cover the news where it’s happening. What if these reporters stopped reporting because the newspapers folded, as Alterman predicts? How will bloggers find out what’s going on?

As I think about this, I’m wondering if in fact there are plenty of people who are observing what’s going on and are reporting on it, but not in newspapers. For instance, there’s Nir Rosen, who wrote the excellent In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq and many articles, including "The Myth of the Surge." Rosen has spends time with the Sunnis, Shiites and our solders in Iraq.

Pepe Escobar also comes to mind. Described as an “extreme traveler,” he interviewed Masoud, the anti-Taliban leader of the Northern Alliance, shortly before he was assassinated (”Masoud: From warrior to statesman,” (Sept. 11, 2001). After visiting the tribal areas of Pakistan in August of 2001, he warned ”Get Osama! Now! Or else …”

And how are magazines doing? I’m consistently finding excellent articles in the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Harper's Magazine, etc. Are they going under, too?

I don’t have an answer to how important newspapers are to our being an informed citizenry, I’m just thinking out loud.

(photo: 1000 Cranes News)

It looks like the unthinkable has become thinkable: U.S. experts will stage a climate war game this summer

2008-03-26T07:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, United Press International reported "U.S. experts will stage a climate war game." There’s a brief post about this today at Steve Clemons’s blog, The Washington Note, "Climate Wars: What to Do With the New Set of 'Climate Change Have-Nots'?"

The first thing that came to mind was the Pentagon’s February 23, 2004 report, "An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security." At the top of the report is boxed-in text titled Imagining the Unthinkable.

The day after the Pentagon report was issued, Knight-Ridder published "Dramatic Climate Change Could Become Global Security Nightmare": “Imagine eastern European countries, struggling to feed their populations with a falling supply of food, water and energy, eyeing Russia, whose population is already in decline, for access to its grains, minerals and energy supply. Or, picture Japan, suffering from flooding along its coastal cities and contamination of its fresh water supply, eyeing Russia's Sakhalin Island oil and gas reserves as an energy source. ... Envision Pakistan, India, and China - all armed with nuclear weapons -skirmishing at their borders over refugees, access to shared rivers, and arable land.

"Military showdowns could be fast and furious, the report speculates: In 2015, conflict in Europe over supplies of food and water leads to strained relations. In 2022, France and Germany battle over the Rhine River's water. The U.S. Defense Department seals off America's borders to stanch floods of refugees from Mexico and the Caribbean. In 2025, as energy costs increase in nations struggling to cope with warmer and colder weather, the United States and China square off over access to Saudi Arabian oil. “ [emphasis mine]

With “climate war games” scheduled, it looks like the unthinkable has become thinkable. Clemons’s post: "’The security ramifications of climate change will affect both the developed and the developing world," said John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress, a member group of the consortium. 'This unique event will challenge participants to confront both the domestic and international security challenges of climate change.'

”Participants in the game, 40 of them, from the United States, Asia and Europe, will ''provide a wide range of perspectives,' said the statement, adding the scenario would be based on the [November 5, 2007] report, 'The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change.' "

Led by the Center for New American Security, the consortium includes the Center for American Progress, the Heinrich Boll Foundation, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, on and Brookings Global Economy and Development.”

It’s distressing that these exercises are described as “war games.” It’s distressing that the United States, with 5% of the world’s population, has contributed 25% of the greenhouse gases causing global warming. As other countries and people suffer from lack of resources caused by global warming, this country (which will not be as adversely affected as many other countries) appears to be working on plans to make sure that they can’t get what we have rather than working on what we can do to help them. I hope the consortium comes up with a better plan.

(photo from BBC: Somalia is one of the countries worst affected by a drought which has hit the Horn of Africa, leaving some 11.5 million people in need of food aid.

"Lame Duck Still Quacks" by Jon Spitz

2008-03-25T19:36:00.000-07:00

Jon’s back. After taking a few weeks off to work on local issues involving water rights, Jon is again writing columns for the Mendocino County Observer. The Observer is the weekly newspaper in Laytonville, California, a town of 1,301 residents that straddles U.S. 101 one hundred and sixty miles north of San Francisco. Since last October, I’ve featured several of his columns with links below.*

His most recent, "Lame Duck Still Quacks," is well worth reading. In the first paragraph he sets the tone by stating “…[T]here is still a bloody war going on in Iraq and …we still have a sitting president who is literally getting away with murder.”

Jon focuses on the underreported war in Iraq, the negative impact of the “surge,” and the likelihood the war will rage on regardless of who is nominated for president next November.

Not just one war. We may be on the verge of a second war. Excerpt: “With virtually no Congressional resistance to his war in Iraq, Bush felt empowered to spend much of his recent trip to the Middle East trying to drum up support from Islamic countries for his plan to bomb Iran. Unlike the cowering US Congress, however, the leaders of these countries did not bow down to the naked emperor, and Bush came away with no local Middle Eastern support for his lunatic plan. But such rejection means nothing to Bush and the bombing of Iran is still very much on his agenda.”

There are many more insightful comments in the article. In Jon’s concluding paragraph he warns, “…Bush is not gone, and in these perilous months before the November election he is still in a position to do a lot of damage. Public beware – this lame duck is still quacking.”

Related reading: Today’s post by Dan Froomkin, "Bush's Peace of Mind" (scroll down to the second section). It describes Bush’s sangfroid in the face of the disastrous Iraq war: “Yesterday, as the American military death toll in Iraq passed 4,000, Bush's first public appearance was at the annual Easter Egg Roll, where he appeared in high spirits. Today he participated in a photo op with two bass-fishing champions. ‘There's nothing better than fishing,’ he said.”

* Jon’s previous columns:
”ClintObamaInc.”
"Full-spectrum impotence"
"Don't look now, but here come the thought police"
"The Suddenly Impeachable Mr. Cheney"
"Frank Rich....and Jon Spitz...comment on the Mukasey confirmation"
"The collapse has begun"

(photo of Jon provided by him)

Poisonous plants: I know more today than I knew yesterday

2008-03-25T08:23:00.000-07:00

I spent all day yesterday with my grandchildren, Sophia and Rody James. I’ve been setting up their play area under a large privet tree in my front yard. Thanks to my astute son, Rody, who expressed concern when Rody James popped a privet berry in his mouth, I Googled “privet berries” and learned they are poisonous. Then I checked with the California Poison Control System and learned that it would take more than one berry to cause problems.

Their play area is no longer under the privet tree. My search revealed that other common plants, including several in my yard, are also poisonous. The rule: No plant material in the mouth!

Check out History Shots

2008-03-23T20:07:00.001-07:00

This morning when I checked what Juan Cole had to say (I call him “my Middle Eastern expert”), I noticed a pop up ad for HistoryShots.com and saved it.

This evening I ordered "History of the Political Parties II." Click here and you can zoom in on the chart.

This is a growing enterprise, with 16 prints currently available, including Race to the Moon, Genealogy of Pop/Rock Music, and History of Life on Earth.

I think I’ve found the perfect place to find gifts for my family and friends.

(photo of History of Political Parties II chart)

Exposure - Bush's refusal to give up torture

2008-03-22T21:43:00.000-07:00

This evening I read "Exposure - The woman behind the camera at Abu Ghraib" in the March 24th issue of the New Yorker.

The article, by Philip Gourevitch* and Errol Morris,** focuses on Specialist Sabrina Harman, who took hundreds of pictures at Abu Ghraib.

What I focused on was what was being done to the detainees. It appears to me that what was being done at Abu Ghraib in 2003 could still be going on. On March 8th President Bush vetoed the 2008 Intelligence Authorization Act due to a provision that would have applied the Army Field Manual on Interrogations to all government agencies, including the CIA.

The Army Field Manual (AFM), officially known as FM 2-22.3: Human Intelligence Collection Operations (Sept. 2006), specifically bans the following in addition to a blanket prohibition of torture:
Forcing a prisoner to be naked, perform sexual acts or pose in a sexual manner.
Placing hoods or sacks over the head of a prisoner, and using duct tape over the eyes.
Applying beatings, electric shocks, burns or other forms of physical pain.
Waterboarding.
Using military working dogs.
Inducing hypothermia or heat injury.
Conducting mock executions.
Depriving a prisoner of necessary food, water or medical care.

Bush’s veto means that he reserves the right to allow these practices to be used by the CIA and other government agencies we may not even know about. The descriptions of how the detainees at Abu Ghraib were treated in "Exposure" fits neatly into the list of procedures the CIA can continue to use, thanks to Bush's veto. You can bet there won’t be any Sabrina Harmans around to take photos.

On this Easter eve, I noted this comment near the end of the article: “Of course, the dominant symbol of Western civilization is the figure of a nearly naked man, tortured to death—or, more simply, the torture implement itself, the cross. But our pictures of the savage death of Jesus are the product of religious imagination and idealization. In reality, he must have been ghastly to behold. Had there been cameras at Calvary, would twenty centuries of believers have been moved to hang photographs of the scene on their altarpieces and in their homes?”

*Philip Gourevitch is editor of The Paris Review and A Cold Case.
** Errol Morris is the Academy Award winning director of "The Fog of War" and a new film coming out next month, "Standard Operating Procedures."
Gourevitch and Morris co-authored Standard Operating Procedures, which will be published in May.

Here are excerpts from Morris’s 9 hour interview with Harman, a clip from the film, a video of Morris and Gourevitch from the 2007 New Yorker Festival, and photographs of Harman and of the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

(photo of Abu Ghraib detainee from Update Center at Britannica Encyclopedia)

From the kingdom of fear and my fearless attempt to stand up against our country's use of torture

2008-03-21T18:51:00.001-07:00

My friend, Pat Denino, who blogs at Wondering Wanderings, has been creating stick figures with signs for my anti-torture campaign, which I posted about on March 18th.

Pat picked up on what I’m trying to do and on March 19th posted "From the Kingdom of Fear," linking to my post.

Pat is an artist. Her stick figures have a life of their own. She’s created a group of them (click on picture to enlarge):
I’m a word person. I’m working on what it is I’m trying to say to the people in my community about our country’s use of torture. I’m trying to do it nonviolently, meaning without anger.

On March 11th, I first learned about Marshall Rosenberg’s book, Nonviolent Communication - A Language of Life. I’ve decided to try to apply the principles I’ve been reading about to all aspects of my life, including standing up against torture,

On page 6 of the book, Rosenberg describes the nonviolent communication (NVC) process as having four components:
1. observation
2. feeling
3. needs
4. request

Here’s my effort to apply NVC regarding torture:
1. observation: I am observing that our government is condoning the use of torture. David Cole, legal correspondent for The Nation says it so well in his comment in the March 31st issue of the magazine, "The Torture Veto," which Congress failed to override.
2. feeling: This is so wrong! On March 13th I posted "No Torture. No Exceptions," linking to the Washington Monthly special edition featuring 37 articles about why our country shouldn’t be using torture. I rest my case.
3. needs: I need to speak out about this. In a democracy, what our government does in our name creates a responsibility in us to visibly and vocally oppose actions that are contrary to what this country is all about. I am choosing to stand on a street corner with a sign showing that I’m opposed to our country’s use of torture.
4. request: I’m asking that the people in this country, starting with my community, do something to oppose torture. I don’t expect everyone to stand on a street corner, but surely those who oppose our use of torture can contact the media or our Congressional representatives.

(stick figures with a message thanks to Pat Denino)

Iran is back in Bush's gunsight - William R. Polk sees Iran through lenses of danger and opportunity

2008-03-20T18:43:00.000-07:00

As I started to gather up the articles I planned to link to in my post about the likelihood of an attack on Iran before Bush is out of office, I came across a Washington Post March 21st article, "Iran a Nuclear Threat, Bush Insists - Experts Say President is Wrong and Is Escalating Tensions." From the article: “Experts on Iran and nuclear proliferation said the president's statement was wrong. 'That's as uninformed as Senator John McCain’s statement that Iran is training al-Qaeda. Iran has never said it wanted a nuclear weapon for any reason. It's just not true. It's a little troubling that the president and the leading Republican candidate are both so wrong about Iran,' said Joseph Cirincione, president of Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation."

I’ve posted numerous times about the likelihood of an attack on Iran. When the National Intelligence Estimate came out last December stating with high confidence that Iran had stopped its nuclear weaponization process in 2003, I thought, “That’s it. Bush can’t possibly attack Iran now.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Even Juan Cole, who blogs at Informed Comment, appears to be getting concerned. On March 12th, he posted: “Secretary of Defense Robert Gates denied Tuesday that the abrupt resignation of Admiral William Fallon as CENTCOM commander indicates an imminent war against Iran. I think Gates's denial is credible. There is no sign of an American war on Iran, which would involve key positioning of warships, materiel and troops…. My guess is that the real reason for moving Fallon out is not Iran but Iraq, and that he is being made to step down for the same reason that Donald Rumsfeld was. He does not agree with the long-term troop escalation or 'surge' in Iraq….”

Today, Cole handed over his blog to William R. Polk,* whose guest op ed, "Iran: Danger and Opportunity." Polk starts with the March 12th US News & World Report article, 6 Signs the U.S. May Be Headed for War in Iran." He elaborates on the six signs, including Cheney’s most recent visit to the Middle East, and asks if it’s “…deja vu all over again? U.S. News and World Report notes, ‘Back in March 2002, Cheney made a high-profile Mideast trip to Saudi Arabia and other nations that officials said at the time was about diplomacy toward Iraq and not war…’ It was, as we now know, one of the concerted moves in the build-up to the already-decided-upon plan to attack Iraq.”

Is Juan Cole a little more concerned about an attack on Iran than he was a week ago? I don’t know, but I describe him as “my Middle East expert” and continue to rely on his blog to keep me informed. Regardless of Cole’s opinion, Polk’s guest op-ed is well worth reading.

* William R. Polk was the member of the Policy Planning Council responsible for North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia from 1961 to 1965 and then professor of history at the University of Chicago where he founded the Middle Eastern Studies Center. He was also president of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs. His most recent book is Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism & Guerrilla Warfare from the American Revolution to Iraq (New York: HarperCollins, 2007).

