Thanks again to Rob-san for yet another tip: Top Ten Things You Wouldn't Expect to Happen If You Listened to Bush and Cheney, on Informed Comment. Juan Cole is a professor of history at the University of Michigan who records his "Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion" in his blog.
The list includes a link to the Gitmo interrogation log excerpted by Time magazine.
I'll have more to say about the interrogation log after I have a chance to digest it (no doubt with plenty of help from Maalox Plus).
Monday, June 13, 2005
"Top 10" Bush and Cheney
Schwarzenegger Trembles Before Satan
In a little less than 13 hours, California President Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to announce that he is going to force the cash-strapped state (actually, the even more cash-strapped counties) to shell out $70,000,000.00 or so to hold a special election on November 8, 2005, because we just can't wait seven whole months to decide whether or not to change the rules for public school tenure, re-draw our legislative boundaries in an unprecedented (except in Texas) mid-decade redistricting, and pass a binding requirement that the state government find enough pixie dust to balance the budget, even knowing full well that the Legislature lacks the conejos cojones to either raise taxes or cut services. Our highways are crumbling, we don't have enough public transit to provide a solid alternative to private cars, our schools rank #47 out of 51 states (including D.C.) — thank goodness for Texas and Mississippi! — and we have literally millions of residents with no access to medical care except through the emergency room.
So why are we spending $70 million on a special election, when there's a regular election only seven months later? Because Governor Schwarzenegger's personal political calculus is more important than a few hundred new calculus teachers. Because redrawing legislative districts six years early is more important than repainting the lane stripes on our decaying highways. Because giving the governor an opportunity to yell at nurses as a "special interest group" is more important than providing healthcare to homeless children.
Or just maybe because Arnold Schwarzenegger is afraid that if he waits until June 6, 2006, the right-wing Christian lunatics who are a significant part of his power base will be afraid to go out and vote on 6/6/06. C'mon, Arnie, you're not really afraid of a black cat, are you? Maybe we could hold the special election on January 13th instead. (Hey, it's even the day before a full moon. Very auspicious.)
At 5:00 p.m. today, we will find out whether the governator is going to govern, or whether he's going to just play at being an action hero.
News Flash from Subic Bay, Derkderkistan
— Derka derka derka mensaje derka.Yup, as many languages as I've dabbled in (mostly just a few words here or there), Tagalog still sounds the same to me as the Derkderkistani soldiers in Team America. All the same, I occasionally listen to the Filipino newscasts here in San Francisco. Between the Liberal sprinkling of English and Spanish words in a typical Filipino sentence and the general knowledge of what they're talking about from having already seen the news in English, I can get a fair idea of what they're saying, even if I don't know my Dalawampung from a Tagapangasiwa.
— Derka derka derka derka six months.
— Derka derka American boyfriend derka derka.
Right now, though, I'm watching the 1997 movie Goodbye, America, and finding its storyline entirely too timely for comfort. John Stryzack, a Navy military policeman at Subic Bay in the Philippines, played by Corin Nemec, sees America through the same eyes embodied by President George Walker Bush. [paraphrasing Stryzack from memory:] "You see over there? That used to be a 1300-foot [400-metre] mountain, but the United States decided it was in the way, so now it's gone. That's the kind of country I want to be a part of." If the locals aren't savvy enough to appreciate the opportunity to lick the boots of Americans, then damn them all to hell anyway. What the United States wants, the United States takes, whether that's your sister (or your daughter) as a prostitute for the pleasure of our men in those spiffy white sailor outfits (Woof!), or a naval base at Guantánamo Bay to use as a torture laboratory (hey — gotta learn which techniques really get results!), or every drop of dead dinosaur juice from underneath your worthless sand dunes. It's mine now, bitch! Boo-hoo. Whatcha gonna do, call the United Nations on us?? Maybe the Security Council will pass a strongly worded resolution condemning our rapacious greed.
