I HAVEN'T BLOGGED SINCE THURSDAY, partly because my computer is dead and I have to use my daughter's, when she's not using it; but also because I've been feeling very depressed and hopeless lately about the news. Lately, sitting down to blog seems to mean repeating the same news over and over again, albeit with the latest wrinkles.
For example, Terri Schiavo. I wrote about her on Thursday, before her feeding tube was removed. Now, today, what the media is calling a "compromise" has been reached. But the compromise is not between Terri Schiavo's parents and her husband, or even between her husband and Congress. The compromise is between the different camps in Congress over the fate of a woman in Florida who has been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years and whose parents and husband disagree over whether her feeding tube should be removed or kept in. My first reaction to this state of events is that it is absolutely surreal. For over two centuries, since this country was founded, it was possible to have a private life in which you could make medical and health decisions for yourself and your family. It seems America has reached a point in its development where that is no longer possible. Americans cannot have private lives anymore; cannot make their own personal decisions for their own loved ones' welfare without having 250 million other Americans and the federal government telling them what they should do. I mean, what is going on here?
The situation now seems to be that the two sides in Congress warring over whether Terri Schiavo's feeding tube should be re-inserted or kept out have agreed to pass a quickie law allowing a federal judge to decide whether to favor the parents' wishes or the husband's wishes in this private family decision. But as I understand it, the feeding tube will not be re-inserted until and unless the law is passed and a federal judge subsequently orders that the tube be re-inserted. So what we have here is the prospect of Congress trying to rush through a law on a fundamental matter of human rights and personal privacy, without taking the time to discuss the issues in even a perfunctory manner, because if they take that time, Terri Schiavo would probably die. So they will rush the law through, although they can only get the law passed if every member of Congress agrees to it, and they will ask a federal judge to rule on it immediately, and either way the decision goes, it will be a decision made at lightning speed concerning a matter with enormous, incalculable implications for the power of government to involve itself in Americans' personal lives.
And then there is the bankruptcy legislation. The more I read about it, the more this law looks to me like another example of the government forcing its way into private individual decisions -- in this case financial decisions about how to handle overwhelming personal debt. The bill stipulates that individuals planning to file for bankruptcy have to go through "counseling" on how to handle debt at least 180 days before being allowed to file. The ostensible purpose of this requirement is to "make sure debtors know they have options other than bankruptcy." However, there is no similar requirement that credit card executives attend classes or training seminars on how to make responsible decisions about targeting and lending to high-risk consumers -- so they know they have lending options other than blanketing low-income and financially unstable people with credit card offers.
To me, this counseling plus waiting period requirement sounds awfully similar to the anti-abortion laws in many states that impose waiting periods on pregnant women, and require them to sit through anti-abortion lectures and videos, before they can end a pregnancy -- so that they know "they have options other than abortion."
Abortion and filing for bankruptcy are very different situations, but they have one thing in common: They are both highly personal and private decisions that individuals make, after much serious and often agonized consideration, based on their own unique understanding of their health concerns in the case of abortion and their financial concerns in the case of bankruptcy. Abortion is a private decision made by a woman in consultation with a medical expert: her doctor. Bankruptcy is an equally private decision made by either a woman or a man in consultation with a legal expert: the lawyer; and in the case of bankruptcy, a judge as well.
End of life decisions, abortion, and now debt relief: three areas of private life in which the federal government tries to intrude itself into Americans' personal lives and private family decisions, based on the assumption that individuals are incapable of making informed, intelligent decisions without government supervision. The list is growing.
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Thursday, March 17, 2005
MORE ON THE CULTURE OF LIFE ... Jefferson Morley of the Washington Post reports in his column that Felix Rodriguez, an ex-CIA operative who has strong ties to the Bush administration, is hinting strongly at possible plans by the United States to assassinate Hugo Chavez, the democratically elected and very popular president of Venezuela. Morley includes a remark made by Roger Pardo-Maurer, a State Department official, and quoted in the London-based Financial Times:
"Chavez is a problem because he is clearly using his oil money and influence to introduce his conflictive style into the politics of other countries," Mr Pardo-Maurer said. "He's picking on the countries whose social fabric is the weakest. In some cases it's downright subversion."
Translation: Pres. Chavez hates Bush, has been trying to persuade other Latin American countries to work against Bush's desires for the region, and has been having a lot of success at it.
Sounds like a good reason to snuff out a precious human life to me.
REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS want to pass legislation to nullify yesterday's court decision to allow Terri Schiavo's doctors to remove her feeding tube. Personally, I think making law to address one individual's situation trivializes the purpose and meaning of law. Laws exist to protect the rights and enforce the obligations of the entire society -- not to get a particular preferred outcome in one specific instance.