(photo of William R. Polk: http://www.williampolk.com/)

"5 Years, 5 Lies"

2008-03-19T08:10:00.000-07:00

This morning, Juan Cole, who blogs at Informed Comment, had the best summary of the five lies of President Bush and his advisors, one for each year of our war in Iraq.

“Year 1: ‘There is no guerrilla war.’

Year 2: ‘Iraq is a model democracy.’

Year 3: ‘Zarqawi is causing all the trouble.’

Year 4: ‘There is no Civil War.’

Year 5: ‘Everything is calm now.’

”I also suggest that John McCain is pushing for:

Year 6: ‘Total victory is around the corner.’"

Cole links to his Salon.com article describing how "How President Bush and his advisors have spent each year of the war peddling mendacious tales about a mission accomplished."

In the run up to the war, I spent an incredible amount of time reading and watching the debates in Congress about whether or not Iraq represented a threat to this country. I concluded it didn’t. I’m just an ordinary citizen. If I could figure this out, I wonder why our elected representatives couldn’t.

Whether or not an individual opposed the war before it began, there is so much accurate information now available, particularly from people like Juan Cole, who comprehends Arabic, Persian and Urdu, that there’s really no excuse for believed Bush’s lies.

This evening I’m joining others* who oppose the war in Iraq on the plaza in my town, Healdsburg, to publicly protest our continuing occupation of that country.

* The Healdsburg Peace Project has been meeting every Thursday to oppose the Iraq war since October of 2002. They even show up on Thanksgiving!

(photo of the core members of the Healdsburg Peace Project)

"Torture R US" - What do you think?

2008-03-18T18:29:00.000-07:00

I’d like your opinion on what I plan to do.

I’ve decided I need to do more than blog* about our country’s use of torture

The plan:
1. To show up an evening or two a week on a busy street corner in my hometown, Healdsburg, waving a “Torture R US” sign.

2. If people express interest, I’ll hand them a one-page summary of why I’m doing this.

3. Encourage others to become visible in their communities on the torture issue, using any message that feels right to them.

Two reasons why I’m doing this:
1. In the introduction to the 37 articles in the Washington Monthly, "No Torture. No Exceptions," this paragraph stood out: “Over the past decade, voters have had many legitimate worries: stagnant wages, corruption in Washington, terrorism, and a botched war in Iraq. But we believe that when Americans look back years from now, what will shame us most is that our country abandoned a bedrock principle of civilized nations: that torture is without exception wrong” [emphasis mine]. I want to be able to say that I did everything I could to stop our country's use of torture.

2. How our country is treating terrorism suspects is affecting how other countries, groups and individuals treat “the enemy.” For example, in the April issue of Harper's Magazine, John Leonard reviews The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari. The review starts with a chilling description from the book of a Janjaweed man who tied a parent to a tree, then forced him/her to watch while he skewered his/her daughter on a bayonet and danced around with her in the air. Leonard describes the book as a “…..geography of an African tragedy….a Darfur the size of Texas, where ….’torture was the popular new thing because Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib were everywhere in the news at that time, and crazy men …were now getting permission to be crazy'’’ [emphasis mine].

I want to take action locally because I can walk to the street corner and won’t be contributing to climate change.

Please e-mail me at gejonas@sonic.net or post a comment to let me know what you think about my plan or to propose a different plan.

* Previous posts here, here, here, and here.

(stick figure with sign: thanks to Pat Denino)

Sunday scooter ride

2008-03-16T17:14:00.001-07:00

Earlier today my neighbor Will and I took a ride around Dry Creek Valley. It was my first long trip (about 12 miles) on my Oxygen Lepton.

I’ve known Will since he was four years old. This was our first mini-road trip together. In his twenties and recently back from his second tour of duty in Iraq, Will rode his new motorcycle, slowing way down so he could stay with me as I got used to my sleek black and gray 230 pound behemoth. We stopped at the halfway mark, the Dry Creek Store, so I could check the LED screen on my scooter. When I got back home, I plugged it in, using mostly geothermal power from the nearby Geysers, the largest geothermal development in the world. Over 50% of the electrical energy for my town, Healdsburg, comes from the Geysers.

I’m leaving this afternoon for my son’s ranch out near the Geysers, to help take care of my 13 month-old twin grandchildren. I won’t be posting until I return home on Tuesday.

(photo of Will and me taken in front of the Dry Creek Store, source of the photo of the store; photo of the Geysers: U.S. Dept. of Energy - Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy)

"How could you have done what you did?"

2008-03-16T07:17:00.000-07:00

Currently the most read link at the New Yorker’s website is "Auschwitz album," a slide show of photos in a recently found album that is the subject of an article in the March 17th issue of the New Yorker, "Picturing Auschwitz" by Alec Wilkinson (abstract of article).

The album is at the Holocaust Memorial Museum and includes 116 photos, mostly portraying off-duty German officers who worked at the Auschwitz concentration camp

What struck me was a paragraph toward the end of the article: “Several people at the museum told me [Alec Wilkinson] that the strangest thing about the album for them is that a person can look again and again at the images and never find an answer to the question 'How could you have done what you did?' One thing is that is particularly troubling is the presence of so many doctors and the pseudoscientific legitimacy that their participation lent to the process. I showed the album to Robert Jay Lifton, the psychiatrist and author of 'The Nazi Doctors' (1986). Alcohol, Lifton told me, is what it made it possible for many of the doctors to persevere when killing was substituted for the imperative to heal, or at least to do no harm...."

Fast forward to our country’s use of torture, which I posted about here. I included a sketch of Diliwar, the 22 year-old Afghan taxi driver who died as a result of five days of torture. Evidence showed that Dilawar had no connection to the rocket attack for which he had been apprehended.

In 2005, Specialist Glendale Wells of the U.S. Army pleaded guilty at a military court to pushing Dilawar against a wall and doing nothing to prevent other soldiers from abusing him. Wells was sentenced to two months in a military prison. Two other soldiers convicted in connection with the case escaped custodial sentences.

I wonder if Specialist Wells, the two other soldiers implicated in Dilawar's death, interrogators and guards of detainees, members of the medical profession who are supervising the interrogations, and the leaders in this country who are continuing to authorize the use of torture are drinking a lot.

(photo: Laughter lines the faces of Auschwitz camp staff as they prepare for a sing-song from the Daily Mail)

Saturday morning hike

2008-03-15T12:15:00.000-07:00

This morning took a strenuous hike at Lake Sonoma with my friend, David Gonzalez. The hills are steep and David carried at least 35 pounds of rocks in his back pack as a “handicap” since I’m thirty years older then he is.

I really enjoy hiking with David. We are so different, not just separated by the gap in our ages but also because I’m unabashedly liberal and David is what I describe as a traditional conservative. I wrote about David for our county bar journal, available here. Our bond, in addition to being family law lawyers and enjoying hiking, is the importance we place on raising children so they know they are valued.

Since I’ve been very preoccupied by our country’s use of torture (see my recent post), I brought it up. I learned that David isn’t where I am on this issue, but we listened to each other. When I mentioned I plan to stand on a street corner waving a sign that says “Torture R Us,” he didn’t ridicule me. It’s helpful to have a conservative with whom I can talk about difficult issues. I’m grateful to have David for a friend.

(photo of David and his dog, Otis, whose political position is unknown)

NO TORTURE. NO EXCEPTIONS.

2008-03-13T17:58:00.001-07:00

The use of torture by our country has bothered me for a long time. On November 20, 2007, I posted, "Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war." My final paragraph: “I wonder if our generation will be described as the ‘torture generation.' We live in a democracy, albeit a weakened one, but it’s not a dictatorship yet. How can we not be blamed if we allow our leaders to continue to torture?"

It's our "leaders" who continue to justify using torture. Its use is authorized by our president, George W. Bush and supported by Vice President Richard Cheney. Last Saturday, Bush vetoed the bill which would have required the CIA to be bound by the same anti-torture prohibitions mandated for the military.

Last Monday, Dan Froomkin, who blogs for The Washington Post, posted "A Legacy of Torture," which included excerpts from the February/March 2008 issue of the Washington Monthly. My hard copy arrived today and I urge everyone to either buy* the magazine or read ”NO MORE. No Torture. No Exceptions.” online. Thirty-seven people** have written articles about why using torture on so-called terrorists in an attempt to extract information must stop.

The drawing on the cover of the Washington Monthly is a sketch of Afghan detainee, Diliwar. He was a 22-year-old Afghan taxi driver and farmer, weighed 122 pounds and was described by his interpreters as neither violent nor aggressive. Dilawar was taken into U.S. custody on December 5, 2002. He was deprived of sleep, chained to the ceiling of his cell, his legs were “pulpified,” and he died five days later.

I feel responsible. I wonder if you do.

*I’ve subscribed to the Washington Monthly because I’m a fan of Kevin Drum, who blogs for the magazine.

**Including Jimmy Carter, Wesley Clark, John Kerry, Carl Levin, Richard Lugar, and Lawrence Wilkerson

What I learned last night

2008-03-12T18:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon I posted "Do you know your and your community's carbon footprint?, then went off to a local meeting on the issue of global warming.

I arrived at the meeting upset:

A. With myself because my carbon footprint is huge, i.e., I’m contributing several tons of carbon to the atmosphere each year;

B. Because the problem of global warming is so dire. This week, The Washington Post reported that "Carbon Output Must Near Zero to Avert Danger, New Studies Say";

C. Because our county sent as its representative to the UN international climate change convention in Bali an elected official, Paul Kelley, who had made these comments within the past few years:

“I am still not convinced that global warming is not a hysterical thing, a fad that will pass.”

“It’s sort of arrogant that people think that man can have such a catastrophic impact on the earth. I’m not so sure.”

And on and on and on. I felt anxious and critical of what I had read about local efforts to reduce our carbon footprint. I planned to question the speaker, Ann Hancock, executive director of the nonprofit Climate Protection Campaign, about why we weren't doing more.

After all, using the chart from her organization’s website, the commitment of our county to reduce its carbon footprint by 25% from the 1990 level by 2015 seemed woefully inadequate. Plus our county's greenhouse gas emissions rose at double the national rate between 1990 and 2000, and the graph (see yesterday's post) shows that it's continuing to rise at virtually the same rate from 2000 to 2010.

By the time I left the meeting last night, I had lost my angry edge. What happened? I relearned something very valuable: The most effective way of getting the message across is to refrain from blaming, ridiculing, or getting angry with those who don't believe that human beings are affecting our climate. It also helps to listen. Of course, these apply to all facets of my life.

I also learned that the best way to describe what is happening is this: “Climate change is caused by a manmade blanket of carbon dioxide that surrounds the earth and traps its heat.”

Ann mentioned Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication - A Language of Life, which helped her become effective in carrying the message that we need to do something to protect our earth from overheating.

Why was I so impressed with Ann’s message? Because the very person who I thought would never change his mind, Paul Kelley, has now “come around.” So has the one hold-out on our city council.

I bought Nonviolent Communication - A Language of Life this afternoon and plan to start reading it tonight.

(book cover: Language of Compassion)

Do you know your and your community's carbon footprint?

2008-03-11T18:45:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I read in The Washington Post "Carbon Output Must Near Zero to Avert Danger, New Studies Say": “The task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions enough to avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures may be far more difficult than previous research suggested, say scientists who have just published studies indicating that it would require the world to cease carbon emissions altogether within a matter of decades.” [emphasis mine]

I decided I’d better check my carbon footprint. According to the calculator at Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” website, mine is 2.55 tons per year, with the average in this country of 7.55 tons. Using the Carbon Footprint calculator, it’s 4.7 tons and looks a lot smaller than the average footprint for a person living in California but a lot larger than the goal for each of us throughout the world.

Then I became interested in what my small town, Healdsburg, is doing about its carbon footprint. There’s a push for a new large upscale development north of town, Saggio Hills, and its carbon footprint has not been calculated yet. Will Healdsburg consider this when it approves or disapproves the project?

What about my county, Sonoma. ? I’ll learn more this evening because Ann Hancock, executive director of the Climate Protection Campaign, will be here in Healdsburg to talk about it. Hancock has been the driving force behind all nine Sonoma County cities adopting the country’s boldest target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: 25% below 1990 levels by 2015.

But is this enough? When I look at the chart below, it doesn’t look like it to me (double-click to enlarge).

One other thing that bothers me about local efforts to reduce our carbon footprint is that Paul Kelley, who is a county supervisor, went to Bali to represent Sonoma County at the U.N. conference on climate change held in December.

How could Kelley, who said the following within the last three years, possibly represent our county at an international climate change conference?

1. “I am still not convinced that global warming is not a hysterical thing, a fad that will pass.”
2. “It's sort of arrogant that people think that man can have such a catastrophic impact on the Earth. I'm not so sure.''

I’ll go to the meeting this evening with an open mind. However, I suspect that I as an individual and my community, i.e., my town and my county, need to do more to reduce its carbon footprint.

(carbon footprint logo: Blogs Today (UK); chart of Sonoma County emission reductions: Climate Protection Campaign)

Being with babies beats blogging

2008-03-10T19:11:00.000-07:00

I spent most of the day with my twin grandchildren, Sophia and Rody, 13 months old. We were outside most of the day, and it took a lot of energy to keep them happy and comfortable.

There are so many things I want to post about, but I will have to wait until I revive.

The good thing is that given the option of taking care of these infants or spending that time blogging, the babies win out every time!

It's going to be a messy election in November

2008-03-08T19:51:00.000-08:00

I’ve been involved in election integrity since 2004. In my opinion, there are more breaks in the voting process now than there were in 2000, when the United Supreme Court stopped the recount in Florida and handed the election to George W. Bush.

I highly recommend that you watch the movie "Uncounted" by David Earnhardt. It’s being shown across the U.S., or you can order a DVD here.

If you need to be convinced that watching “Uncounted” is worth your time, I recommend you read the following:

A. "’Uncounted: The New Math of Elections’ and the Power of One," a great review by Joan Brunwasser, voting integrity author at OpEdNews.