Why does America think it is well served by having that kind of attitude in the White House? Why does America think it is well served by sending that kind of attitude to the United Nations? Why does America think it is well served by applying that kind of logic to our own people?
Why does America believe that the man who personifies that attitude is also a sincere Christian? Because he says that God really doesn't (wink, wink) hate homosexuals, he just doesn't want them to marry abortionists? Because he gives bread crumbs and stale tuna salad to the masses while serving cake and caviar to the moneychangers in the temple? You tell me.
Just a few random thoughts about the fight against the Barbars.
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Is Relying on Foreign Law Impeachable?
Wow. I'm linking to an article by Phyllis Schlafly. That's a first for me.
In the May 2005 issue of The Phyllis Schlafly Report, poor little Phyllis, too old now to be barefoot and pregnant the way God intended, instead turns her attention to "the latest outrage by the U.S. Supreme Court" — the ruling in Roper v. Simmons in which Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, found that it is "cruel and unusual punishment" (within the meaning of the 8th Amendment) to execute a criminal who was a minor at the time the crime was committed.
Schlafly's greatest dismay is reserved for the fact that Kennedy makes reference to something outside the United States of America. Since 1989, when the U.S. Supreme Court last upheld it, the juvenile death penalty has been abolished in Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Nigeria, Congo, and the People's Republic of China — all nations known for their sterling record of humane treatment of criminals. Kennedy noted this trend in the reasoning for his decision that in 2005 execution of juveniles constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment."
How dare Tony Kennedy even acknowledge the existence of the outside world?! For that matter, how dare that well-known liberal Thomas Jefferson refer to the outside world in the Declaration of Independence:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people [the United States] to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another [Britain], and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God [that's a Deist reference, not a Christian reference] entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.Clearly we need to retroactively impeach President Jefferson. Read More......
Protecting the Vote for Men Only
A female state senator is seeking the Republican nomination for Kansas Secretary of State, the top state elections official. In and of itself, that's not something I would pay attention to. (Yes, I know, "something to which I would pay attention.") But there's this little quote from 2001:
I think the 19th Amendment, while it's not an evil in and of itself, is a symptom of something I don't approve of. The 19th Amendment [giving women the vote] is around because men weren't doing their jobs, and I think that's sad. I believe the man should be the head of the family. The woman should be the heart of the family. — Kansas State Senator Kay O'Connor, in 2001The sad thing is, Kay O'Connor really isn't out of the mainstream of Republican politics in America today. Read More......
Intrusiveness of Government
(The following quote has been circulating on the Internet, attributed to a "recent column" by Craig Carter in the Sunday Oregonian. I wasn't able to verify its authenticity on the Oregonian's web site, but the quote itself is worth repeating even if the attribution is unconfirmed.)
Other than telling us how to live, think, marry, pray, vote, invest, educate our children and, now, die, I think the Republicans have done a fine job of getting government out of our personal lives.Yes, indeed, I remember when the Party of Lincoln (a name in which I took great pride) stood for individual liberty, for the principle that the government should stay out of our personal lives, except where a "compelling state interest" is involved. For instance, the government cannot interfere in my freedom to practice my religion unless there is a compelling state interest. If my religious beliefs require me to sacrifice the lives of unwilling victims upon my altar, there is a compelling state interest in preventing me from exercising that particular part of my religious beliefs, unless of course I'm a Republican President.
Where is the compelling state interest in telling me how to conduct my private sexual affairs with other consenting adults? Where is the compelling state interest in telling me that I can't marry another man? We as a nation belatedly recognized the lack of CSI in prohibiting me from marrying a woman of a different race. Where is the compelling state interest in telling me what I can or can't watch on cable television? Where is the compelling state interest in interfering in Terri Schiavo's wishes not to have her life artificially prolonged by a feeding tube? Where is the compelling state interest in being able to check my library records without even bothering a judge beforehand? For that matter, where is the compelling state interest in telling me that I can't use marijuana, whether on the advice of a qualified doctor or as a part of my religious practice or just for grins? Read More......