Scott McClellan, Bush's communications person, said that if Congress passed its Terri Schiavo Law, Bush would sign it, because the "proposed legislation fell within Mr. Bush's desire to 'build a culture of life.' "
It's odd, really. It's even fascinating, in a science fiction-ish kind of way. "Mr. Bush" and his Republican acolytes support a "culture of life" in inverse proportion to how self-aware or actualized that life is. Thus, a frozen embryo is a "microscopic American"; but a child killed by a U.S. bomb in Iraq is "collateral damage." Right-wing commentators like Andrew McCarthy express moral outrage about removing feeding tubes from a woman who has existed for 14 years in a persistent vegetative state and whose prognosis for regaining consciousness is almost nil; but I wonder how much outrage McCarthy and his ilk expressed over Bush's recent call to cut funding for food aid to children and their low-income mothers.
McCarthy also expresses the view, common among Republican Bush-supporters, that the value of life is directly related to the innocence of that life; and that torturing, abusing, maltreating, and killing human beings who have done bad things or who might have done bad things is acceptable, if not fine.
What kind of law is it, what kind of society is it, that says the lives of Khalfan Khamis Mohammed and Mohammed Daoud al-`Owhali’s have value — over which we must anguish and for the sustenance of which we must expend tens of thousands annually — but Terri Schiavo’s is readily dispensable? By court-ordered torture over the wrenching pleas of parents ready and willing to care for her?
What kind of society goes into a lather over the imposition of bright lights and stress positions for barbarians who might have information that will save lives, but yawns while a defenseless woman who hasn’t hurt anyone is willfully starved and dehydrated? By a court — the bulwark purportedly protecting our right to life?
First of all, if Andrew McCarthy were being honest, he would not be claiming that "bright lights and stress positions" are what people who still have a conscience are troubled about. It's chaining human beings to ceilings and beating them to death over a period of five days that has people with a conscience in an uproar. It's forcing human beings to drink water until they can't breathe. It's tying them to a board, telling them they are going to be drowned, and plunging them into water that causes the uproar. It's terrifying children with attack dogs that has at least some people in an uproar. It's putting lit cigarettes into human ears and attaching electrodes to human male genitals that has a few people in an uproar. But writing "What kind of a society goes into a lather over beating prisoners to death, mock-drowning them, and torturing them with electric shocks to their genitals for barbarians who might have information that will save lives..." would not have the same ring to it. It wouldn't scan as well, either.
Second, a society that values only life that is inoffensive and has done nothing wrong is a society that does not value life at all -- just as a society that supports free speech for those who say nothing terribly controversial or shocking but not for those who express opinions or beliefs that are vile, hateful, offensive, or deeply unpopular is not a society that supports free speech at all. If you believe that life has intrinsic value, then a suspected terrorist's life is no less valuable than the life of a woman in a vegetative state who has not offended or harmed anyone.
I am not saying that I believe removing Terri Schiavo's feeding tube is the right thing to do. I can see both sides of this issue. I have very mixed feelings, and the truth for me is that I am just not sure. But I do ask myself what kind of a society can weep for the possible pain and suffering of a woman who has been unaware of her surroundings for over a decade; yet dismiss with a shrug and a sneer the pain and suffering experienced by human beings who are caught up in war, who see their families torn apart, and who all too often experience unimaginable terror and physical pain because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time and have the wrong ethnic heritage.
PRES. BUSH SPOKE OPENLY TODAY for the first time about the C.I.A.'s "extraordinary renditions" policy: returning Arab and Muslim detainees arrested by U.S. troops to their countries of origin. The detainees are then detained and interrogated in their own countries -- countries widely known to practice torture. In his comments today, Bush said the U.S. does not believe in torture but has a right to protect itself (from threats of harm that presumably are irrelevant to the renditions program, since not one single detainee who has been kidnapped and sent to another country has been charged with any crime, and Bush has not mentioned any specific act of violence that was discovered and prevented through the renditions program).
Since the U.S., according to Bush, does not believe in or practice torture, the U.S. would be morally obligated not to turn prisoners over to countries that everyone knows practice torture. And Bush does not deny that these other countries practice torture; he does not deny that the U.S. knows they practice torture. But, he says, what the U.S. does is "arrest people and send them back to their country of origin with the promise that they won't be tortured. That's the promise we receive."
And that, according to the president and the C.I.A., is how the U.S. complies with laws that prohibit sending prisoners to countries that torture. We ask the countries that are notorious for torturing prisoners to give us "verbal assurances" that they will not torture the prisoners we send them. And, of course, they don't. Or, at least, we assume they don't. If they do, it's not our fault. We're covered. We asked them not to. And they promised us they wouldn't. So we're morally in the clear. Aren't we?
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
ONE OF KEVIN DRUM'S POSTS TODAY is about Douglas Wead's letter of apology in USA Today. Abject apology would be more accurate, as Kevin notes.