B. David Earnhardt interview by Buzzflash.

I plan to be very involved in the voting process in November. After you watch “Uncounted,” you, too, may want to become involved. I have several suggestions and can be contacted at Gail@GailJonas.com.

(banner from “Uncounted” website)

Today's must read: "The banality of the surveillance state"

2008-03-07T08:34:00.001-08:00

Glenn Greenwald, who blogs for Salon.com has posted "The banality of the surveillance state," “Another federal database is launched to monitor the behavior of Americans, and, as usual, it receives little attention and has almost no oversight.

“Independent of revelations yesterday that the FBI has been abusing its NSL powers for years, it was also reported that the Federal Government is now launching "a domestic intelligence system through computer networks that analyze vast amounts of police information." The system will store broad new categories of data about the behavior of Americans -- from the mildly suspicious to the perfectly innocuous -- and will create "new power to discern links among people, patterns of behavior and other hidden clues."

Yesterday I saw the articles Greenwald is referring to above and sent them off to my son, Jeff Jonas, because he’s created software that mines data. Also, Jeff was quoted in front page articles in The Washington Post about the NSL letters, here, and about the ineffectivness of warrantless eavesdropping in finding terrorists here (“Techniques that ‘look at people's behavior to predict terrorist intent,’ he [Jeff] said, ‘are so far from reaching the level of accuracy that's necessary that I see them as nothing but civil liberty infringement engines.’”

I’m not sure what I expect Jeff to do, but I’m hoping he can tell me that it isn’t as bad as it sounds.

The Greenwald post is worth reading in its entirety.

(Caricature of Glenn Greenwald from his blog)

What's the big deal about telecom immunity?

2008-03-06T07:22:00.000-08:00

“One sunny day in San Francisco two winters ago, a retired telecommunications technician with an understandable distrust of telephones stepped off a BART train after a short but fateful ride. His name was Mark Klein, and his destination was a red brick office building in an untouristed part of the city dominated by low-rise warehouses. There he met with a small group of maverick, tech-savvy lawyers called the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“For Klein, then 60, this trip was a long time coming. As a veteran telecommunications technician and computer network associate at AT&T, he had in recent years obtained several company documents that described in specific, technical terms a secret room he says the National Security Agency (NSA) had set up on the sixth floor of an AT&T building downtown. Klein entered the room itself only once, and that was just for a couple of minutes. (Generally, people needed a security clearance to gain access.) However, just one floor above, he managed the Internet-traffic room to which it was electronically connected. Through that work, the documents he gathered, and conversations he had with other employees, Klein came to understand that his employer was colluding with the federal government to siphon a copy of billions of domestic Internet communications into that secret room, every second of every day. And all without a warrant. ‘Even Nixon didn't go that far,’ Klein thought. As he later told MSNBC, the situation made him think of George Orwell's classic 1984. ‘Here I was, being forced to connect the Big Brother machine.’ However, after complaining to a supervisor, with no result, he did not pursue the matter. He retired in 2004.” [emphasis mine] "Up Against Big Brother - The Electronic Frontier Foundation Takes on Warrantless Surveillance," February, 2007, California Lawyer Magazine.

The House is likely to capitulate and give AT&T and other telecom providers retroactive immunity. Once granted, it’s final. Mark Klein won’t be testifying in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against AT&T. The suit will be dismissed.

Sometimes I feel like giving up. Yet one more time, I will call my Congressional representative, toll free 800-828-0498, 800-614-2803 or 866-340-9281 and urge him vote no to letting the telecoms off the hook for knowingly disregarding the law to wiretap millions of ordinary U.S. citizens. When the leaders of this country advise private individuals and corporations to ignore the law and they cooperate with no consequences, we have a police state.

Recommended reading:

1. If you are concerned about whether or not it’s fair to hold the telecoms responsible for warrantless eavesdropping, I highly recommend Dan Froomkin’s March 3rd post, "Why Immunity Matters."

2. For background on how far this country has moved toward secret surveillance, Glenn Greenwald’s March 2nd post, "The 'liberal' position on the Surveillance State."

3. On the upcoming vote on telecom immunity, Glenn Greenwald’s March 3rd post, "House Democratic leadership: not just complicit but also self-destructive."

(photo The Coming New World Order)

This morning, a double-winged brown bird cheered me up

2008-03-05T07:36:00.000-08:00

I confess, I’m feeling discouraged.
* The Democratic presidential nomination contest is likely to become a nasty fight .
* The House Democrats are expected to roll over and vote for telecom immunity.
* The true cost of the invasion and occupation of Iraq is likely to be at least three trillion dollars.
* It’s going to be a messy election in 2008. The statewide voter registration lists are highly likely to disenfranchise thousands of people.

I could go on, but my focus was changed this morning when my friend, Pat Denino, sent me a photo of a double-winged brown bird.

Pat has blogged for several years at Wondering Wanderings. Pat encouraged me to blog and helps me with technical problems. The bird photo encourages me to turn off my computer and go outside to enjoy the real birds that are chirping up a storm this spring morning.

(photo by Pat’s brother, Bob Fister)

The List: Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies

2008-03-02T07:11:00.000-08:00

Have you ever wondered about the more than four million Iraqis displaced by the war started by the U.S.? Where are they? Which countries are taking them in? What about those who have had to flee Iraq because their lives have been threatened for helping the US as translators, interpreters and drivers?

I’ve been aware of the mass misery of these displaced Iraqis, but now I’m going to learn more about these people as individuals, starting with those who have been put in harm’s way by allying themselves with the U.S. I’ve put The List: Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies icon on my desktop. I’ve also signed up for e-mail updates.

There’s a good description of The List in Juan Cole’s March 1 post, "On Mercy and Redress."

George Packer, who writes and blogs for the New Yorker, has been paying attention to the Iraqis whose lives are at risk because they helped the US. His March 26, 2007 article, "Betrayed - The Iraqis who trusted America the most," and his November 16, 2007 post, "One Refugee's Story," are both worth reading.

(logo of the The List from its website)

"The Myth of the Surge"

2008-03-01T07:00:00.000-08:00

The mainstream media quotes members of Congress and the president describing the surge in Iraq as an unqualified success.

From The Washington Post on February 27th, "Senate Agrees to Debate Bill on Iraq Pullout": “The Senate voted overwhelmingly yesterday to begin debating a bill that would require the administration to start withdrawing forces from Iraq in 120 days and cut funding for battlefield deployments, a surprise move supported by Republicans who want to highlight the security achievements over the past year under President Bush's troop buildup strategy. [emphasis mine]

“Republicans remain almost unanimously opposed to any required withdrawal timeline, but they supported opening the debate because they want to draw attention to the decreased violence and other military progress in Iraq since the United States sent an additional 30,000 U.S. troops there last year. [emphasis mine]

"There's been so much improvement in the situation in Iraq. Since [Democrats] are the ones who want to turn back to the subject, we'd like to spend the time talking about the dramatic improvements in Iraq," Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters moments before a preliminary vote on the withdrawal measure.” [emphasis mine]

Dan Froomkin, who blogs for The Washington Post, reported on Bush’s comments at the February 28th press conference here: “President Bush today defended his unpopular war in Iraq, accusing Democratic leaders of being in denial about progress there…. [emphasis mine]

"It seems that no matter what happens in Iraq, opponents of the war have one answer: retreat," Bush said at a press conference this morning. "When things were going badly in Iraq a year ago, they called for withdrawal. Then we changed our strategy, launched the surge, and turned the situation around. . . . [emphasis mine]

"It's interesting that many of the same people who once accused me of refusing to acknowledge setbacks in Iraq now are the ones who are refusing to acknowledge progress in Iraq."

I wonder why mainstream media journalists, with a few exceptions, don’t report on what Nir Rosen and Chris Hedges have to say about the surge. I’ve read Rosen’s In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs of Iraq and Hedges’s War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.

Both men have risked their lives to report on what is really happening in war zones. Rosen’s Rolling Stone March 6th article "The Myth of the Surge" is a first-hand account of what he learned from meeting with both Sunnis and Shiites last December. It’s a stunning report about how the U.S. arming of Sunni Iraqis is already starting to backfire. It’s long, but you have the whole weekend to read it.

On February 25th, Hedges posted "The Calm Before the Conflagration" at Truthdig. Excerpts: “The supporters of the war, from the Bush White House to Sen. John McCain, tout the surge as the magic solution. But the surge, which primarily deployed 30,000 troops in and around Baghdad, did little to thwart the sectarian violence….

“The Sunni Arab militias, though they have ended attacks on U.S. forces, detest the Shiite-Kurdish government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and abhor the presence of U.S. troops on Iraqi soil. They take the money and the support with clenched teeth because with it they are able to build a renegade Sunni army, a third force inside Iraq, which they believe will make it possible to overthrow the central government…. There are several hundred thousand well-trained Sunni Arabs who lack only an organizational structure. We have now made the formation of this structure possible. These militias are the foundation for a deadlier insurgent force, one that will dwarf anything the United States faced in the past. The U.S. is arming, funding and equipping its own assassins. “

(photo by Danfung Dennis: A father cares for his daughter after she fainted when US soldiers of Eagle Company, 2-2 Stryker Cavalry Regiment entered the house during an operation in the East Rashid neighborhood of Baghdad, Iraq on Dec. 12, 2007: Rolling Stone)

On this day 20 years ago...

2008-02-29T07:00:00.000-08:00

On February 29, 1988, my 23 year-old son, Jeff, broke his neck. He was in the back seat of a BMW wearing a seat belt. The driver, who apparently thought he was Mario Andretti, failed to follow the road around a curve and drove the BMW into an embankment at high speed.

My son recovered consciousness but couldn't breathe because his airway was blocked. He observed that his fingertips were blue. Apparently out of nowhere and quite miraculously, a passerby opened the car door and gently straightened out Jeff’s neck so he could breathe. He held his head in position until the ambulance arrived and Jeff’s neck was stabilized.

When the family gathered at the hospital the next day, we were told that Jeff would most likely be paralyzed, but there was no way to know how extensive or how permanent the paralysis would be. At first, Jeff couldn’t move his limbs and also suffered from sensory loss. There are more details at Jeff’s post, My Broken Neck: A 20 Year Anniversary.

Jeff spent months wearing a “halo” and still has the marks on his temples where it attached to his skull. He slowly regained mobility and the sensory loss lessened.

Ten years later, in May of 1998, Jeff and I ran a marathon together. It was his first competitive race and his training consisted of several eight-mile runs on an indoor gym track. We didn’t break any records.

A few years later, Jeff entered his first full distance triathlon and is now doing them all over the world. He shares his athletic experiences here.

On February 23rd, Jeff participated in the Ironman Malaysia Triathlon. It was tough in the heat and the mosquitoes came out as the sun set. Here he is, halfway through the 26.2 mile run:
With very little training, he managed to finish in approximately 14 hours and considers it a warm up for the Ironman South Africa on April 13th.

There’s a lot more to Jeff than his competitive races. A Google search will satisfy the curious.

I’m just so grateful that Jeff recovered and that he is packing so much into life and getting so much out of it.

(photo of Jeff from his blog; photo from Malaysia triathlon, thanks to Jeff’s girlfriend, Michelle)

In defense of Ralph Nader

2008-02-28T07:00:00.000-08:00

Some Democrats won’t speak to me because I don’t hold Ralph Nader responsible for George W. Bush’s election in 2000.

In January, 2005, my friend, Tod Brilliant, and I arranged a venue in Healdsburg for Ralph to come talk with us and raise funds to pay off the debts related to his run for president in 2004. Everything he had to say made sense.

Ralph Nader has always made sense to me. I realize that many Democrats think he was a “spoiler” in the 2000 election, resulting in GWB’s running our country for eight disastrous years. To them, Nader’s run in 2000, 2004, and 2008 doesn’t make sense.

Here’s what I ask these Democrats:
1. Is there any substantive issue on which you don’t agree with Ralph Nader? The answer is always, “No.”
2. Why do you blame Nader instead of blaming the Democratic Party for moving so far to the right that Nader stands almost alone in support of Democratic principles? Typically I don’t get an answer to this question.
3. Why don’t you blame the Democratic Party for not supporting public funding of campaigns so that those who are running for office can afford to listen to the citizens? Again, I usually don’t get a response.

Yesterday I posted "The Paul Wellstone Way." Wellstone, whom I admire very much, urged us to vote for what we believe in. For those that believe that Ralph Nader best exemplifies the principles Democrats should stand for, he deserves their support.

On February 25th, I posted ”Zinn and Nader .....hold presidential candidates' feet to the fire." Nader came up with 12 questions to ask Clinton and Obama, questions they should be addressing. I even got some flack for this post.

If the issue of whether or not Ralph Nader is a plus or a minus for our country is worth your time, I urge you to read the following and make up your own mind:

1. Transcript of Ralph Nader's February 24th interview on "Meet the Press."

2. Chris Hedges’s February 26th Truthdig article in support of Nader running for president, "Pariah or Prophet?"

3. "Robert Scheer debates Ralph Nader," a transcript of their conversation on The Nation cruise in July of 2007. Friends who were on the cruise told me they thought Nader won the debate. The debate was presented as “Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer goes head to head with progressive icon Ralph Nader, who denies the charge that he has been a spoiler and challenges the value of the Democratic Party.”

Scheer’s final comments: “Ralph Nader has been one of the great citizens in this country’s history. And I don’t think he cost Gore or Kerry the election. I agree with that analysis, I think that they shot themselves in the foot. And I think they should have run a more vigorous, progressive campaign. In Gore’s case, no one has mentioned it, but he distanced himself from Clinton, who was enormously popular, and he failed to carry his own home state. And if you can’t carry your own home state, you haven’t done something right in that connection. So I agree with Ralph that he should not be held responsible for the state of the country, in any negative way. I think he has been an incredibly useful person, I’m not being condescending here—this is heartfelt. I think he’s a great person. And I do think he has the right to run. ...”