Pit Bulls and War Plans
The banner headline of Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle is "Mother Shut Boy in Basement to Protect Him from Pit Bull." Here in San Francisco a few days ago, a 12yo boy was mauled to death by his family's own pit bull. The boy's mother, Maureen Faibish, called the newspaper yesterday to give her side of the tragic situation.
I put him down there [in the basement], with a shovel on the door. He [her son Nicholas] had a bunch of food. And I told him, "Stay down there until I come back." Typical Nicky, he wouldn't listen to me.Maureen was concerned because her female pit bull, Ella, was in heat, and the male pit bull, Rex, was acting "possessive." But did she control her pets? Did she lock the DOGS in the basement? No, she locked her 12yo son in the basement to protect him from the dogs.
In a recent newspaper article, a doctor who treats pit bull bites said, "When you have an animal like [Rex the pit bull] in your house you are recklessly endangering your family." Incredibly, Maureen Faibish takes issue with that statement, saying, "They made it sound like we put our kids in a war zone. That's not true. My kids got along great with [the dogs]. We were never seeing any kind of violent tendencies." Well then, Maureen, why did you SHUT your son in the BASEMENT to protect him from the dogs?? Unsurprisingly, Maureen said that it was destiny, that it was Nicky's time to die. She even says, "I have no regrets about that day."
If I seem insensitive to the pain of a mother whose child has been horrifically killed, that's because I am insensitive when that pain was caused by her own grotesque gross negligence as a parent. Of course I don't know all the facts of the case, but from what I've seen so far, I would support pressing criminal charges against the parents, and I would certainly support placing Nicholas' brother and sister into protective care.
Nicholas Faibish (family photo, via SFChronicle)
As for War Plans, I'm referring to another headline in today's Chronicle (page A11, "British memo shows pre-invasion doubts," by Walter Pincus, originally for the Washington Post). Even before the (not nearly famous enough) "Downing Street Memo," a briefing paper prepared for Tony Blair "concluded that the U.S. military was not preparing adequately for a 'protracted and costly' postwar occupation of [Iraq]." The article notes that Paul Wolfowitz portrayed the Iraq invasion as a more attractive alternative than spending another $30 billion over 12 years, as the U.S. did in its post-Kuwait containment strategy. So it's better to spend 40 times as much money, and far more dead and wounded soldiers, without a postwar plan? Don't worry about it, they'll greet us as liberators; you know, flowers and chocolates and that sort of thing.
A postwar occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise. As already made clear, the U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point. — July 21, 2002, staff memo to Tony Blair
There was a perceptible shift in attitude [in Washington]. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. — Sir Richard Dearlove, chief of MI6 [British counterpart to the CIA], reporting to Tony Blair, July 23, 2002So why on earth have I juxtaposed a local story about a boy killed by his family's pet against an international story about the lack of planning for the Iraq war?
George W. Bush and Maureen Faibish both ignored obvious signs of lethal dangers, and both are contorting themselves to evade any responsibility for the deaths that ensued.
I'm not saying that the United States should never go to war; in particular, I think entering World War II was a pretty good idea. However, I think that the Marshall Plan was a really great idea, and I don't see anything on remotely the same wavelength coming out of the Bush White House. I'm also not saying that all pit bulls are evil and should be destroyed; I have good friends who own pit bulls. However, when you're so concerned about your dog's aggressiveness that you lock your child in the basement for his own protection, that should be a red flag about the size of Kansas. Read More......
Friday, June 10, 2005
What color is your cat?
In the Datebook section of Thursday's San Francisco Chronicle, columnist John King remarks on "Lessons to be learned from London's mayor." London's mayor Ken Livingstone was in San Francisco for World Environment Day. Livingstone is a proud card-carrying socialist, but he praised Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for working to reduce greenhouse gases, and also quoted former Chinese premier Deng Xiaoping.