...what Wead offered up was nothing less than a full bore brand of forgive-me-for-I-have-sinned style groveling that was almost physically painful to read. And while I was reading it, what I wondered was this: how do they do it? How does the Bush family manage to scare so many people into public retractions of such Stalinesque thoroughness?
Hell, I'm not even sure I want to know the answer. Don Corleone had nothing on these guys, that's for sure.
The Comments section for this post has a lot of responses to the effect that Wead's letter was perfectly fine and appropriate; and did not point to any likelihood that Bush or his associates gave Wead to understand that if he did not issue a public apology, he would regret it. Here is one:
So let's imagine this was done to you? The apology sounds appropriate. And if you have any other examples of Bush-family coercion,please share them with us. Or at least provide the Gulag addresses of the culprits.
I have to disagree. Wead was not simply apologizing for an error in judgment that hurt a friend; he was peeing in his pants; on his knees, begging, please don't harm me or my family. That is not a normal way to try to rectify a mistake, if one is acting out of conscience only, and not out of grave fear of the consequences if one does not apologize.
Let's take a look at exactly what Douglas Wead wrote in his letter to USA Today (or part of it):
I was foolish and wrong to tape-record Mr. Bush without his permission. I was wrong to play any part of the tapes for my publisher, regardless of the circumstances. I was wrong to play any part of them for a journalist. I apologized to the president before the story appeared and again afterward. He has been typically patient, in spite of the personal hurt.
Today, the work of reparation has begun.
•My book promotion has been canceled.
•Future royalties from the book have been assigned to charity.
•The hours of tapes, which prompted offers of millions of dollars, have been turned over to the president.
•The work of rebuilding relationships, with God, the president and friends, has begun.
If I could live my life over again, there are many things I would do differently. I cannot undo the hurt I have caused but I can, with God's help, take the heat I deserve and move on.
Okay, he was foolish and wrong. I can buy that. And I can also buy that he needs to work on rebuilding his relationship with Bush. But with God?
I commented on this on Kevin's site; I am going to say it here, too.
I can agree with the statement [made in another comment]that "What Wead did was scummy." But to characterize Wead's letter as "saying he's sorry" is ludicrous. Kevin was right. Wead groveled to the point where it was painful to read his letter.
I personally object to the idea that Wead needs God's forgiveness for secretly taping conversations with Bush and then giving the tapes to the press. BUSH needs God's forgiveness for starting a war based on lies, forgeries, and disinformation and thus being directly responsible for the deaths of about 1,050 American men and women, the permanent maiming of thousands more, and the killings of literally hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis.
What Wead did was tacky, and showed poor judgment, if only because he should have known that Bush and his pals would crucify Wead for it.
And they have. I think whatever they threatened Wead with went far beyond telling him his future with the Republican Party was over, or that he would never eat with the power brokers again. I don't think threats of that nature could have produced a letter saturated with the kind of sheer terror that Wead's letter emanated. I think Bush et al. threatened Wead with financial ruin, or arrest on criminal charges (they'd find something), or threatened to harm his family in some way -- and I don't mean necessarily physically.
George W. Bush and his accomplices are the political equivalent of the Gotti crime family.
Vengeful, cruel, and evil might begin to cover it.
THE (UK) INDEPENDENT has a series of very interesting articles about abortion in the context of the upcoming elections in Britain. The Conservative MP, Michael Howard, wants to lower the limit for legal abortions from 24 weeks to 20 weeks; Tony Blair favors leaving the limit as it is and letting individuals make their own private decisions.
Notice that neither party is suggesting that abortion should be made illegal.
The piece entitled "Abortion: the Facts" gives a brief history of abortion from ancient Greek and Roman times to the present. This is a very different approach from that taken by the U.S. media; I don't believe I have ever seen any discussion of abortion in the press that looked at it from any context other than the Roe v. Wade decision, the contentiousness of the issue in American political and social life, how the religious right has made the issue a litmus test, how Supreme Court nominations will affect the issue, and how the issue affects elections.
Of course I am aware that women have been terminating unwanted pregnancies from the earliest days of recorded history (and before, I'm sure). What I didn't know was specifics like this:
The Ancient Greeks and Romans allowed abortions. The early philosophers argued that a foetus did not become formed and begin to live until at least 40 days after conception for a male, and around 80 days for a female.
From the 16th century, the Christian doctrine of passive conception held that the foetus was only given a soul in the fifth month. Then, in 1869, Pope Pius X changed the timing of "ensoulment" to conception.
In 1803, the Ellenborough Act made abortion in Britain after the 16- to 20-week period in which life is first felt, an offence that carried the death penalty, though it later became life imprisonment. In 1938, Dr Alex Bourne was acquitted of performing an illegal abortion after claiming that it was to save a raped girl mental harm, setting a case-law precedent. Women wanting to terminate had illegal, backstreet abortions performed by unqualified abortionists. Women were often injured in the process and some died. At least 50 were killed each year from botched surgery and infection.