I’ve already decided that Ralph is a plus for our country. I haven’t yet decided whom to vote for, but if I take the late Senator Paul Wellstone’s advice, I’ll be voting for Ralph Nader.

Sidebar: If The Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles captures the feelings of a majority of Democrats, Tuesday's cartoon makes me sad.

(photo of Ralph Nader: World Prout Assembly)

The Paul Wellstone Way

2008-02-27T07:00:00.000-08:00

My friend and blogging buddy, Chris Borland, and I have been exchanging e-mails about how to successfully convey the liberal message to the public.

Again and again, I share my experience of going to Camp Wellstone (link to my June 6th, 2007 post). Chris, I, and others don’t have to reinvent the liberal message wheel. It’s already available, thanks to Wellstone Action!.

Wellstone Action! was started by the David and Mark Wellstone, shortly after the tragic death in 2002 of their parents, Paul and Sheila Wellstone, and their sister, Marcia.

Recently I’ve been seeing references to Paul Wellstone’s message, including in Ralph Nader’s "Meet the Press" interview last Sunday and Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne’s February 22nd op-ed, "A Page from Paul Wellstone," which opens with, “If you want to talk about candidates borrowing from each other, consider how much Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are taking on loan from the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, the affable populist killed in a plane crash shortly before the 2002 election.”

If you’re willing to take six minutes to self-administer a dose of hope, watch this video:

If you want to know more about all this exciting stuff, check out Wellstone Action! The Executive Director is Jeff Blodgett, who was Wellstone’s campaign manager from 1989 to 2002. His recent article, "Populism, Organization and Conviction: How Paul Wellstone Won Elections" is well worth reading. Then wander on over to the Advisory Committee. You’ll be amazed at who’s on this committee. The Organizing Corner offers tools and resources for building a volunteer infrastructure based on the radical notion that, as Paul Wellstone said, "people get organized because they, too, have a vision."

I also highly recommend reading Paul Wellstone’s The Conscience of a Liberal - Reclaiming the Compassionate Agenda (2001). The first chapter, “This Time, Vote for What You Believe In,” is timely.

(the bus Paul Wellstone used in his campaigns: Wikimedia.org)

Gail goes electric

2008-02-26T07:00:00.000-08:00

I have a new electric motor scooter. It’s an Oxygen Lepton, made in Italy. Its top speed is 28 mph and has a range of up to 31 miles on a 5-hour charge.

My younger son Rody found it for me at Thunderstruck Motors in Santa Rosa, California. It has replaced my 1976 Yamaha Chappies. I’ve owned three all these years so I would never run out of parts, but they have two-stroke engines and are notorious polluters.

The good news is that I only need a one-time license and won’t need to renew my motorcycle driver’s license when I turn 70 in a couple of years. It's quiet and I'm glad not to be riding something that emits puffs of blue smoke.

Possible bad news: It weighs 230 pounds, more than twice as much as I weigh. I’m going to need to make sure that I don’t lose muscle strength so I can maneuver it when the engine is off.

Today's must read: Scott Horton's inside report on CBS's coverage of the conviction of Don Siegelman

2008-02-25T07:18:00.000-08:00

CBS: More Prosecutorial Misconduct in Siegelman Case Alleged

Excerpt: "The CBS piece, for which I was repeatedly interviewed, came through on its promise to deliver several additional bombshells. The most significant of these was the disclosure that prosecutors pushed the case forward and secured a conviction relying on evidence that they knew or should have know was false, and that they failed to turnover potentially exculpatory evidence to defense counsel. The accusation was dramatically reinforced by the Justice Department’s failure to offer a denial. It delivered a fairly elaborate version of a “no comment,” and even that came a full twenty-four hours after it had conferred with the prosecutors in question. The gravity of the accusations made and the prosecutors’ failure to deny them further escalates concerns about the treatment of the former Alabama governor."

Howard Zinn and Ralph Nader team up to create an action plan to hold the Democratic presidential candidates’ feet to the fire

2008-02-25T07:00:00.000-08:00

Full disclosure: Zinn and Nader are only teamed up in this post because I think joining together their ideas on how to get the frontrunning Democratic presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, to address crucial issues makes sense.

On February 23rd, Howard Zinn’s article, "Election Madness" was posted at Information Clearing House. Zinn describes “election madness” that seizes the country every four years: “I'm talking about a sense of proportion that gets lost in the election madness. Would I support one candidate against another? Yes, for two minutes-the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting booth. ”But before and after those two minutes, our time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice….

“Today, we can be sure that the Democratic Party, unless it faces a popular upsurge, will not move off center. The two leading Presidential candidates have made it clear that if elected, they will not bring an immediate end to the Iraq War, or institute a system of free health care for all….

”They do not propose what the present desperation of people cries out for: a government guarantee of jobs to everyone who needs one, a minimum income for every household, housing relief to everyone who faces eviction or foreclosure.

”They do not suggest the deep cuts in the military budget or the radical changes in the tax system that would free billions, even trillions, for social programs to transform the way we live….

“We should not expect that a victory at the ballot box in November will even begin to budge the nation from its twin fundamental illnesses: capitalist greed and militarism.” [emphasis mine]

Enter Ralph Nader: His advice: Email or write Obama and Clinton and challenge them to address what Nader describes as "Candidate Taboos," which he lists in an article published in Counterpunch on January 15th. He describes 12 taboos including the following:

* You won't hear a call for a national crackdown on the corporate crime, fraud, and abuse that have robbed trillions of dollars from workers, investors, pension holders, taxpayers and consumers. Among the reforms that won't be suggested are providing resources to prosecute executive crooks and laws to democratize corporate governance so shareholders have real power. Candidates will not shout for a payback of ill-gotten gains, to rein in executive pay, or to demand corporate sunshine laws.

* You won't hear a call for our income tax system to be substantially revamped so that workers can keep more of their wages while we tax the things we like least, such as pollution, stock speculation, addictive industries, and energy guzzling technologies. Nor will you hear that corporations should be required to pay their fair share; corporate tax contributions as a percent of the overall federal revenue stream have been declining for 50 years.

* You won't hear a call for a single payer health system. Almost sixty years after President Truman first proposed it, we still need health insurance for everyone, a program with quality and cost controls and an emphasis on prevention. Full Medicare for everyone will save thousands of lives a year while maintaining patient choice of doctors and hospitals within a competitive private health care delivery system.

* You won't hear a consistent clarion call for electoral reform. Both parties have shamelessly engaged in gerrymandering, a process that guarantees reelection of their candidates at the expense of frustrated voters. Nor will there be serious proposals that millions of law-abiding ex-felons be allowed to vote.

Other electoral reforms should include reducing barriers to candidates, same day registration, a voter verified paper record for electronic voting, run-off voting to insure winners receive a majority vote, binding none-of-the-above choices and most important, full public financing to guarantee clean elections.

Nader concludes, “ Voters should visit the webpages of the major party candidates. See what they say, and see what they do not say. Then email or send a letter to any or all the candidates and ask them why they are avoiding these issues. Breaking the taboos won't start with the candidates. Maybe it can start with the voters.”

Regardless of who wins in November, let’s take Howard Zinn’s advice and devote our time and energy in “…[E]ducating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice.”

(Photos of Howard Zinn and Ralph Nader: World Prout Assembly)

Update on "60 Minutes" segment on the conviction of former governor of Alabama Don Siegelman

2008-02-24T19:28:00.001-08:00

You can watch it here.

Action Alert: Watch CBS's "60 Minutes" this evening

2008-02-24T09:06:00.000-08:00

This evening at 7 pm (PST/EST) I will be watching the “60 Minutes” segment on "GOP Operative: Rove Sought to Smear Dem."

I’ve been following the tragic story of the imprisonment of former governor of Alabama, Don Siegelman, since June of last year, posting about it on June 30th, “Where is the outrage?”, July 1st , "Read Rove's lips," and July 15th, "Keep your eyes on the Siegelman case."

Scott Horton, who blogs for Harper's at No Comment, has done the best job of keeping up with the Siegelman case, with his 2007 posts available here. He also covers the conviction and incarceration of Siegelman in "Vote Machine" in the March, 2008 issue of Harper’s.

If you think Rove is out of the picture now that he’s no longer Bush’s advisor, think again. On April 10, 2007, TPMuckraker post included Rove’s responses to questions after his speech on "voter fraud" to the Republican National Lawyers Association convention in April of 2006:

QUESTION: In 2008, what states do you think are going to be the swing states?

ROVE: You know, I think in 2008, there will be a number of states which will be competitive that are familiar states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, maybe not Florida, Colorado, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nevada, Iowa, New Mexico….

“So a lot in American politics is up for grabs…. [This is an understatement: think of the consequences to the Bush Administration if the executive branch and Congress are in Democratic hands and we citizens put pressure on both of them to hold Bush's cabal accountable.]

“I intend to observe it with a great deal of interest….”

I suspect Rove is going to do a lot more than observe the 2008 presidential election.

(photo of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman: That's Politics)

"A perverse belief in Harry Potter has gripped Kinshasa"

2008-02-23T08:12:00.000-08:00

Last Wednesday, I posted "Recommended reading: Planet of Slums." The following description of what’s happening in Kinshasa, the capital and largest city in the Democratic Republic of Congo, caught me by surprise:

Kinshasa, a city of 6 million, is described by its own inhabitants as a “cadaver, a wreck.” Less than 5% of Kinoans earn a regular salary. According to Mike Davis, the author of Planet of Slums, “Kinshasa, like the rest of Congo-Zaire, has been wrecked by a perfect storm of kleptocracy, Cold War geopolitics, structural adjustments, and chronic civil war.”

“The Little Witches of Kinshasa” are described on pages 191-198 in Chapter 8, “A Surplus Humanity?” As a result of the collapse of Kinoan society, “The bitter frustration of the people led to an imaginary yet vicious mentality of sorcery….” As a result, literal, perverse belief in Harry Potter has gripped Kinshasa, leading to the mass-hysterical denunciation of thousands of child “witches” and their mass expulsion to the streets, even their murder.”

The same fictional character who enchants our safe, well-fed children (and adults) stands for something else in a country where the basic care and protection of children has broken down.

(photo of Kinshasa: 3 Quarks Daily)

How long will we let the Republicans hold the fear card?

2008-02-22T08:16:00.001-08:00

This morning, Glenn Greenwald, who blogs for Salon.com, posted "GOP politics in a nutshell": “A new House Republican ad warns that we'll all be slaughtered, and soon, by bad dark people, unless we give the government all the new unchecked powers it's demanding.”
The ad:

On Feb. 7th , I included this FAQ in my post:

Question: Isn’t our safety from terrorist attacks threatened if the “Protect America Act” isn’t extended?

Answer: No. The FISA bill that the Protect America Act would replace is still in place. It allows for emergency (warrantless) electronic surveillance when the Attorney General determines that it’s necessary. Then, within 72 hours of the AG’s authorization, he/she must obtain a judicial order issued by the FISA court. That’s our protection, folks.

On February 14th, Greenwald posted "FISA 101."

Excerpt:
“Every President until George Bush was able to defend the nation by engaging in surveillance under FISA. That even includes the Great and Powerful Warrior Ronald Reagan, who vanquished the incomparably nefarious Soviet Union while adhering to FISA. It was only George Bush who claimed that we would All Die unless FISA was modernized, and it was modernized -- repeatedly, to his satisfaction and at his direction.

“FISA and the Protect America Act both equally allow eavesdropping on the Terrorists Who Want to Kill Us. The material difference is that FISA requires warrants for eavesdropping on Americans (after the fact, if necessary) while the Protect America Act allows the President to eavesdrop on any Americans without having any oversight at all. The difference does not relate to the ability to eavesdrop on the Terrorists but on the nature and level of oversight from that eavsdropping. Moreover, the FISA Court is and always has been a rubber-stamping tribunal that does not ever block any surveillance on any suspected Terrorists.

“Thus, we're not all going to die under FISA. We're not ‘going dark.’ FISA is a modern law that was re-written at George Bush's direction and which he himself said allowed for full surveillance on all of the evil Terrorists and all of their complex, super-modern means of communications. None of this has anything to do with the Government's ability to listen in When Osama Calls. It is only about whether the nation's largest telecoms will have pending lawsuits, brought by their customers for breaking the law, dismissed by Congress. Is that really so hard to understand and explain?”

Update to Threat to the Net

2008-02-21T08:23:00.000-08:00

Thanks to my friend Troy Seman for sending this to me, you can still access Wikileaks here (as of 8:30 this morning PST): http://88.80.13.160:80/wiki/Wikileaks.

Threats to the Net

2008-02-21T07:25:00.000-08:00

Within the past couple of days, two news items portend an ominous trend toward restricting our access to information on the Internet.

The first is a federal judge's order shutting down Wikileaks, a whistleblower website that enables the anonymous leaking of confidential government and corporate documents. FreePress.net, the best source of information about threats to the Net, has posted articles here and here.

Even The New York Times editors weighed in on the closing of Wikileaks this morning in "Stifling Online Speech": “A federal judge last week ordered the disabling of Wikileaks.org, a muckraking Web site. That stifles important speech and violates the First Amendment. It should be reversed, and Wikileaks should be allowed to resume operations….”

“Julius Baer Bank and Trust, a Cayman Islands branch of a Swiss bank, sued Wikileaks charging that it had illegally posted documents stolen by a former employee. The site said the documents ‘allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust structures’ for money laundering, tax evasion and other misdeeds.

“Federal District Court Judge Jeffrey White ordered Wikileaks’s domain name registrar to disable its Web address. That was akin to shutting down a newspaper because of objections to one article. The First Amendment requires the government to act only in the most dire circumstances when it regulates free expression.” [emphasis mine]

The second article in today’s Washington Post, "Army Blocks Public's Access to Documents in Web-Based Library" is equally alarming. “ The Army has shut down public access to the largest online collection of its doctrinal publications, a move criticized by open-government advocates as unnecessary secrecy by a runaway bureaucracy.