Deng was a pretty scummy guy. He was the one who ordered the tanks in at Tiananmen Square to destroy the terrible threat posed by a papier-mâché statue inspired by the Statue of Liberty. However, he also said, "It doesn't matter if your cat is black or white, but does it catch the mice?"
The moral is, we should be less concerned with whether an idea is "left-wing" or "right-wing," and more concerned with whether the idea would effectively deal with the problems we face.
We should be able to respect wise words, even from the mouth of a brutally repressive murdering thug of a dictator. Hell, I'd even respect wise words from President Bush, were he ever to utter any.
49ers Training Video
The San Francisco 49ers foo-ball team is experiencing a public relations nightmare because their in-house training video on how to deal with the news media, was leaked to the very same news media.
The top headline in the Thursday edition of the San Francisco Chronicle (which broke the story of the video) is "49ers Players Defend Video as Owners Apologize for It." The pull quote from the one of the players is:
Is the video insensitive? Yes. But ... it's the same type of satire that has [comedian] Dave Chappelle as the No. 1 show.Well, I've seen some of the clips from the video, which has made it all the way up to the top of the news food chain, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Dave Chappelle does satire, including elements that — taken out of context — would be insensitive, tacky, rude, and crass. However, there are a few small differences.
- Dave Chappelle is actually funny (most of the time, anyhow).
- Dave Chappelle is satirizing the tackiness, not tackily mocking
ChinksChinese people,lesboslesbians, orbroadswomen in general. ("Some of my best friends" are lesbo Chink broads.) - Dave Chappelle has a context for the satire. The context is what turns mockery into satire.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
In Defense — and Criticism — of Ward Churchill
Ward Churchill, a professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, is in the news again. Shortly after 9/11, Churchill wrote an essay entitled "On the Justice of Roosting Chickens," in which he used the phrase "little Eichmanns" to describe some of the people working for finance industry titans in the World Trade Center.
Who was Adolf Eichmann? During World War II, Eichmann was a bureaucrat who worked to increase the efficiency of the Nazi death camps. Although Eichmann himself never personally shot or gassed any of the prisoners, he streamlined the process by which they were sent to their deaths.
What was Ward Churchill talking about in calling the WTC financiers "little Eichmanns"? The best source I can find for this is Churchill's interview on Real Time with Bill Maher on March 4, 2005. (Have I mentioned that I love my TiVo?) With considerable help from Bill Maher, the point Churchill made was that the financiers blithely pursued pure profit with inadequate regard to the suffering and death in other countries caused by that pursuit of profit. If an American investor gets rich from sweat-shop labor in a third world country, or from building a factory that props up a brutal dictator, it is an obvious and natural consequence that people in those countries resent America. America as a nation has unclean hands, from the death of tens of millions of African slaves to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians in the two Gulf Wars, and from the sweatshops of southeast Asia to the oil fields of Nigeria and Iraq.
America as a nation needs to address the harms, as well as the benefits, wrought by our economic activities in the world — not just the actions of the government, but also of corporations and even individuals. We need to seek more "win-win" solutions instead of exploitative opportunities, even if our own profits decline slightly. That is what I see as the valid point behind Churchill's essay.
Where I fault Ward Churchill is in his style of communicating the point. He has a degree in communications, but evidently doesn't apply those studies very well to his current work. The comparison of a person working at a brokerage in the WTC, a person whose economic activities include some creation of misery in the third world, to Eichmann, a man who intentionally designed a system with no purpose other than killing innocent human beings, is so far beyond reason as to be obscene. Even on Bill Maher, Churchill hunkered down into a combative stance worthy of a Bush Administration toadie, rather than explain the real point lost behind his inflammatory rhetoric.
Who needs a draft? We'll just KIDNAP new recruits!
skippy the bush hussein kangaroo tipped me off to this item in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which skippy picked up from alternate brain.