In 1967, abortion became legal in Britain, up to 28 weeks of pregnancy. In 1991, the limit was lowered to 24 weeks, largely in response to advances in medical science that enabled premature babies to survive at earlier stages.
Articles like this make it more clear than ever that the emotionally charged language surrounding abortion in the United States, with opponents of legal abortion using the terminology of science to claim, as if it were biological fact, that an embryo or a fetus is a human being from the moment of conception; that "unborn babies" can feel pain; and that "innocent life" should be protected from "murder," is indicative of religious, political, and social belief, and not objective scientific or medical fact.
There are 4 other articles on this issue in the same edition of the paper: here, here, here, and here; although the last 2 are behind a subcription wall. The two that are available in their entirety have the same tone: a lack of hysteria, a lack of fear or reluctance to discuss the issue. Obviously there are differences of opinion about abortion in Britain, but apparently it is possible to air those differences of opinion while still retaining the fundamental assumption that abortion is both an ethical and a medical issue.
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
THERE'S AN ARTICLE in the Christian Science Monitor that expresses exactly what I've been thinking over the past 24 hours about Ashley Smith. I've been thinking that Ashley Smith proves that there is truth to the idea that peaceful strategies can win out over violent strategies; that using words can be as effective as -- or sometimes even more effective than -- using bombs and guns. No one who is at all skeptical about the efficacy of negotiation or diplomacy would be likely to believe that it would be possible to disarm -- in both the literal and figurative sense of that word -- a man such as Brian Nichols. Brian Nichols had committed several violent crimes. He had raped and murdered. He had behaved in a way that was totally irrational. This was not a man anyone would have thought could be susceptible to a respectful, sympathetic, nonviolent approach.
But he was. It's profoundly moving that Nichols went from threatening Smith's life to calling her an "angel" and telling her that God had sent him to her door. It's equally moving that Smith had the capacity for the kind of compassion and generosity of spirit she showed Nichols, especially when you learn that her husband was stabbed to death four years ago and died in her arms. And despite Rush Limbaugh's predictably moronic comment that Ashley Smith let Brian Nichols "walk all over her," the truth is the opposite. Brian Nichols did not walk all over Ashley Smith; and Ashley Smith did not walk all over Brian Nichols. In that seven and a half hours inside Smith's home, both Smith and Nichols won. Why? Because neither of them was killed or physically harmed. Because Smith succeeded in getting herself unbound and talked Nichols into trusting her. And because Nichols DID come to trust her, he won, too: because her simple kindness allowed him to believe that he might still be a human being, able to feel remorse and hope in equal measure. Now that truly is a miracle.
ROBERT SCHEER blasts the bankruptcy bill and the credit card companies behind it, in a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece today. He says the only difference between loan sharks and credit card companies is that the latter use the federal government to play the role that hired thugs play for loan sharks.
Among many other trenchant points, Scheer points out the hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy (pun fully intended) of members of Congress like Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who "...actively opposes abortion and same-sex marriage on biblical grounds yet believes the Good Book's clear definition and condemnation of usury is irrelevant."
The Old Testament, revered by Jews, Muslims and Christians alike, mandates debt forgiveness after seven years, as was pointed out earlier this month by an organization of Christian lawyers in a letter to Grassley.Apparently, for "Christians" like Grassley, the almighty dollar also trumps family values, which in other contexts Republicans of Grassley's ilk are so fond of lauding.
"I can't listen to Christian lawyers," said the senator, "because I would be imposing the Bible on a diverse population."
The bill he wrote placed mothers and their children behind credit card companies in the line for a bankrupt ex-husband's paycheck, for example, which is positively Dickensian. Expected to sail through the House and onto the president's desk in the next few weeks, the bill turns the federal government into a guardian angel of an industry gone mad, placing no significant restriction on soaring interest rates and proliferating fees.One wonders how this guy sleeps at night, but I suppose as long as the money spigot stays on, that's not a problem for him.
Monday, March 14, 2005
ASHLEY SMITH is one of the most awesome human beings I have ever read about. She is extraordinary -- and that word is overused, but it's true of her. There are not many people who, when taken hostage by an armed and physically imposing man who had already raped one woman and shot to death several others, would have the presence of mind to stay calm and talk him out of committing another murder.
But it's more than that. It's not just that Ashley Smith kept her head and acted in such a way that Brian Nichols did not kill her. It's that she talked to Nichols, engaged him in conversation, made him pancakes and eggs, showed him photographs of her family, read the Bible to him, treated him like a human being.
And during those 7 hours and 30 minutes, Brian Nichols acted like a human being.
Progressively, she gained the trust of the man who, at that time, was Georgia's most-wanted fugitive, with a $60,000 reward on his head in connection with the slayings. "I really didn't want him to hurt himself, or anyone else to hurt him," she said.