“Army officials moved the Reimer Digital Library behind a password-protected firewall on Feb. 6, restricting access to an electronic trove that is popular with researchers for its wealth of field and technical manuals and documents on military operations, education, training and technology. All are unclassified, and most already are approved for public release…

"'All of this stuff had been specifically approved for public release,' Aftergood [a member of the public who used the digital library] said. 'I think it's a case of bureaucracy run amok. And it's a familiar impulse to secrecy that needs to be challenged at every turn....'

"Army officials said yesterday that they were compelled to limit access to the Reimer library site to comply with Department of Defense policies that call for tightening the security of military Web sites and to keep better track internally of who is accessing them and why….

"'They can configure Army Web sites however they like,' Aftergood said. 'What they cannot do is to withhold information from the public that is subject to release under the FOIA. . . . What we really want to do is to persuade them to adopt a reasonable policy of openness…..'"

(Wikileak hourglass: Ivo)

Bubbles and Obama

2008-02-19T07:00:00.000-08:00

Several weeks ago, I read "The Next Bubble" by Eric Janszen in the February, 2008 issue of Harper's Magazine.

The next bubble got most of my attention. Janszen predicts that “There is one industry that fits the bill: alternative energy, the development of more energy-efficient products, along with viable alternatives to oil, including wind, solar, and geothermal power, along with the use of nuclear energy to produce sustainable oil substitutes, such as liquefied hydrogen from water.”

I didn’t pay much attention to this statement: “Supporting this alternative-energy bubble will be a boom in infrastructure—transportation and communications systems, water, and power…. After last August’s bridge collapse in Minnesota, it took only a week for libertarian Robert Poole, director of transportation studies for the Reason Foundation to renew the call for “highway public-private partnerships funded by tolls….” [emphasis mine]

Toll roads? Privatized highways only for those who can afford them? I’ve saved several articles about toll roads, including The New York Times January 19th article, "Work is Afoot to Take the Free Out of Freeway." And I joined forces with others here in California to fight the successful battle to stop a six lane toll road through San Onofre State Beach.

Now I’m learning that there’s more than public highways, open to everyone, at stake. It appears that presidential candidate Barack Obama is calling for a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank. The weekend edition of Information Clearinghouse posted "Barack Obama Fronts Wall Street's Infrastructure" by Bruce Marshall. I don’t know enough about the author to simply swallow everything in the article, but I’m now paying attention to public-private partnerships, “PPPs.”

I found another online article, "Barack Obama and the Gentrification of America - The Manchurian Messiah?" by Xenophon. Excerpt: “Soon, when the Messiah Obama is president, the NIC [National Investment Corporation], under the guise of the National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank (NIRB), will begin the process of national gentrification by collateralizing our roads, schools, public utilities and housing turning America into a feudal zone of private toll roads, school buildings, water and gas lines. We will have to pay tolls and taxes on everything. Welcome to gentrified America.”

Marshall and Xenophon are searingly critical of privatizing our infrastructure and Obama for supporting it. Will a NIRB create yet another bubble that will inevitably burst? I don’t know. I’m opposed to privatizing infrastructure but support Obama. However, I know that it’s important to be open to new information.

(caracature of Obama : Publius Pundit)

Observations on the state of the nation, starting at home

2008-02-18T08:30:00.001-08:00

I’ve been spending a lot of time with my twin grandchildren, now a year old, celebrating their first birthday here:

My son and his wife have protected their infants from viewing either television or computer screens based on the belief that it is not good for them. We grandparents have honored the prohibition.

Yesterday, The Washington Post published an article by Susan Jacoby, "The Dumbing of America." Jacoby states that “Americans are in serious intellectual trouble -- in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.”

The main problem? Video. Jacoby: “First and foremost among the vectors of the new anti-intellectualism is video. The decline of book, newspaper and magazine reading is by now an old story. The drop-off is most pronounced among the young, but it continues to accelerate and afflict Americans of all ages and education levels.”

Regarding infants’ exposure to videos, Jacoby says, “Despite an aggressive marketing campaign aimed at encouraging babies as young as 6 months to watch videos, there is no evidence that focusing on a screen is anything but bad for infants and toddlers. In a study released last August, University of Washington researchers found that babies between 8 and 16 months recognized an average of six to eight fewer words for every hour spent watching videos.”

In a recent conversation with my friend Tod Brilliant, he lamented that the early promise of the Internet was that it would restore the lost art of reading. That’s when the Net was full of text and no videos. Alas, now Tod sees the Internet as just one more way to expose everyone to videos.

Chris Borland, who blogs at The Democratic Activist, and I have been pondering how to be effective in getting the message out that liberals are community-interested in contrast to conservatives, who are self-interested. We’ve been focusing more on the medium, Save the Internet, than on the message. Both matter.

I don’t have any answers at this point, I’m just thinking out loud.

(banner: Save the Internet)

Fashion and FISA

2008-02-16T12:19:00.000-08:00

Call this a strange juxtaposition, but both fashion and FISA are on my mind right now.

Fashion: I recently subscribed to Vanity Fair for its great articles. I’ve become fascinated by the ads, which take up three-quarters of the magazine. Last night I came across this one in the March issue. It’s a Balenciaga, a fashion house started by Christobal Balenciaga in 1914. I’m definitely not up on fashion if this outfit is the latest thing.

FISA: Maybe the reason I’m so hopelessly out of fashion is that I care way more about what’s happening to this country. For those of you (whether you dress in the latest fashions or not) who want to know more about the consequences of the Protect America Act lapsing today and Bush’s dire warnings that this could result in a terrorist attack worse than 9/11, read Glenn Greenwald’s February 14th post, "FISA 101" (click "Enter Salon" at the top right of the ad after a few seconds).

(photo: Vanity Fair)

What has happened to our country in the last thirty-five years?

2008-02-15T19:11:00.000-08:00

Almost thirty-five years ago, there was a bipartisan effort to hold Nixon accountable. Fast forward to today, and there is a bipartisan effort to refuse to hold President Bush and Vice-President Cheney accountable for acts far more egregious than Nixon’s.

Compare the description below regarding how Congress acted in 1973-1974 regarding impeaching Nixon to its non-action in failing to even consider impeaching Bush and Cheney.

My source is Chapter 1 in Impeach the President - The Case Against Bush and Cheney, (2006), written by Judith Volkart, a Constitutional law attorney.

“…[I]n October, 1973, the Senate took the first step leading to Nixon’s impeachment with a unanimous and bipartisan vote of those present (77-0) to create a select committee with subpoena power to investigate the allegations of illegal campaign activities.” (p. 18). [emphasis mine]

“In early February, 1974 the House voted 410-4 to empower its Judiciary Committee to begin an impeachment investigation of Nixon….” (p. 19) [emphasis mine]

(photo and caption: One pissed off liberal)

It's kayak rolling tonight

2008-02-14T18:11:00.001-08:00

For the past seven years, I’ve helped people learn to roll their kayaks. It’s a wonderful experience. So, this evening I’ll be in the pool rather than posting something political.

Here’s a quick lesson on how to roll a kayak:

What's going on in the world where we aren't looking?

2008-02-13T17:19:00.000-08:00

We focus on the military disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq and worry about whether or not the Bush Administration will attack Iran.

According to John Feffer, we’re missing Asia's Hidden Arms Race, posted yesterday at TomDispatch.com.

In 2003, I read John Feffer’s North Korea South Korea - U.S. Policy in a Time of Crisis and posted about it here. Feffer is an expert on military policy and Asia and co-director of the Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Asia's Hidden Arms Race focuses on the nations who have been participating in the Six Party talks about North Korea’s nuclear program: the U.S., Japan, China, Russia, and the two Koreas.

According to Feffer, “…[I]n the shadows an already massive regional arms race is threatening to shift into overdrive. Since the dawn of the twenty-first century, five of the six countries involved in the Six Party Talks have increased their military spending by 50% or more. The sixth, Japan, has maintained a steady, if sizeable military budget while nonetheless aspiring to keep pace. Every country in the region is now eagerly investing staggering amounts of money in new weapons systems and new offensive capabilities.”

The whole article is worth reading. There’s also a chart showing the increase in military expenditures in the six countries. Russia leads the pack with a 300% increase from 2000 to 2006.

Which country is the chief driver of the global arms spending? According to Feffer, the United States. And he expects it to continue to be even if a Democrat is elected November because “The Democratic frontrunners for the presidential nomination have also called for troop increases and have said nothing about slowing, freezing, or even cutting the military budget.”

(photo of a Russian military corps marching on Victory Day, May 9th, 2006: Nar9000.com)

The Democratic Activist Takes Over

2008-02-12T18:06:00.000-08:00

I’m out of steam. I hope you’ll go to my friend Chris Borland’s blog, The Democratic Activist and check "This could be it ! Conyers can be moved...."

Impeachment isn’t really off the table if we citizens stand up and demand it. Chris gives us some background and easy directions on how to take action.

If you still aren’t convinced that impeachment is imperative, I urge you to read Scott Horton’s February 3rd post, "The Case for Impeachment."

(banner: True American Patriots)

Some bad news, some possible good news that depends on you

2008-02-12T07:14:00.000-08:00

First the bad news. The Senate is expected to vote for telecom amnesty and warrantless eavesdropping today. Glenn Greenwald, who blogs at Salon.com comments on this ignominious erosion of democracy, "Amnesty for Bush and lawbreaking telecoms." Read it and grieve for our country.

Now the good news. According to Democrats.com, House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers appears to be open to calling for the impeachment of Cheney. What will it take? Last Thursday, Conyers met with two members of Code Pink. At that meeting, Conyers expressed his concerns about what might happen following an impeachment, the danger of installing a Bush replacement or losing an election. But he said he's listening to several advocates for impeachment, including former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman and David Swanson of Democrats.com. He hinted he could be swayed by a convincing argument, leaning out of his chair for dramatic effect.

So it’s up to us. Democrats.com provides a plan of action: So let's help Chairman John Conyers decide! We know Conyers agrees with all of us on the legal grounds for impeachment because he made this case himself in his 2006 book, "The Constitution in Crisis." Where Conyers needs persuasion is on the politics of impeachment, so we have addressed his concerns here.

We'd like you to email Conyers (and other Judiciary Committee Democrats) with the link above, but please don't stop there. Contact information is available here (scroll down).

1. Call his office at 202-225-5126, or use the toll free capital switchboard, 800-828-0498, and say you would like him to begin Cheney impeachment hearings immediately. Tell him the hearings must be on impeachment because that's the only way to force the White House to comply with Congressional subpoenas. The phone in his office was reportedly ringing once every second, 60 times per minute, all day long on Monday. Let's ring it faster on Tuesday.

2. Print our petition and fax it to Conyers at 202-225-0072 with your name and address at the end. Or you can send two free faxes per day by going to FaxZero.

3. Urge your Representative and Senators to sign onto Congressman Robert Wexler's letter to Conyers (which he plans to deliver on Friday) here.

We know we're asking a lot, but we're not alone - our friends from Code Pink are fasting for impeachment and meeting with Conyers on Tuesday to discuss opening Cheney impeachment hearings.

Want to do more? Start planning now to visit your congress member's office when they're back in their district between February 16th and 24th. Find ideas here.

Join (or create) your Congressional District Impeachment Committee here.

(exclamation points: Behance)

Why stopping the six lane toll road through San Onofre State Beach means a lot to me

2008-02-10T18:37:00.000-08:00

On February 8th, The New York Times reported, "Park Toll Road Plan Rejected in California." “After a marathon public hearing in which hundreds of people spoke, the California Coastal Commission voted late Wednesday to deny approval for a toll road through a popular beach state park.

"The 8-to-2 vote against the road, which would bisect California’s fifth-most-visited state park, San Onofre State Beach in north San Diego County, was seen as a significant victory for the region’s environmental movement and a major setback to a 20-year-effort to ease traffic congestion in the increasing sprawl of southern Orange County."

I celebrate this victory because I got involved in the effort to stop the toll road, admittedly too little, too late, but I like to think that my effort, though small, contributed to the preservation of San Onofre State Beach.

On January 24th, I went to a meeting to learn more about the threat to San Onofre State Beach and posted about it here. Then on February 4th, I posted an action alert, "Help Save California's State Parks," sent a link to quite a few people and wrote a letter to the Coastal Commission. Thanks to the many people who e-mailed me that they had sent a letter to the Coastal Commission.

The bigger message for me is that citizens can come together and make a difference. Some of us some of the time feel hopeless about affecting the 2008 election, stopping US imperial overstretch with wars of choice, etc. This victory, saving one state park in California, gives me hope.

You can watch the Coastal Commission hearing about the fate of San Onofre State Park here (go to agenda item 8 b. and click on the icon to the right of the b.)

(San Onofre State Beach: Visit USA)

Have you heard of Infragard?

2008-02-09T17:49:00.000-08:00

This past Friday I heard the following news item on Democracy Now!:

“The Progressive is reporting that more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The business leaders form a group known as Infragard that receives warnings of terrorist threats directly from the FBI before the public does. According to one whistleblower the FBI has given members of InfraGard permission to shoot to kill in the event of martial law.’

The article by Matthew Rothschild is the cover story for the March issue of The Progressive, "Exclusive! The FBI Deputizes Business."

Rothschild is editor of The Progressive and author of You Have No Rights: Stories of American in an Age of Repression.

Read the article. Then ask yourself if you think it’s a good idea for the FBI to be working with Infragard. According to Rothschild, the ACLU is alarmed.

(Infragard logo: Bad American)

Who is Steven Bradbury?

2008-02-08T07:40:00.000-08:00

Steven Bradbury's name is popping up in all sorts of blogs these days. Who is he? According to the White House website, Steven G. Bradbury is the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel U.S. Department of Justice.

Yesterday, Dan Froomkin, who blogs for The Washington Post, linked to several recent articles about Bradbury in "Nominee Watch":

Holly Rosenkrantz writes for Bloomberg: "President George W. Bush said the Senate must vote on his backlog of more than 200 nominees promptly and stop treating them like 'political pawns.'

"'The confirmation process has turned into a never-ending political game where everyone loses,' Bush said in a statement at the White House in Washington. 'It is clear that the process is not working.'"