In brief, 17yo Axel Cobb is being stalked by US Marine Corpse recruiters. Axel's father, a Marine who served in Vietnam, died when Axel was 4. Axel is not interested in signing up. His mother doesn't want him to. His father would not have wanted him to. But the Marines won't take no for an answer. The recruiter kidnaped Axel from his workplace and coerced him into signing papers the recruiter refused to explain.
If the all-volunteer military isn't getting enough sign-ups, and the Presidunce is committed to not having a draft, the only remaining option is impressment.
It was "Uncle Jim" (President James Madison, actually my mutter-th cousin mumble times removed) who declared what became known as The War of 1812 in part because of the British practice of impressing sailors (including natural-born U.S. citizens) into the Royal Navy. We no longer have King George III to impress (kidnap) our citizens, so now we have George Bush.
I know that today's teenagers are difficult to impress, but really....
They don't call them Uncle Sam's Misguided Children for nothin'.
Retirement Accounts
So far in this blog, I have probably looked pretty left-wing, maybe even verging on loony left. What can I say; I live in San Francisco. However, I do feel it's about time to show my conservative, right-wing, downright "mossback" side. (It's only a side; I don't whole-heartedly endorse the mossback philosophy.)
President Bush has been talking quite a bit about Social Security and especially private retirement accounts. This is an issue on which I find myself to the right of President Bush.
Social Security taxes should be used only to pay for the benefits necessary to ensure that, as President Bush says, "if you worked all your life in a tough job and you contributed to the Social Security system, when you retire, you ought not to retire into poverty." That's it. Social Security is a safety net to keep people out of poverty. It is not, never has been and never should be, a full-fledged pension plan. It is the ultimate "loony left" idea to think that the government should provide your entire retirement.
The balance of your retirement planning should be composed of true private accounts. The distinction between President Bush's fake private accounts and the genuine article is clear. In a true private account, you decide how much you contribute, you decide what risk level is appropriate for you (certificates of deposit or penny stocks or somewhere in between, or better yet a mix of investments), and you decide where to invest. President Bush proposes to set up a very small number of government-established mutual funds into which you can divert your mandatory payroll taxes and hope that they do better than your Roth IRA.
We already have private retirement accounts. They go by names like IRA, Roth IRA, Keogh, 401(k), SEP, and SIMPLE, and I'm probably leaving out a couple. If Social Security as it is currently set up is not enough to provide a happy retirement (Duhhh!), then you need to get yourself over to one of those private retirement accounts. That's called "personal responsibility," which I seem to recall that President Bush favors.
Of course, the reality is that many people, especially if you're living paycheck to paycheck, find it difficult to set aside money for 30 or 40 years from now. We want to get new sneakers and video games and big-screen TVs (and food, clothing, and shelter, plus the occasional medical care) right now. Saving for retirement isn't "sexy."
The appropriate role of government in such a situation is to encourage and facilitate responsible behavior, not to replace it with government bureaucracy. There are many ways we can do that. We can tinker with the particulars of various IRA-type accounts. For example, the dollar limit for annual contributions was recently raised. Maybe we could add a checkbox to the W-4 form (where you tell your employer how many exemptions you are claiming, in order to calculate your income tax withholding) for a monthly retirement contribution; say, for example, put $75 per month into IRA account #123456789. Maybe we could find a way to make it easier to put part of your income tax refund into your retirement account, since the tax refund is the one way that most working people save money. In the mean time, we should not raise mandatory payroll taxes to pay for fake private accounts. Taking money out of the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for fake private accounts only makes it more difficult for individuals to save for their retirement.
The way that Bush is proposing to set up fake private accounts would create a handful of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats who would administer these multi-trillion dollar mutual funds. If you give me a couple of trillion dollars to invest, I suddenly become one of the most powerful people on the planet. I can make or break a medium-sized company with a wave of my hand. Of course, a bureaucrat installed by George W. Bush would never make investment decisions based on partisan political considerations, right? On the other hand, a bureaucrat installed by that paragon of personal integrity William Jefferson Clinton would never invest in a partisan way, either. Both honorable patriotic Americans would invest wisely in oceanfront resort property in North Dakota.