Watching TV news about the carnage being blamed on him, and the multi-agency law enforcement operation mounted to capture him, she said Nichols told her: " 'I cannot believe that's me on there.'
"He needed hope for his life," Smith said. "He said, 'Look at my eyes, I'm already dead.' I said: 'You're not dead. You're standing right in front of me. If you want to die, you can. It's your choice.' " ...
Smith's former captor, who described himself at first to her as "a soldier," offered no resistance to police, and surrendered by waving a makeshift white flag. "If you don't turn yourself in, lots more people are going to get hurt," Smith said she told him. She said Nichols called her "an angel," and said God had led him to her door so that she'd tell him he had hurt a lot of people.
She asked him, she said, if he believed in miracles. "You got out of that courthouse with police everywhere, and you don't think that's a miracle?" Smith said. "You don't think you're supposed to be sitting right here in front of me…. Your miracle could be that you need to be caught for this. If you go to prison, then you need to share the word of God with all the prisoners there."
Let's hope that Brian Nichols does go to prison, so he can have that opportunity to redeem himself by helping others. Let's hope that the chance for a new life and a changed heart that Ashley Smith gave him does not get snuffed out by a needle in his arm and poison running through his vein.
THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT is getting more and more aggressive about attacking the scientific theory of evolution and forcing into the public school system the religious belief that God created the world and everything in it exactly as it exists now. In a Washington Post article online today, Peter Slevin describes a change in tactics on the part of Christian theocrats. Instead of openly calling for schools to replace the teaching of evolution with the teaching that God created the world in 6 days, Christian fundamentalists are couching their efforts in the language of open intellectual debate. They say they want to "allow" teachers to "challenge evolution" and present the concept of "intelligent design" to explain life on Earth. What they mean by this term, of course, is that a Superhuman Supreme Living Being created human beings, just as human beings are now; although, for strategic reasons they try not to use the word "God."
It's an academic freedom proposal. What we would like to foment is a civil discussion about science. That falls right down the middle of the fairway of American pluralism," said the Discovery Institute's Stephen C. Meyer, who believes evolution alone cannot explain life's unfurling. "We are interested in seeing that spread state by state across the country." Some evolution opponents are trying to use Bush's No Child Left Behind law, saying it creates an opening for states to set new teaching standards. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), a Christian who draws on Discovery Institute material, drafted language accompanying the law that said students should be exposed to "the full range of scientific views that exist."
"Anyone who expresses anything other than the dominant worldview is shunned and booted from the academy," Santorum said in an interview. "My reading of the science is there's a legitimate debate. My feeling is let the debate be had."
My personal belief is that faith in God and the reality of evolution are not mutually exclusive. There is nothing anti-religious about saying that living things, including human beings, evolved over millions of years, if you feel, as I do, that God works through nature and biological processes.
Of course, if you are convinced, as these Christian literalists are, that God is a superhuman wizard with magic powers who exists apart from the natural world and the laws of physics, then it cannot be simultaneously true that both God and evolution are real.
In a democratic society where freedom of religion is valued and taken seriously, these people have the right to their beliefs -- as I have to mine. But they do not have the right to drag personal religious convictions into public school classrooms; just as I do not have the right to insist that public educators teach children that "God works through nature" or that "evolution is God's Creation Process." Religion should be taught in church or in private religious schools; in the public classroom, science should be taught.
But the agenda of people who want "creation science" to be taught alongside evolution, and who want stickers put on textbooks saying that "evolution is an unproven theory" goes far beyond the desire to have their personal religious certainties given equal status with Darwinian evolution in the classroom. The long-term goal of people like Rick Santorum and the constituency he represents is to transform American society as a whole from one based on constitutional law to one based on religious law -- and specifically fundamentalist Christian religious law. Don't ever, ever think for one moment that radical extremist preachers in Kansas oppose theocracy or theocratic governments. They do not. They simply want that theocracy to be Christian. And their extremism is becoming increasingly mainstream.
Although many backers of intelligent design oppose the biblical account that God created the world in six days, the Christian right is increasingly mobilized, Baylor University scholar Barry G. Hankins said. He noted the recent hiring by the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary of Discovery Institute scholar and prominent intelligent design proponent William A. Dembski.
The seminary said the move, along with the creation of a Center for Science and Theology, was central to developing a "comprehensive Christian worldview."
"As the Christian right has success on a variety of issues, it emboldens them to expand their agenda," Hankins said. "When they have losses . . . it gives them fuel for their fire." ...
The efforts are not limited to schools. From offices overlooking Puget Sound, Meyer is waging a careful campaign to change the way Americans think about the natural world. The Discovery Institute devotes about 85 percent of its budget to funding scientists, with other money going to public action campaigns.