Paul Kiel writes for TPM Muckraker that at the heart of this controversy lies Steven Bradbury, who has been the acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel for more than three years.
"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and [Dick] Durbin, the Senate whip, revealed that, in negotiations with the White House late last year before the Christmas holiday, the President refused to strike a deal on nominees unless Reid allowed him to recess appoint Bradbury. Reid said he'd offered to confirm 84 of the pending nominees, but the White House said no dice. . . .

Jim Oliphant blogs for Tribune Newspapers: "Who is Steven Bradbury? "Bradbury is the acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department. The critically important office provides legal advice to the White House and it was this office that, at various times during the Bush administration, green-lighted controversial anti-terror policies involving extreme interrogation methods and the warrantless wiretapping program.

"Bradbury was nominated in 2005. He's been doing the job in an acting basis ever since because the Democratic-led Senate has made it crystal-clear they won't vote to approve him. Durbin said that Bradbury signed off on legal opinions approving abusive interrogation practices such as waterboarding and complained that the Justice Department won't hand over those memos.
"The Senate was so fearful that Bush would use a recess appointment to make Bradbury's position permanent that it stayed in session over the Christmas break, having Sen. Jim Webb come in daily to bang the gavel. . . .

"'When the president is willing to vote so many of his own people -- including four Assistant Secretaries of Defense and the Fed -- off the island for one nominee, you know that person must be special. And special he is,' Reid said. 'Mr. Bradbury is the lawyer who loves to give the president the answer he wants regardless of the law, regardless of its impact on our nation and regardless of what it does to our standing in the world.'"

In a letter to Mukasey this week, Durbin described his concerns about Bradbury -- and about whether his continued service as the head of the Office of Legal Counsel violates the law.

(photo of Bradbury: White House website)

Action Alert: Call your Congressional representatives TODAY to stop passage of the warrantless eavesdropping law

2008-02-07T08:00:00.000-08:00

This morning I received the People's E-mail Network urgent message to contact my representatives TODAY to stop passage of the “Protect America Act.”

From PEN: Please AGAIN call all your members of Congress, toll free at 800-828-0498, 800-614-2803 or 866-340-9281, and submit the No Immunity of Any Kind Action Page to back that up with an email message. 1) Tell them NO immunity and YES to making FISA the exclusive means or surveillance.

Here are my FAQs:

Question: Why shouldn’t the telephone companies be granted immunity if they acted in “good faith” by turning over all our phone and e-mail records to the government when asked?

Answer: “Good faith” is not a sufficient defense to violating laws. None of us could get away with it.

On January 17th, Glenn Greenwald posted ""Lawbreaking telecoms still conniving to obtain immunity from Congress." Excerpts: “Manifestly, retroactive immunity is something available only to the largest, lobbyist-using corporations, and is not something that ordinary Americans would ever even get a hearing on. ....

“...[I]mmunity would be a complete evisceration of the rule of law, bizarrely protecting telecoms from the consequences of their lawbreaking and putting an end to any real hope for investigating and obtaining accountability for years of illegal spying on Americans by the Bush administration. When you put all of that together, telecom immunity embodies every form of lawlessness and corruption which are destroying our political culture….

“In fact, the ability of the rich and well-connected to obtain immunity from lawbreaking is one of the hallmarks of corrupt oligarchy, one of the surest signs of the breakdown of basic justice.”

Question: Isn’t our safety from terrorist attacks threatened if the “Protect America Act” isn’t extended?

Answer: No. The FISA bill that the Protect America Act would replace is still in place. It allows for emergency (warrantless) electronic surveillance when the Attorney General determines that it’s necessary. Then, within 72 hours of the AG’s authorization, he/she must obtain a judicial order issued by the FISA court. That’s our protection, folks.

(Cartoon: Image Shack)

Letter from Jack Balkin to Senator McCain regarding waterboarding as torture

2008-02-07T06:44:00.000-08:00

Jack Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment and director of The Information Society Project at Yale Law School, sends Senator John McCain the following letter:

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

What Do You Say Now, John McCain?

Dear Senator McCain:

The White House has now admitted that the United States has waterboarded, that President Bush believes the practice is not torture, and that it violates neither the anti-torture statute, the McCain Amendment (which you sponsored) nor the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (which you voted for).Will you condemn the White House for its latest admission? Will you say to the President what you said to Rudy Giuliani back in October?

"All I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today," Mr. McCain, who spent more than five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, said in a telephone interview. Of presidential candidates like Mr. Giuliani, who say that they are unsure whether waterboarding is torture, Mr. McCain said: "They should know what it is. It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture."

And if that is so, Senator McCain, do you agree that the Administration is subject to criminal liability under the torture statute and the War Crimes statute? Do you agree that the United States, under the leadership of George W. Bush, has committed war crimes and has stated that it sees no obstacle to doing so again?The country awaits your answer.

JB
(simulation of waterboarding outside the Justice Department in Washington November 5, 2007: Nan Carrow Webdesk; photo of Jack Balkin: Yale Tomorrow)

Congress surrenders power of the purse

2008-02-06T07:26:00.001-08:00

I’ve been gathering articles about Bush's use of signing statements to circumvent laws for several years. Many of them are illegal, i.e., impeachable offenses.

The most recent one is almost unbelievable if George Bush gets away with it. Congress will no longer control the purse strings.

Dan Froomkin, who blogs for The Washington Post at the White House Watch, linked to Bruce Fein's Washington Times opinion column (scroll down to “Signing Statements Watch”) about Congress’s surrender of the power of the purse over national security affairs to the White House. Fein is a conservative. He appeared with The Nation's Washington Correspondent John Nichols on Bill Moyers’s "Tough Talk on Impeachment" Fein’s article: "Power of the purse purloined?"

Froomkin also reports: "After Bush issued his latest signing statement, [Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont.] signed onto a bill that would nullify presidential signing statements, becoming the fourth co-sponsor for a bipartisan bill introduced in June by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa.

"'The president's job is to sign or veto legislation passed by Congress,' Tester said in a press release last week. 'He doesn't get to add small print allowing him to pick and choose what he wants.'

"Specter's Senate Bill 1747 and its House twin (with 58 co-sponsors) assert that Congress has the constitutional authority to write legislation, while the president's role in enacting legislation is limited to signing it or vetoing it. Both bills direct that 'no federal or state court shall rely on or defer to a presidential signing statement as a source of authority.'”

(Bill of Rights revised (click to enlarge): http://lazyiguana.blogspot.com/)

Election Night Life - Super Tuesday with The Young Turks

2008-02-05T14:06:00.001-08:00

Starting at 1 pm today, PST, I’ve had Brave New Films' "Election Night Live - Super Tuesday," the online reporting of the 24 presidential primaries, running in the background on my office computer.

The Young Turks are moderating the coverage. Below is a EST schedule of the guests who will be interviewed.

4:00 Liveblog starts
6:00 Video starts, Senator Sherrod Brown
6:20 Senator Ted Kennedy
7:10 Anna Burger, SEIU
7:30 Joe Garofoli, San Francisco Chronicle
7:40 Dolores Huerta
7:50 Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood
8:10 Melody Barnes, CAP Action Fund
8:50 Jane Hamsher, Firedoglake
9:00 Howard Dean, DNC
9:30 Senator Barbara Boxer
9:40 Eli Pariser, MoveOn.org
10:00 Alexandra Acker, Young Democrats

10:10 Joe Conason, Salon.com
10:20 Trailer Premiere, This Brave Nation
10:30 Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation
11:30 Todd Beeton, MyDD
11:40 Keith Boykin/Malia Lazu, Daily Voice
12:00 Joan McCarter, Daily KOS
12:20 Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post

You can sign up for e-mail alerts of upcoming shows.

(photo of Young Turk Cenk Uygur: Huffington Post)

My fax to Senator Feinstein urging her to change her mind about the FISA bill

2008-02-04T07:06:00.000-08:00

It’s now or never, folks. Below is my letter that I just faxed to Sen. Feinstein: 202.228.3954 and 415.393.0710. Go to The Democratic Activist for great suggestions on what you can do.

Gail Jonas
State Bar #74601
P.O. Box 973
Healdsburg, CA 95448
(707) 433-6845
fax: (707) 433-8314
e-mail: Gail@GailJonas.com
http://www.gailjonas.com/

By fax only

To: Senator Dianne Feinstein

Re: Extending the Protect America Act

Dear Senator Feinstein:

I realize that you have been adamant that the Protect America Act needs to be extended.

I have before me your letter dated December 14, 2007, in which you justified your support of the nomination of Judge Mukasey to lead the Department of Justice. Yet Attorney General Mukasey will not say that waterboarding, long recognized as torture, is torture.

I assume you are now concerned about having the top law enforcement official who is not willing to take a position on an issue as crucial as whether or not this country condones torture.

Before you vote to extend the Protect America Act, I urge to consider the irreparable harm you could do to our democracy if this act passes. A video, “Trust Us,” is circulating widely. In it, your colleague, Senator Russ Feingold, clearly lays out the risks of trusting the government regarding our private communications.

I have faith that most of our elected officials are open to new information. I hope you are one of those in whom I can have faith.

Respectfully,

Gail Jonas

Action Alert: Help save California's state parks

2008-02-04T06:14:00.000-08:00

I’ve been so busy trying to stop the extension of the warrantless eavesdropping bill that I almost neglected alerting readers to the need to help preserve our state parks.

On January 24th, I attended a meeting about the proposed six lane toll road through San Onofre State Beach, posting about it here. I came away from that meeting knowing that those of us who love California can’t afford to ignore the risk to our state park system.

The Coastal Commission is meeting on February 6th to consider whether or not to approve construction of the toll road. If this project is approved, it becomes a precedent for wiping out state parks for roads, desalination plants and other infrastructure.

Here’s what you can do:
1. Write a letter to Commissioner Patrick Kruer and e-mail it to Shannon.raj@sierraclub.org. She will take it to the meeting. Here’s my short letter:

Commissioner Patrick Kruer
Chairman
California Coastal Commission
45 Fremont Street, Suite 2000
San Francisco, CA 94105

Re: Opposition to Consistency Certification for Foothill South Toll Road

Dear Chairman Kruer:

I strongly oppose the proposed Foothill-South Toll Road through San Onofre State Beach. I urge the California Coastal Commission to reject a finding that the project is consistent with the federal Coastal Zone Management Act.

Governor Schwarzenegger does not represent the people of this state when it comes to state parks. His position that the Foothill-South Toll Road won’t produce environmental damage is consistent with his belief that state parks simply don’t matter. In addition to supporting a six lane toll road through the middle of San Onofre State Park, he is proposing the closure of 48 state parks.

California’s state parks, especially those adjacent to the Pacific Ocean, are our natural jewels, attracting residents and tourists from all over the world.

As a resident of California who would rather live here than anywhere else in the world, I urge the Coastal Commission to preserve what is special about California – its state park system.

2. Go to Save San Onofre- How You Can Help.

(photo of San Onofre State Beach - Surfline.com)

On this day.....

2008-02-03T12:41:00.000-08:00

One year ago, my youngest grandchildren, Rody and Sophia, were born. I posted this a day after their birth. Here they are at their birthday party.

Nineteen years ago today, my granddaughter, Tiffany was born. She’s formally dressed for the dinner honoring her father, Jeff Jonas, as the volunteer of the year a couple of years ago for the Nevada Multiple Sclerosis Society. Tiffany graduated from high school at age sixteen, attends college, and is unusually nice and helpful. Ninety-three years ago today, my mother was born. I previously posted about my mother here. Although she’s no longer alive, her gift to me of the love of nature and reading has sustained me all these years. She’s sitting, and her older brother Ray is standing.

ClintObama Inc.

2008-02-03T07:00:00.000-08:00

February 5th is "Super Tuesday." Twenty-two states, including California and New York, will be holding their primaries at which 50.9% of the Democratic delegates will be selected.

So what’s the big deal? According to Jon Spitz,* it’s no big deal whether Senator Hillary Clinton or Senator Barack Obama win. Hey dude! We have a woman and an African-American running for office. Isn’t this a big deal? According to Spitz, yes and no.

The physical differences between them are obvious, and as Jon states in his article, ClintObama Inc., “This [neither contender is a white man] is indeed an unprecedented situation in US presidential politics and I think generally deserving of the attention it gets.”

But Spitz thinks it “…[W]ould be a big mistake to believe that either of these two candidates, Senator Hillary Clinton of New York or Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, really represent any great change from the corporate controlled government we have long suffered.”

Read the whole article here.

*I’ve posted links to Jon’s previous articles here, here, here, here, and here)

(photo of Jon Spitz provided by him)

Action Alert: The Senate switchboard need to be swamped with calls from constituents who oppose warrantless eavesdropping and telecom immunity

2008-02-02T07:20:00.000-08:00

It appears that the Senate will vote this Monday, February 4th, on extending the "Protect America Act," which will give the government carte blanche to listen to our phone calls and read our e-mails. The bill will also grant the telecoms immunity from prosecution for illegally turning our records over to the Bush Administration.

Any immunity offered to telecoms is binding, whether or not the “Protect America Act” is ever revoked by a future Congress and president.

What you can do: Go to The Democratic Activist.

1. Watch Senator Russ Feingold’s 30 minute video clip, “Trust Us.”

2. Follow the simple instructions on how to contact your senators.

3. Send the link to The Democratic Activist to at least 10 friends.

(photo: Banderas News)

Water: Where does it come from? Who gets it? How is global warming affecting our water supply?

2008-02-01T20:40:00.001-08:00

Last night I attended a forum on water, sponsored by the Raven Performing Arts Theatre here in my hometown, Healdsburg. The panelists addressed the problems of the likelihood of a diminishing water supply due to global warming and the need for even more water as the population in Northern California increases.

As I left, I picked up a citizens guide to protecting and restoring our watersheds, Basins of Relations, recently published by the Water Institute. The author, Brock Dorman, was one of the forum panelists. He spoke eloquently and poetically about treating our watersheds with respect.