One trillion dollars looks like this: $1,000,000,000,000.00. Can you wrap your mind around all those zeros? It's a million times a million dollars. Imagine a world in which winning the Lotto jackpot is almost as important as picking the lint out of your navel.
One thing on which both the Left and the Right should agree is that President Bush's fake private accounts are an incredibly bad idea, across the board.
Mysterious Skin
I just went to see the Gregg Araki film Mysterious Skin (rated NC-17), a film that deals with the aftermath of childhood sexual abuse a decade earlier. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, probably still best known for his role on Third Rock from the Sun, turns in an astonishing performance as the lead. It's a movie that'll leave you speechless.
Read More......Wednesday, June 08, 2005
President Bully on Fox News
I was watching a bit of Fox News (Don't try this at home! Leave watching Fox News Propaganda & Disinformation to the trained professionals!) this afternoon, and happened to catch Neil Cavuto's interview with President George W. Bush. What struck me most was the extent to which the defining element of Dubya's character came shining through: he is a bully. We know from his classmates that Dubya was a schoolyard bully. Now, as an adult (chronologically speaking), Dubya continues bullying other nations (friend and foe), bullying our own politicians (Republican and Democrat) and bullying the news media (except Fox News: News at the Speed of Lies). The term "bully pulpit" is not supposed to mean a pulpit for a sanctimonious bully.
In the Cavuto interview, President Bush said, "Part of the problem is that, in a certain body in Congress, a minority can block anything." He was referring, of course, to the Senate filibuster, although he was referring to his energy bill, not to the flap over judicial nominations. The filibuster has been a part of the Senate for its entire history. The filibuster has served our nation well for over two centuries. Indeed, up until 1975, only 34 Senators were needed to sustain a filibuster, and before 1917, it took only one Senator. (It now takes 41 Senators to sustain a filibuster.)
The point of the filibuster — a point lost on President Bully — is to encourage the crafting of a reasoned consensus on the most important issues, rather than allowing a 50.001% majority to work their will unfettered. Rather than demonstrating leadership by genuinely reaching out to find judicial nominees, or an energy bill, that would meet with bi-partisan approval, President Bush prefers the tactics of a playground bully. His "my way or the highway" attitude is the antithesis (exact opposite) of leadership, and the country is not well served.
President Clinton's nominees to the Supreme Court were voted in with over 80% of the Republican-controlled Senate after hearings in the Republican-controlled committee. Why can't Bush nominate judges who would get 80% votes? I guess it's because Bill Clinton was a far better leader than George W. Bush could ever aspire to become — and my assessment of Clinton's leadership is pretty lukewarm, only slightly ahead of John Kerry.
Unfortunately, the Democrats (and many Republicans) prefer a policy of appeasement with the Bush political machine. The comparison of Bush to Hitler is absurd, but the appeasement of Bush is remarkably similar to the great success achieved by Neville Chamberlain in the 1930's. If you consistently back down in front of a bully, it only emboldens him, encouraging him to come back next week for more than just your lunch money.
By the way, Bush also told an outright lie to Neil Cavuto:
I was very impressed by the use of intelligence [regarding the alleged terror cell in Lodi, California] and the follow-up. And that's what the American people need to know, that when we find any hint about any possible wrongdoing or a possible cell, that we'll follow up — by the way, honoring the civil liberties of those to whom we follow up. In other words, we're just not going to pick up the telephone and listen to somebody without a proper court order. That's protecting the civil liberties of Americans.The whole point of the USAPATRIOT (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act is that it allows surveillance without a court order, using a "National Security Letter" or other administrative (rather than judicial) procedure. The President is not committed to protecting the civil liberties of Americans.