Discovery Institute raised money for "Unlocking the Mystery of Life," a DVD produced by Illustra Media and shown on PBS stations in major markets. The institute has sponsored opinion polls and underwrites research for books sold in secular and Christian bookstores. Its newest project is to establish a science laboratory.
Meyer said the institute accepts money from such wealthy conservatives as Howard Ahmanson Jr., who once said his goal is "the total integration of biblical law into our lives," and the Maclellan Foundation, which commits itself to "the infallibility of the Scripture."
"We'll take money from anyone who wants to give it to us," Meyer said. "Everyone has motives. Let's acknowledge that and get on with the interesting part."
Terry Fox, a Southern Baptist minister in Kansas, also makes it clear that the goal is not just to get a hearing for his views, but to change social and political policy for all Americans.
To fundamentalist Christians, Fox said, the fight to teach God's role in creation is becoming the essential front in America's culture war. The issue is on the agenda at every meeting of pastors he attends. If evolution's boosters can be forced to back down, he said, the Christian right's agenda will advance.
"If you believe God created that baby, it makes it a whole lot harder to get rid of that baby," Fox said. "If you can cause enough doubt on evolution, liberalism will die."
Which is very flawed logic, because when did a religious belief that God created human life ever keep those same people from supporting the destruction of human life? For the ethical conviction behind Fox's statement to be consistent, he and other Christians of his ilk would have to believe that a human being continues to be God's creation after that human being is no longer a fetus or a newborn baby. And if such people DID believe that human beings are God's creation throughout their lives, then they would oppose war and the death penalty on the same religious grounds that they oppose abortion. As we all know, that is not the case.
Sunday, March 13, 2005
THE AMERICAN STREET has two fascinating pieces today: one about whether ancient DNA can be brought back to life, and another linking to a New York Times review of a book by a Jesuit priest, about the history of religious freedom.
MARY AT THE LEFT COASTER writes about Dianne Feinstein's reasons for voting against the bankruptcy bill after her initial plans to support it. Mary quotes part of Feinstein's statement explaining her opposition to the legislation:
Senator Dayton moved an amendment which would limit interest rates on credit cards to 30 percent. The amendment was summarily defeated. The fact of the matter is that with penalties, with other charges, with high interest rates and many companies have interest rates well -- believe it or not -- in excess of 30 percent, a minimum payer cannot ever repay the full debt because the interest on the debt, if combined with certain penalties and/or fixed payments, becomes such that it overwhelms the principal. Now, many people don't know that.I wonder if any of the senators who voted down the amendment to bar credit card companies from charging higher than 30% interest consider themselves Christians. Just in case there are any such, I would like to ask them: If Jesus were alive today, what would he think of Christians allowing banks to charge 30% interest or more on loans to poor and working-class people? What would Jesus have done?
THERE'S BEEN A LOT OF TALK in the traditional media lately (as I mentioned in my previous post) about whether Bloggers Are Really Journalists, or just wannabe journalists who aren't accountable to anyone and don't have to meet the same standards as real journalists, and yadda yadda yadda. BUT: Are real journalists really journalists? That is to say, do journalists who have gone to J-school or who are employed by a newspaper or magazine or who have formal press credentials actually follow the First Rule of Journalism?
JEANNE AT BODY AND SOUL has written a not-to-be-missed piece about doing evil things in the name of fighting terror; about how it affects her emotionally; and about how it affects all Americans when terrible acts are committed in our name, and we deny them, ignore them, or even enjoy them.
Quoting Mark Shea of Crisis Magazine on why torture is a moral absolute (i.e., torturing is always evil and never justifiable), Jeanne says:
A culture of abuse doesn't stay in the box.
In fact, I'd take that argument much farther. The problem isn't just that certain people, already prone to that sin, will be given license to practice it and won't know when to stop. Evil isn't something that exists over there in the other guy, but not in me. Whatever penchant for cruelty exists in each of us will come to the surface. And at some point you end up with a country in which people can look at pictures of abuse, read about men beaten while hanging from the ceiling, or children raped and set upon by guard dogs, and move on, perhaps even find some sick enjoyment in the spirit of vengeance. They won't react to the evil done by their leaders. They won't care. Or worse, they will approve.
Maybe we're already there, in which case this is less a matter of politics than of saving souls. I can't think of any effective political response to this situation. There's no way to "frame" abuse so that people who don't care will care. The only way to talk about it is -- with or without religious language -- as the most important moral issue we face.
This is blogging at its very best, and the answer to traditional media pundits who question what blogs have to offer. Read it. You will be glad you did.
THE U.S. MAY BE VIOLATING local laws in carrying out its policy of renditions. Today's Washington Post reports that officials in several European countries are looking into the possibility that the C.I.A. may have broken laws by kidnapping what the C.I.A. calls "terrorism suspects" on European soil and taking them by force to countries where they are tortured, abused, and mistreated.