Basins of Relations contains numerous links to websites that will help us choose not to use so much water. The 20 page guide is well worth the $7 purchase price. You can order it here.

This evening, I finished reading the "Drying of the West-The American West was won by water management. What happens when there's no more water to manage?" in the February issue of National Geographic. Recommended reading.

Hopefully, those of us who live where increased severe and sustained droughts are likely to occur will start paying attention to this issue and what we can do to decrease the impact of too little water and too many people. And let’s not forget the flora and fauna that are also going to suffer.

(photo: The main source of our water, the Russian River - Russian River Watershed)

What hath deregulation wrought?

2008-01-31T18:11:00.001-08:00

When both CounterPunch and the New Yorker provide essentially the same information, I know to pay attention.

First I read "An Inverted Pyramid of Subprime Slop - The Great Credit Unwind of 2008," Posted on January 29th at CounterPunch. This is a rather alarming article, and its author, Mike Whitney, points the finger at former President Bill Clinton for creating the situation that has exacerbated the slide of the US economy into a recession that even a $156 billion stimulus package can’t fix.

What did Clinton do? “The US' current account deficit (nearly $800 billion) has been recycling into US Treasuries and securities from foreign investors. Up to this point, American markets were an attractive place to put one's savings. The dollar was strong, and the stock market had a proven record of profitability and transparency. But since President Bill Clinton repealed Glass-Steagall in 1999, the markets have been reconfigured according to an entirely new model, 'structured finance.'

“Glass-Steagall was the last of the Depression-era bulwarks against the merging of commercial and investment banks. As a result banking has changed from a culture of ‘protection’ (of deposits) to ‘risk taking’, which is the securities business. Through ‘financial innovation’ the investment banks created myriad structured debt instruments which they sold through their Enron-like ‘off balance’ sheets operations (SIVs and Conduits) Now, trillions of dollars of these subprime and mortgage-backed bonds---many of which were rated triple A---are held by foreign banks, retirement funds, insurance companies, and hedge funds. They are steadily losing value with every rating's downgrade.”

There’s more to this article about bond insurers going belly-up. If you read the whole article, you may not get a good night’s sleep.

When my February 4th New Yorker came, I thumbed my way through it to “The Talk of the Town,” and found "The Minsky Moment," by John Cassidy: “Twenty-five years ago, when most economists were extolling the virtues of financial deregulation and innovation, a maverick named Hyman P. Minsky maintained a more negative view of Wall Street; in fact, he noted that bankers, traders, and other financiers periodically played the role of arsonists, setting the entire economy ablaze. Wall Street encouraged businesses and individuals to take on too much risk, he believed, generating ruinous boom-and-bust cycles. The only way to break this pattern was for the government to step in and regulate the moneymen.”

Read on. Cassidy points the finger at Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin for the current credit crisis and likelihood we’ll have a recession: “Since the nineteen-eighties, Congress and the executive branch have been conspiring to weaken federal supervision of Wall Street. Perhaps the most fateful step came when, during the Clinton Administration, Greenspan and Robert Rubin, then the Treasury Secretary, championed the abolition of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which was meant to prevent a recurrence of the rampant speculation that preceded the Depression.”

(photo of Clinton signing the bill repealing the Glass-Steagall Act - Ratical.org).

Senator Russ Feingold on warrantless wiretapping

2008-01-30T16:22:00.000-08:00

The Protect America Act, which would give the telecoms immunity for illegally providing our private communications to the government and would allow continued warrantless wiretapping, will be voted by the Senate sometime within the next fifteen days. The House has voted to extend the vote for 15 days, and it appears that the Senate and Bush are in agreement with the extension.

Please watch this 30 second video clip:

If you found Feingold's comments as compelling as I did, go to The Democratic Activist to learn what you can do to stop the surveillance of our phone calls and e-mails without a warrant.

Thanks to Heifer International and the Gates Foundation, 1 million people in Africa will have better lives

2008-01-29T06:12:00.001-08:00

This morning as I went online, the first thing I saw was an e-mail alert from Caroline Bonnet, my friend and tireless organizer for Heifer International ,* "Heifer Receives 42.8 Million Grant from the Gates Foundation." The grant targets one million people living in poverty in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. I love good news! Check out the announcement, and join me celebrating this wonderful partnership between Heifer International and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

*See my previous posts: January 27, 2007, "My end run around government" and July 21, 2007, "Heifer International - My refuge from the world of woes."

(photo and map from Heifer International)

Worth reading: "Waving Goodbye to Hegemony"

2008-01-28T06:51:00.000-08:00

This weekend, I started reading "Waving Goodbye to Hegemony," by Parag Khanna, a senior research fellow in the American Strategy Program of the New America Foundation. This is an important article which I’ll finish as time allows.

Steve Clemons of The Washington Note thinks it’s important, too. This morning he posted "America Diminished: Parag Khanna's 'Waving Goodbye to Hegemony.'" Check out his post; there’s a great photo illustration of the world and the future role of the U.S. Steve is also a senior research fellow in the American Strategy Program of the New America Foundation.

(drawing: Professor Florig's homepage)

Tomorrow is the big day - telecom amnesty and warrantless eavesdropping will be voted on by the Senate

2008-01-27T18:40:00.000-08:00

The Senate is voting tomorrow on the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). On January 26th, Glenn Greenwald, who blogs for Salon.com, posted about the upcoming vote, "More disruptions to the Cheney/Rockefeller plan" (an ad will pop up, wait a few seconds, then go the link at the right top of the ad, “Enter Salon.” to read Greenwald’s post).

Today I worked with my friend, Chris Borland, who blogs at The Democratic Activist, to alert citizens to tell their senators to vote NO to telecom amnesty and warrantless eavesdropping.

Chris I are also concerned about Net Neutrality, so Chris’s action alert also includes how to take action to protect our access to the Net.

I included the following information in my e-mail:

1. Tell the Senate: NO IMMUNITY for Bush and His Telecom Buddies

2. Net Neutrality Ninjas Needed NOW!

I believe that our ability to communicate with one another via the Internet (e-mails, blogs, alerts from organizations like Democrats.com will be severely compromised if:

1. Congress gives the telecom giants immunity for illegally providing our private communications to the Bush Administration (how free will we feel to take positions in opposition to what your government is doing?); and

2. The Internet becomes privatized, with those who can pay given preferential treatment over those of us who have limited incomes and rely on a free Internet. Citizens’ interests will be sacrificed to corporate interests, which already control the mainstream media.

As you know, I count on the Net to be involved in election integrity, impeachment, saving state parks, you name it. I feel so strongly about being able to continue doing this that I’m asking for your help.

Please go to Tell the Senate: NO IMMUNITY for Bush and His Telecom Buddies and Net Neutrality Ninjas Needed NOW!, get up to speed on what’s going on, and take action now. The Senate is voting on telecom immunity this Monday, the 26th. The deadline to file comments with the FCC regarding Net Neutrality is February 13th.

(Cartoon: Scranton Times)

Freedom's Watch - a right wing MoveOn?

2008-01-25T18:13:00.000-08:00

I’ve been watching Freedom's Watch since its inception in August of 2007, posting about it on September 13th and October 3rd.

According to Right Web, “…Freedom's Watch (FW) is a well-funded pro-war advocacy outfit that was set up by a group of prominent conservatives to, in their words, ‘protect America's interests at home and abroad, foster economic prosperity, and strengthen families’….Among the group's core agenda items are supporting the ‘surge’ in Iraq and advocating intervention in Iran….”

On January 20th, The Washington Post published "A Conservative Answer to MoveOn - Political Advocacy Group Formed by Former Bush Aides Plans a Broad Agenda." “Freedom's Watch has loudly announced that there will be no limits to what it might do. From its $15 million summer ad campaign defending the Iraq strategy to its six-figure effort in the House special election in Ohio, the group has put Democrats on notice that its agenda will go far beyond the conservative principles of its largest financial backers….

"We're a permanent political operation here in town. We're not going to be Johnny One Note," said Joe Eule, executive director of the expanding group, a nonprofit organization that many are describing as the MoveOn of the right....

“Wes Boyd, who co-founded MoveOn.org with his wife in their home in Berkeley, California, said the two groups are fundamentally different because his liberal organization was set up outside the influence of Democratic Party operatives and is funded primarily by small-dollar donors around the country.

“Freedom's Watch, on the other hand, is ‘doing attack ads by Beltway operatives, financed by billionaires, at the request of the White House,’ Boyd said by e-mail. ‘MoveOn helps millions of real people get engaged and be heard and is solely funded by these same people.’"

My recommendation: Read The Washington Post article, then keep your eye on Freedom's Watch. Perhaps you’ll decide to give a little more to MoveOn.

(logo: Boston.com)

Of State Parks and Toll Roads

2008-01-24T16:58:00.000-08:00

I’m off to a meeting this evening about the proposed toll road through San Onofre State Beach, which is in Orange County, California. I’m in northern California, so why am I going to a meeting this evening to learn more about saving a state park in southern California?

1. It’s sponsored by the Sierra Club, which I belong to. The speaker is Mark Massara, Sierra Club Coastal Director.
2. I’m getting uneasy about all the articles I’m reading about toll roads. It looks like our country is letting our public highways and streets deteriorate, replacing them with roads that extract a fee from those who use it. This is appalling.
3. According to Elizabeth Goldstein, President of the California State Parks Foundation, “Approval of the Foothill-South Toll Road through San Onofre State Beach would set a dangerous precedent and put ALL our parks at greater risk...."

If you want to learn more and/or take action, go to Save San Onofre)

(photo: Visit USA)

Today's must read: Juan Cole on 935 false statements that led a nation to war

2008-01-23T06:58:00.000-08:00

Please take time to read "935 False Statements that Led a Nation to War," posted this morning by Juan Cole at his blog, Informed Comment.

Then ask yourself why Congress and even the public don’t think lies that take this nation to war are impeachable offenses. If you do, go to The Democratic Activist and scroll halfway down the page to the action items.

So far, according to AlterNet, we're one step closer to impeaching Cheney because nine out of 23 Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee favor starting impeachment hearings against Vice President Dick Cheney.

That doesn’t feel close enough to me.

Backtracking: Jim Lobe's January 18th post about Bush's failed efforts to form an anti-Iran coalition in the Gulf

2008-01-22T18:30:00.000-08:00

A must-read: "Anti-Iran Coalition in the Gulf? Read This,"posted by Jim Lobe on January 18th. From this article, it appears that President Bush’s main purpose in visiting the Gulf a couple of weeks ago – to build a containment and isolationist strategy against Iran – not only failed but also was counterproductive.

In the last paragraph, there’s a link an article at the Royal United Services Institute of Defence and Security Studies (RUSI)*, "Dire Straits: U.S. Mid-East Policy: The Gulf Arab States and US Iran Relations" my next must-read.

*RUSI was founded in 1831, the oldest such institute in the world, at the initiative of the Duke of Wellington. Its original mission was to study naval and military science, what Clausewitz called the ‘art of war.’

(photo of Jim Lobe from LobeLog.com)

Laura Taichman's law school term paper inspired a pro bono effort that has resulted in the release of a young man wrongfully convicted of murder

2008-01-21T07:00:00.000-08:00

This past Friday, my friend Laura Taichman* sent me an e-mail with a link to an article about her in The New York Law Journal, "Tankleff Pro Bono Effort Born of Ex-Classmate's Law Paper," published on January 18th.

I urge you to read the whole article because you’ll feel better for doing it, but here’s a partial description of Laura’s major role in overturning the conviction for murder of an innocent person, Marty Tankleff (link to Marty's website with lots of information about the case).

Laura grew up in Belle Terre, Long Island and went to high school with Marty. He had just turned 17 when he was arrested for killing his parents, Seymour and Arlene Tankleff, in their home on Long Island, NY. He was convicted in 1990, sentenced to 50 years to life in prison, and sent to the Clinton Correctional Facility at Dannemora, New York.

On December 24th of last year, Marty's murder conviction was vacated by New York's Appellate Division.

What did Laura have to do with the overturning of Marty’s murder conviction? Read on.

While attending Northeastern School of Law in the early 1990’s, Laura wrote a term paper on Marty’s conviction. According to The New York Law Journal article by Thomas Adcock, "’I always followed the case,’ Ms. Taichman said in a telephone interview Wednesday from her home in California, where she was once an associate at the San Francisco headquarters of Morrison & Forrester….

"’For my paper,’ she said, ‘I read all the court transcripts and interviewed all the lawyers. I never thought Marty did it. The facts didn't make sense.’

"Among the first of Ms. Taichman's doubts, she said, was a gruesome detail in the police report. Seymour Tankleff's killer or killers bludgeoned him to death, after which they performed a coup de grace commonly used by drug dealers as a warning to rivals - the so-called ‘Colombian necktie,’ whereby the tongue is pulled out from a slit throat.

"’In the days pre-Internet, I don't believe little Marty Tankleff could know of such things,’ said Ms. Taichman. ‘We were middle-class kids who trusted the cops, and believed they had nothing less than our best interests at heart.’"

You may still be asking how a law student’s term paper could result in the overturning of a murder conviction. I urge you to read the article. There are many heroes, inspired by Laura’s term paper, who took on Marty’s case pro bono. There’s also a suspect.

*I met Laura in November of 2004, when were supervising attorneys on the National Campaign for Fair Elections voter protection hotline (800-OUR-VOTE) in San Francisco. After the election, Laura, Tillie Botz, and I worked on a "Get Ready to Vote" effort with the League of Women Voters of Sonoma County and the Sonoma County Registrar of Voters. Laura is one of the brightest and nicest persons I’ve ever met.

(photo of Laura with her permission)

Susan Truitt, Ohio election integrity activist, asks for our help

2008-01-20T07:00:00.000-08:00

In November, 2004, the “epicenter of the world” was Ohio. That’s how the Reverend Jesse Jackson described it to the plaintiffs in the Ohio Supreme Court case, Moss v. Bush. I decided to keep the spotlight on Ohio and started scouring the country for recount observers and volunteer attorneys to help the Moss v. Bush legal team press its case against Bush, Cheney, Karl Rove and others. The goal was to keep George Bush from being elected president.