I also caught some of the following program, The Big Story with John Gibson, where I got to see John Gibson interrupt his guest in mid-sentence talking about alleged terrorists in California to bring us the critical breaking news that the judge in the Michael Jackson trial was going to issue a statement (not a verdict, just a written statement) later in the hour. To be fair (and balanced!), I doubt that the other networks handled it much better; I just happened to be watching Faux News at the time. The possibility of a terror cell in central California affects America far more deeply than the upcoming release of a run-of-the-mill statement related to the Jacko trial. Our news media is, as usual, AWOL — seduced by celebrity gossip instead of real news. (Did you hear that Nick Carter and Jesse McCartney were secretly married on Monday in Seekonk, Massachusetts!? No? That's probably because it didn't happen.) Read More......
Transgressing Gender Conference
(I got an e-mail this evening about a conference in Zagreb, Croatia, this autumn. I'm stunned to see something this progressive coming out of the former Yugoslavia.)
Transgressing Gender Conference:
Two is not enough for gender (e)quality
Zagreb, Croatia ∗ 7 – 9 October 2005
Society's concepts of sex and gender must be challenged. These concepts are more fluid now than they have ever been. However, as the struggle for gender equality and freedom of gender expression intensifies, communities that could be working together are becoming more and more divided. What does it mean for the sisterhood of feminism when someone who was born with testicles, someone who will never menstruate, wants to be accepted as one of their own? Can someone assigned male at birth ever really be a woman? What should be done when a baby is born with "ambiguous" genitalia? Furthermore, is gender socially constructed, or wired into our brains? Can an androgynous person actually exist in a gender-free identity? Can a man with a vagina really call himself a man? And what does all this mean on the larger scale of human rights? Is gender in and of itself a human rights issue? These questions seem to be affecting communities all over the globe and we want some answers. And so, we bring you the Transgressing Gender Conference: Two is not enough for gender (e)quality.For more information, check the following sites:
Transgressing Gender Conference
Women's Room
CESI [Hrvatska]
Organization Q [Bosnia]
DEVE [Yugoslavia]
"The working language of the conference will be English; however, part of the program will be in local languages."
More on the multiplicity of genders later. Read More......
Colin Powell will be on the Daily Show tonight
The scheduled guest on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart tonight (Wednesday, June 8th) is General Colin Powell, former Secretary of State, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and former man of integrity Bush Administration patsy.
Should be good.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Blogwhores
What is a blogwhore? A blogwhore is "one who engages in blogwhoring: one who blogwhores."
(Actually, I just gave that definition so that all three forms of the word would show up in a search engine.)
A blogwhore is someone who promotes his/her/monkey's/their blog by posting a comment on someone else's blog. The practice is acceptable if the comment has some relevance to the thread to which it is attached.
Thus far, no one has used my blog for blogwhoring. You could be the first! Do you have an interesting blog, preferably an interesting political blog? Post to this thread.
The Duration of War
From the attack on Pearl Harbor to the unconditional surrender of Japan: 1,365 days.
From the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to today: 1,365 days.
Funny thing, I don't see Osama bin Laden on the deck of the USS Missouri laying down his sword, literally or figuratively.
(Thanks to Rob-san for the timeline tip.)
Monday, June 06, 2005
The Price of Gasoline
No, I'm not going into some esoteric rant about the true cost of gasoline to society, in terms of pollution and resource depletion and yada yada yada. I'm talking about the U.S. dollars and cents it costs to purchase a U.S. gallon (3.785 litres) of gasoline. Here's a recent photo of my local gasoline station, right here in the United States of America, taken April 3, 2005. I have not retouched or altered the photo in any way (except for adding the way-studly copyright notice).
San Francisco, CA, USA, 2005-04-03, about €1.30/litre
Yes, that's $3.40 for regular, $4.50 for mid-grade, and $6.11 for premium, and the actual prices on the pumps matched the sign.