A radical Egyptian cleric known as Abu Omar was walking to a Milan mosque for noon prayers in February 2003 when he was grabbed on the sidewalk by two men, sprayed in the face with chemicals and stuffed into a van. He hasn't been seen since.
Milan investigators, however, now appear to be close to identifying his kidnappers. Last month, officials showed up at Aviano Air Base in northern Italy and demanded records of any American planes that had flown into or out of the joint U.S.-Italian military installation around the time of the abduction. They also asked for logs of vehicles that had entered the base.
Italian authorities suspect the Egyptian was the target of a CIA-sponsored operation known as rendition, in which terrorism suspects are forcibly taken for interrogation to countries where torture is practiced.
The Italian probe is one of three official investigations that have surfaced in the past year into renditions believed to have taken place in Western Europe. Although the CIA usually carries out the operations with the help or blessing of friendly local intelligence agencies, law enforcement authorities in Italy, Germany and Sweden are examining whether U.S. agents may have broken local laws by detaining terrorist suspects on European soil and subjecting them to abuse or maltreatment.
The CIA has kept details of rendition cases a closely guarded secret, but has defended the controversial practice as an effective and legal way to prevent terrorism. Intelligence officials have testified that they have relied on the tactic with greater frequency since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Obviously, the legality of rendition is questionable. Kidnapping is not legal, and neither is torture. I doubt that "We didn't do the torture ourselves; the countries we sent the suspects to did the torture" would be regarded as a legal defense, when the C.I.A. knows perfectly well that the countries these suspects are sent to practice torture routinely.
There's a larger point, too. When, in order to prevent terrorism, our government itself acts in ways that are terroristic, then the line between good guys and bad guys becomes very blurry. The C.I.A. may believe renditions are preventing terrorism (that in itself is an arguable point, given that so many kidnapped suspects have eventually been released without being charged); but what do we then say to people in other countries when they want to know how they can defend themselves against the threat of American terrorism? It must be pretty nerve-wracking to know that you can never be sure when you leave your house that you will come back again.
Those who use the tools of terrorists -- kidnapping, torture, death threats, assassination -- to fight terrorism would be well advised to remember the example of the Star Wars character, Anakin Skywalker. He started out "kind and selfless," with a passion for justice; but he let himself be seduced by the seductive appeal of the Dark Side -- and he became Darth Vader.
REMEMBER THOSE PHOTOS and television footage of jubilant Iraqis welcoming U.S. troops with open arms, giving them flowers, and holding up signs saying, "Thank you, Bush! Thank you, U.S.A.!"? More likely than not they were produced by the Defense Department, the State Department, or any one of over a dozen other government agencies, given to local television stations, and aired as straight news, with no acknowledgment that the government had made and distributed them. Even the "reporters" were public relations professionals working for the Bush administration.
Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.
This is arguably worse than state control of the press in the Soviet Union. There, the tv stations and newspapers had no choice but to report what the government told them to. If they didn't, they would be arrested and thrown into prison, or maybe even vanish into the gulag archipelago. Here, although the Bush administration HAS been doing everything it can to bully the press into following the party line, it's still not politically feasible for the government to arrest and imprison journalists or news producers for refusing to air government-produced "news" segments, "reported" by pr flacks, and beamed into Americans' homes with no disclaimer that what people are seeing is basically a commercial, and not actual objective information or news.
Centralized governments will always try to take away individual and intellectual freedom, if they can. That is the nature of governments. It's up to the people to recognize and appreciate their obligation to be vigilant against intrusions on freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and all the rest. Too many Americans in the late 20th and start of the 21st centuries have come to believe that love of country means trusting, believing, and obeying our government without any serious questioning or opposition, because we elected them and that means we have to allow them to do whatever they want. Jefferson, Adams, Madison, and our other founders would have been shocked to their very cores at such attitudes.
And it IS truly shocking that a country where freedom of the press and the obligation to question authority is enshrined in that country's founding documents, has become a place where the press willingly allows itself to become a tool of government propaganda.
FROM TODAY'S NEW YORK TIMES. Take particular note of the last paragraph.
In the weeks after Baghdad fell in April 2003, looters systematically dismantled and removed tons of machinery from Saddam Hussein's most important weapons installations, including some with high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear arms, a senior Iraqi official said this week in the government's first extensive comments on the looting.
The Iraqi official, Sami al-Araji, the deputy minister of industry, said it appeared that a highly organized operation had pinpointed specific plants in search of valuable equipment, some of which could be used for both military and civilian applications, and carted the machinery away.
Dr. Araji said his account was based largely on observations by government employees and officials who either worked at the sites or lived near them.
"They came in with the cranes and the lorries, and they depleted the whole sites," Dr. Araji said. "They knew what they were doing; they knew what they want. This was sophisticated looting."
The threat posed by these types of facilities was cited by the Bush administration as a reason for invading Iraq, but the installations were left largely unguarded by allied forces in the chaotic months after the invasion.