Susan Truitt was one of the four attorneys handling this monumental challenge to George Bush’s “win” in Ohio. We became acquainted and have maintained contact over the past three years.

Susan, who co-founded CASE Ohio, is still beating the drums for election integrity in Ohio. Karl Rove has targeted Ohio as one of the 11 key states in the 2008 election.

Below is Susan’s request asking us to help her challenge the ouster of a staunch election reform advocate, State Senator Teresa Fedor (Democrat, 11th Dist.), as Minority Leader of the Ohio Senate (photo).

We’re in it together, folks. If we don’t reach across state borders and support election integrity activists wherever they are, Karl Rove is likely to have his way.

Please heed Susan’s request for help.

Please WRITE - EMAIL - CALL Ohio Democratic Party Leaders

The Ohio Democratic Party has ousted staunch election reform advocate, State Senator Teresa Fedor, from her position as Minority Leader. Senator Fedor was sounding the alarm regarding the unsafe nature of touch screen voting machines (DREs) years before most people had ever heard of them. Her removal as the leader of the Democrats in the Ohio Legislature is a dramatic blow to the election reform movement in Ohio. She has worked tirelessly for years for election reform, first as a state representative and then as a state senator.

Among other things, Senator Fedor spearheaded the 2004 Joint Committee on Ballot Security, which, with the help of CASE Ohio members, prevented the purchase of any new DREs in Ohio prior to the 2004 election. She invited many computer experts, and others, to testify before the committee, educating not only the legislature, but also the public, about the dangers of DREs. She introduced and passed the bill requiring a paper trail for all voting machines. But she has not stopped there - she has continued to advocate for voting rights and voting reform for years.

She was also instrumental in exposing the Thomas Noe scandal in Lucas County (see Noe indicted for helping steal 2004), and the scandal of former Ohio Congressman Bob Ney, who, unfortunately, pushed through the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) which has created the DRE nightmare.

Who is behind her removal from power and why? Who expressly and tacitly approved it?

Why, with only months to go before a presidential election, have the Dems removed from a leadership position the one legislator who has devoted herself to election reform? Especially in the key state of Ohio?

Is this move driven by those who do not buy into the grave nature of the election system in Ohio and in the entire U.S.? Is it more insidious than that? This move clearly indicates that there are Ohio Democrats in key leadership positions who are unaware of the dire situation regarding the unreliable, unverifiable, and untrustworthy DREs. To oust Senator Fedor as a party leader, after her years of devotion and unflagging work, is an abomination.

Who will lead the election reform charge, now?

Write, email, and call the Chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, Chris Redfern, ask him why Senator Fedor was removed as Minority Leader:

Chris Redfern
77 S. High St., 10th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215-6111
Telephone: (614) 644-6011
Fax : (614) 719-6980
Email Address: district80@ohr.state.oh.us

Write, email, and call the Chief Legal Counsel for the Governor, Kent Markus, who also serves as the Chief of State-Legislative Relations, and ask him why Senator Fedor was removed as Minority Leader:

Kent Markus
Office of Governor Ted Strickland
77 South High Street, 30th Floor
Columbus, Ohio 43215-6117
Phone:(614) 466-3555
Fax:(614) 466-9354
Capitol Phone:(614) 466-2000
Email address: kmarkus@law.capital.edu

EVEN IF YOU DO NOT LIVE IN OHIO - IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN ELECTION REFORM, Call, email, and write them now and demand some answers about why Senator Fedor has been punished for her years of exemplary service to the State of Ohio and to the issue of election reform.

Regards,

Susan Truitt

(photo of Sen. Fedor from her website; photo of Susan Truitt, Fairness by Beckerman)

Where have I been?

2008-01-19T10:31:00.001-08:00

I missed posting yesterday, even though I was home.

Here’s what I’ve been doing:

1. This morning I took a hike at Lake Sonoma with my friend and fellow family law attorney, David Gonzalez. 2. This past week, I spent a lot of time working in my law office.
3. I spent Monday and yesterday caring for my eleven month old grandchildren, Sophia and Rody. 4. I’m getting new flooring for my kitchen, a gift from my sons, Jeff and Rody. Last Saturday I went to the natural flooring store, Naturlich, to pick out the lineoleum I wanted. While there I met an old attorney friend and her husband. We spent about 45 minutes talking in the parking lot, and I discovered that the husband, Dan Gurney, also blogs.

He’s "Mr. Kindergarten," and now I have the link on my desktop so I can frequently check on what he’s doing. If you need a spirit-lifter, check out his blog.

An altogether satisfying week even if I missed posting yesterday.

Important Public Health Announcement

2008-01-17T07:25:00.000-08:00

Every morning I check the e-mail alert from Votelaw. Item number 5 this morning caught by attention because it wasn’t about voting, "Important Public Health Announcement."

Intrigued, I opened the link to discover a 5 minute video titled "Why Don't We Do It in Our Sleeves?" I watched it. It’s funny but also contains a message about not spreading germs from coughing and sneezing.

Ed, who blogs for Votelaw, has the same idea I do about blogging. If something strikes us as interesting, we post it.

(photo: Wordpress.com)

Wexler addresses the House: What you can do to support impeaching Cheney

2008-01-16T05:00:00.000-08:00

Last night I watched Representative Robert Wexler (19th Dist., Florida) address the House about his efforts to get the House Judiciary Committee to hold hearings on impeaching Vice President Cheney. It was a great speech (5 minutes) available here.

Today Wexler is presenting the petition signed by 189,000 people to the House Judiciary Committee along with a letter to Rep. John Conyers. Wexler is gathering colleagues’ signatures on this letter urging Conyers to begin investigating what Wexler described in his speech as Cheney’s “incredible abuse of power.”

Last night, Wexler said that all together, there are over one million signatures on various petitions asking the House Judiciary Committee to hold hearings on H.Res. 799, the impeach Cheney resolution submitted by Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

It’s not too late to contact Congress. In fact, it won’t be too late tomorrow, the next day, or next week. Go to Chris Borland’s post. Scroll down to “Here's what you can do, specifically, to join the effort” and “Other ideas.”

(photo of Rep. Wexler: Wikimedia)

Did you know that there are no international waters in the Straits of Hormuz?

2008-01-15T07:21:00.001-08:00

There’s a basic factual error in our mainstream media’s reporting on the recent incident in the Straits of Hormuz.

According to Paul Woodward (see my Dec. 13th post), “Witness the spectacle of an international “incident” that after a few days has devolved into a debate about a Filipino Monkey. The only comfort the White House can take from this drama is that the press never even noticed when the stage upon which it was set, came into question.

“Iranian speedboats threatened US warships in international waters in the Straits of Hormuz. So far only one analyst — Kaveh L Afrasiabi, writing in Asia Times — has pointed out the most basic factual error in this account: there are no international waters in the Straits of Hormuz.”

My point: If the mainstream media can’t get the facts straight, why should we believe anything it reports? My solution? I rely on alternate news sources, including Paul Woodward’s invaluable War in Context. Recommendation: Sign up for daily e-mail alerts.

(map: University of Texas Libraries - double click to enlarge)

"We are moving into an era of a thousand pin-prick tests of our resolve and global position"

2008-01-14T07:21:00.001-08:00

Steve Clemons cautions us that while our attention is on the roiled Middle East, the "Bubbling Balkan Crisis is Back."

Russia is resisting Kosovo’s desire to become independent by vetoing U.N. recognition and giving moral support to the Serbs. If independence is not granted, it’s likely the Kosovo Albanians will revolt.

Clemons observes that there are “…[A]nti-Putin, anti-Russian hardliners in Washington who want yet more reasons to ignite global conflict and tension -- which reinforces the high-fear politics they have become vested in.

“But beyond some folks in DC demonizing Putin and a resurgent Russia, there is little evidence that Russia is a priority today on Washington's foreign policy roster of concerns. As one former senior G.W. Bush administration official said at a Nixon Center gathering, ‘I can see no evidence that this administration has a strategy towards Russia of any kind.’

“And thus I would suggest … that Russia thinks it can push its agenda now with little fear of blowback because it senses no serious strategic plan of the United States towards it.

"This is one of the reasons I believe that the next President of the United States is going to get the crap kicked out of him or her -- far worse than when Khrushchev famously manhandled John F. Kennedy in their early encounters.

“Our allies as well as our real and potential foes just don't know what our genuine priorities are, and what the reality of American power is and isn't. There is a sense that America is less and less able to secure the objectives it sets for itself internationally.

“We are moving into an era of a thousand pin-prick tests of our resolve and global position.”

(photo of the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin: The Washington Note)

Thinking out loud about my year of blogging

2008-01-13T16:35:00.000-08:00

One year ago today I started blogging in earnest. This is my 347th post.

I’m particularly grateful to Pat Denino, who’s been blogging at Wandering Wonderings for several years. Without her encouragement, I never would have started.

In November 2004, Pat (I didn't know her) responded to my request to provide housing in Columbus, Ohio for recount observers and attorneys who were willing to travel to Ohio to challenge Bush’s election. Now I visit Pat at least once a year and was welcome even during her cancer treatments. Pat's hair has now grown back.

I’m also grateful to Janie Sheppard, in the photo below with her partner Bill Radtkey and their best friends, Heidi and Gerry. On July 2nd, I posted What do skateboarding and blogging have in common? I decided I ought to give up blogging as I did skateboarding a few years ago. Janie encouraged me to continue. Without her support, I wouldn’t have made it this long.

Janie sends my posts to her political allies and has been my guest blogger at least four times, here, here, here and here. She spearheaded a local to impeach Cheney, culminating in a hearing before the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors last August 14th.

Additionally, Janie, Bill, Heidi and Jerry welcome me to their home on weekends. Each time I visit, Bill prepares hot cereal made with steel cut oats and serves it with yogurt, fruit, and nuts. At their home, I get to think out loud, which is why I’m so comfortable with them.

Thanks to all of you who have posted a comment, e-mailed me about something I posted, or simply told me that you appreciate my blog.

Action alert: What can we do to reduce the risk of a naval incident between the US and Iran triggering a war?

2008-01-12T22:30:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I heard about Incidents at Sea agreements for the first time and posted about it here. According to Jim Lobe, there exists “…[T]he possibility that the Navy and the Pentagon chose to dramatize the incident [the recent confrontation in the Straits of Hormuz] not so much to isolate and embarrass Iran as to enhance the chances for a new “incidents-at-sea” agreement that they have been pushing on the White House without success for many months now.

Here’s what I’ve learned and what I think we can do to jump start an effort to get the Bush Administration to start talking with Iran about an Incidents at Sea Agreement.

1. What is an Incident at Sea Agreement? According to the Federation of American Scientists, “The Incidents at Sea Agreement serves to enhance mutual knowledge and understanding of military activities, to reduce the possibility of conflict by accident, miscalculation, or the failure of communication, and to increase stability in times of both calm and crisis."

2. Has the U.S. entered into an Incidents at Sea Agreement with other countries?

Yes.

A. Russia (formerly the USSR): The Agreement was signed by Secretary of State John Warner and Soviet Admiral Sergei Gorshkov during the Moscow summit meeting in 1972. There’s a good summary of the Agreement at Global Beat Syndicate. This agreement was reached in the middle of the Cold War.

B. China. In January, 1998, China and the United States signed the Agreement.

3. Why won’t the Bush Administration enter into an Incidents at Sea Agreement with Iran if the Navy and Pentagon want it? Beats me.

4. Is Iran open to it? Yes, according to William Arkin, who blogs for The Washington Post, they appear to be open to it. “At this point, Washington has two choices: It can release every shred of intelligence and information it has in an attempt to show how the Iranians are lying. Or it can let the matter drop and focus instead averting these types of incidents in the future. If it chooses the latter, it may find that Iran is a more willing partner than it appears. What Tehran is saying, after all, is quite similar to what the U.S. Navy is saying.”

5. What can we do? Former Secretary of the Navy, John Warner, who signed the Agreement on behalf of the US with the USSR, is an influential Republican US Senator. He retiring at the end of his current term. Why not contact him and ask him to use his power and influence to persuade the Bush Administration to start Incident of the Sea Agreement negotiations with Iran?

How to contact Sen. Warner:
1. Use the CONTACT FORM on his website
2. Call his office: Capitol Switchboard: 800.828.0498, or directly, 202.224.2023
3. Fax or mail a letter: fax: 202.224.6295; Senator John Warner, 225 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., 20510.

(photo of US Naval ships: op-for.com)

An alternate explanation for the Straits of Hormuz incident

2008-01-11T20:57:00.000-08:00

This evening, Jim Lobe, who blogs at LobeLog.com, made an interesting observation about the recent naval incident in the Straits of Hormuz. Lobe is best known for his coverage of U.S. foreign policy, particularly the neo-conservative influence in the Bush administration. He is also the Washington Bureau Chief of the international news service agency, Inter Press Service.

In his post, About that Straits Incident...., Lobe raises “…[T]he possibility that the Navy and the Pentagon chose to dramatize the incident not so much to isolate and embarrass Iran as to enhance the chances for a new 'incidents-at-sea’ agreement that they have been pushing on the White House without success for many months now….

“It’s been no secret for some time now that the Pentagon, and the head of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), Adm. William Fallon, in particular, have been pressing the White House — without success — for negotiating a new ‘incidents-at-sea’ agreement with Iran that would reduce the risk of a an accidental confrontation in the Straits of Hormuz and the Gulf itself.

“Frustrated until now in their efforts to get the White House to authorize negotiations over a new agreement, could it be that Fallon … and other Pentagon and Navy officials decided to dramatize the danger just as Bush was embarking on his trip, anticipating that the president would get an earful from his Gulf state hosts about their fears that a naval confrontation could quickly escalate into a real war in which they would suffer significant collateral damage?”

It will be interesting to see if there are any other articles or posts about the “incidents-at-sea” agreement.

See previous posts linking to Jim Lobe’s blog: here, here, here, here, here, and here.

(photo of Jim: LobeLog.com)