Apparently this particular station decided to make some sort of political statement, because the price across the street was only $2.79 for regular, and an extra dime for each step up in grade. The political interpretation is up to you. Read More......
A Black Day in Green Land?
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled by a 6-3 margin (O'Connor, Rehnquist, and Thomas dissenting; Scalia writing a separate concurring opinion) that the federal laws prohibiting marijuana override any state laws that might permit its use.
I support the legality of medicinal use of marijuana. I support the legalization of recreational use of marijuana. I support the continued legal use of marijuana for religious purposes.
However, from my perusal of the actual text of the decision, I'm not sure that the Supreme Court was wrong. Read the decision itself, please. You can gloss over on the details of Blahblah v. Yadayada; the substance of the decision is that the states cannot carve out a limited exception to the federal drug classification. It is (as the majority of the Court goes out of its way to note) the responsibility of the Congress to recognize the silliness of calling marijuana a substance with no established medicinal use.
The dissenters held that it was within the rights of an individual state to permit medical marijuana within its own borders, provided that it did not extend into interstate commerce.
The Congress has classified marijuana as a Schedule I drug. That means that it has a high potential for abuse, no accepted medical use, and no accepted safety for use in medically supervised treatment.
High potential for abuse
It seems to me that the potential for abuse of a substance breaks down into the attractiveness of non-medical use, the dangers associated with non-medical use, and the risks of physical addictiveness and psychological habituation. Marijuana clearly rates high (no pun intended) on the first criterion. It's fun — kind of like getting drunk, only without the stumbling and puking and with a lot less hangover the next day.The dangers of non-medical use of marijuana vary depending on the frequency of use and the timeframe under consideration. In the long term, smoking marijuana (as well as smoking other things, such as tobacco) increases the risk of various ailments such as lung cancer. More on that issue later.... The THC in marijuana also appears to cause long-term effects such as decreased sperm motility and poor short-term
Marijuana certainly has an element of psychological dependence. On the other hand, another way of saying the same thing is that many people use marijuana as medication for certain psychological issues such as depression. (Such use remains controversial in medical and legal circles, but it is abundantly clear that many individual people consider it self-medication for depression.) On a physical level, though, marijuana is physically addictive. Yes, I said that marijuana is physically addictive. However, that's not the whole story. A friend of mine got his start on smoking pot at his parents' knees at the age of 4. He was a heavy user for 13 years before he quit cold-turkey at age 17. He experienced the textbook symptoms of withdrawal from tetrahydrocannabinol. Of all the marijuana users I have ever known, including some for whom sobriety was a brief break from near-perpetual stoner fog until they abruptly quit, I have never seen any other evidence of physical addiction to marijuana. Besides that, let's look at that issue in context — which carries greater risk of addiction: smoking a Marlboro while enjoying a whiskey and soda, or puffing on an unfiltered marijuana cigarette?
Accepted medical use
The Congress does not accept the medical use, but it is clear that many physicians do. At the very least, the issue is deserving of serious unbiased study. On August 14, 1970, Roger E. Egeberg wrote that marijuana should remain on Schedule I "at least until the completion of certain studies now underway" (see pages 10 & 11 of the majority opinion in Gonzales v. Raich). The studies in question were completed and turned over to President Nixon, recommending that marijuana be removed from Schedule I. NixonSafety of use
Smoking marijuana increases the risk of lung cancer and other ailments. However, that risk can be dramatically reduced by readily available technology, like the Volcano vaporizer. Many of the components of marijuana smoke are products of high-temperature combustion; using a controlled-temperature vaporizer can allow for greater release of the desired active ingredients with lower levels of toxic, carcinogenic, or otherwise nasty crud. It is clear that there is an "accepted safety for use in medically supervised treatment" in using a vaporizer.So why Schedule I?
Politics. Nothing but politics. Seriously. Look at the facts, and tell me with a straight face that it is rational to allow cocktails and ciggie-butts but prohibit reefer. If you can do that, I want to know what you've been smoking. Read More......
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