Saturday, March 12, 2005
THE POWER OF BLOGS ... Echidne guest-blogs on The American Street about ... blogging! She muses about the Powers-That-Be, who worry about our enormous un-journalistically credentialed influence on the political process so much that they are talking about various ways to confront the danger we represent -- like treating links to a candidate's site as campaign contributions. At the same time, we are called "bloggers in pajamas" to let us know we have no real significance as purveyors of information and commentary.
Kathy Flake over at What Do I Know? also weighs in on the Blog Phenomenon.
ANOTHER LOOK AT THE ZOMBIE STORY ... Elayne Riggs has a post about the Kentucky high school student who was arrested for "terroristic threatening" after his grandmother found some writings of his that alarmed her. As I wrote on March 6, the boy said that what he had written was a short story about zombies taking over a high school.
Elayne refers to a post about this case at Neil Gaiman's blog, of which I had been unaware until I read her post about 10 minutes ago. Neil links to an article on the Lexington Herald-Leader's website, which quotes a local police detective, Steven Caudill, to the effect that the writing had nothing to do with zombies, but rather was about a "bloody shootout" in "Zone 2," which is the student's term for Clark County, where he lives.
Here is a portion of what the Herald-Leader's reporter writes:
In an interview after his arrest, Poole told WLEX-TV (Channel 18) that he had simply written a fictional story about zombies taking over an unidentified high school.
Sympathizers who saw the news story on the Internet have sent dozens of e-mail messages to police, the county attorney, teachers and others. In e-mail and on Web bulletin boards, they have suggested local authorities are "idiots" and "incestuous hillbillies" who were out to take away Poole's right to free speech.
However, Poole's teachers told police they had not assigned such a story or talked to him about it -- and had they seen it, they would have been obligated to report him to authorities.
And, as it turns out, Poole's writings include no brain-eating dead folks.
What they do contain, Winchester police Detective Steven Caudill testified yesterday, is evidence that he had tried to solicit seven fellow students to join him in a military organization called No Limited Soldiers.
The writings describe a bloody shootout in "Zone 2," the designation given to Clark County.
"All the soldiers of Zone 2 started shooting," Caudill read on the witness stand. "They're dropping every one of them. After five minutes, all the people are lying on the ground dead."
The papers contain two different dates of Poole's death.
The article also reports that Caudill testified that Poole (the student), "corresponded with someone in Barbourville who claimed to have acquired cash and guns in break-ins. ..."
Elayne is absolutely correct in saying that the people who criticized the local Kentucky authorities for charging Poole with "terroristic threatening" when all he did was write a piece of fiction may have jumped to conclusions and need to acknowledge that they may have been wrong. Obviously, I am one of those people; and it does appear that there is more to this story than what it seemed to be at first.
So, I plead guilty to assuming the worst of the local authorities when they may have been acting in good faith to stop what could have been a real and serious threat of school violence.
That said (you knew there was going to be a "But," didn't you?), I am not yet prepared to accept at face value the charges that Poole "made threats against students, teachers and police." Let's take a look at some of the details in this story, shall we?
- The Herald-Leader piece says that "Poole's teachers told police they had not assigned such a story or talked to him about it -- and had they seen it, they would have been obligated to report him to authorities." But in the original news article I linked to in my March 6 piece, Poole said nothing about his teachers assigning him the story he wrote. He said he wrote the story for his English class, but the topic was something he made up from his head. He did not claim or imply (in this article, at least) that his teachers had given him an assignment to write about zombies taking over a high school. My sense is that they told him (or the class) to write a piece of fiction, and this is what he chose to write.
- The portion of Poole's short story that Caudill read in court does not sound like a threat against his students and teachers to me. Granted, we're only seeing one sentence from the story, but this is what the newspaper article gave us. And that sentence -- "All the soldiers of Zone 2 started shooting. They're dropping every one of them. After five minutes, all the people are lying on the ground dead." -- sounds like a description of a military attack. With the exception of the phrase "Zone 2," it could be a news account of the U.S. siege of Fallujah. How surprising is it that an 18-year-old kid who has been exposed to endless news for years about bloody attacks, shock and awe, bombing, shooting and killing insurgents, suicide bombing and body parts scattered everywhere would have that sort of thing on his mind? Is it possible that Poole was not trying to threaten or plan an attack of his own, but merely writing, in fictional form, about what he reads and hears every day?
- Last, what on earth does "The papers contain two different dates of Poole's death" mean?
So -- here is my bottom line: By all means, we should not (and I should not have) jump to conclusions about Poole's arrest or the content of his writing; but neither should we go to the opposite extreme and say that the authorities are right about what Poole wrote and what he intended by writing it, and that he absolutely is guilty of "terroristic threatening" against his students and teachers. I, for one, will continue to watch this story as it plays out, and I will continue to remain skeptical.
