Mirabile

U.S. worst in preventable death rate

2008-01-09T09:55:00.000-08:00

Of the 19 leading (whatever that means) industrialized nations, the France ranks the best, and U.S. ranks worst in the rate of preventable deaths, with a death rate equal to 1.69 x that in France. Published yesterday by, for example, ABC, Reuters, and UPI.

Bush Admin: What You Don't Know Can't Hurt Us

2007-12-31T13:26:00.001-08:00

Making information disappear. 2007 version. 2006 version.

Truth hurts, so it seems.

Bush Administration Subjects of Criminal Probes

2007-12-31T13:16:00.000-08:00

Wow, it's a New Era in Government. Bush Administration Officials Indicted, Convicted, Pled Guilty, Resigned due to Investigation, Pending Investigation of Allegations of Impropriety, Nomination Failed Due to Scandal, Under Investigation but Still In Office: listed.

Our Undemocratic Constitution

2007-12-27T14:10:00.000-08:00

On the December 21 episode of his Journal, Bill Moyers interviewed Sanford Levinson, whose most recent book is Our Undemocratic Constitution. We find ourselves decrying the degree to which the United States is undemocratic. It turns out, it was never intended to be a democracy. Rather, our founders of the United States of America deliberately and extensively devised strategies to isolate its government from its people. Would we imagine that the word "democracy" would be found in the Declaration of Independence or in the Constitution? It's not. We talk about spreading democracy around the world, yet our own government is explicitly designed otherwise. For starters, the veto gives the president the power to override congress 95% of the time. The electoral college! And the Senate! Very interesting to grasp the implications of how this most undemocratic of institutions can block anything the House of Representatives does. There is a transcript as well as a video at Bill Moyers's site.

The Christmas Story

2007-12-25T11:49:00.000-08:00

Today I stumbled onto a particularly coherent explanation of the the origin of the Christmas story. It's in the form of a 33 minute video. I have not seen Parts 2 & 3 of the same series, which appear to be polemics on "911 Truth", and on "History of the Federal Reserve", respectively. I think the Part 1 linked above can stand alone as a good piece of scholarship.

The piece feels a little too pat, simplistic, at wrapping up the origins of Chrisianity. My gut feel is that the brief survey of the historians like Josephus is more or less veridical; that the resonance of the attributes of Jesus with those of Horus and Mithra seems convincing; and that the broad basis in astrology, though surprisingly explanatory of many core Christian themes, might be overstated. But this stuff should be the starting point for any serious consideration of what Christianity is about.

Bush Administration Scandals.

2007-12-21T14:36:00.000-08:00

On December 6, we mentioned that Hugh at Netrootsmass had compiled a list of 284 Bush Administration scandals. Now it's 15 days and 8 scandals later. You've got your give-aways to lobbyists; the Administration's assertion of the right to kidnap British citizens; its assertion of States Secrets privilege to keep the purpose of Jack Abramoff's White House visits secret; the destruction of video tapes documenting use of torture; the underfunding of Social Security disability payments; the attempt to put the JAGs under the control of political appointees; the hidden costs of the Iraq occupation; the failure of the Justice Department to participate in the matter of Jamie Leigh Jones who was drugged and gang raped by employees of Halliburton subsidiary KBR.

Keith Olbermann on Bill Moyers Journal

2007-12-15T15:39:00.000-08:00

On his Journal last night, Bill profiled and interviewed Keith Olbermann.

There is but one

2007-12-07T13:37:00.001-08:00

Women in art

Bush Administration Scandals: Anybody Keeping Track?

2007-12-06T21:15:00.000-08:00

This guy's trying. As of November 28, 2007, he had counted 284 scandals. To be fair, some are moral lapses of Republicans in Congress, and some are just indications of general governmental collapse, not specific to the Administration. I wonder if anyone is counting how many due to George W's "decisions" are now maimed or dead, or worse.

What happens at Guantanamo if you're found innocent?

2007-12-06T19:10:00.000-08:00

You guessed it. You remain locked up because your release might compromise national security.

Cafferty: White House Illegally Deleted Over 10,000,000 emails

2007-12-06T19:04:00.000-08:00

In a Jack Cafferty December 5 video essay (with transcript): "The Presidential Records Act of 1978 mandates White House communications be preserved. Another law broken -- Another example of nobody doing a damn thing about it." Anybody remember the 18 minutes on Nixon's tapes that were erased accidentally?

Ten Steps To Close Down an Open Society

2007-12-05T15:10:00.000-08:00

Naomi Wolf's April 24 essay summarizing her good book.

Bush v. Bill of Rights

2007-12-05T11:57:00.000-08:00

Phil Leggiere has written a timeline of the actions by the Bush Administration, beginning in January, 2001, to shut down public scrutiny of their activities by curtailing FOIA requests and limiting release of presidential documents, to surveil, wiretap, and read the email of the citizenry without search warrants, to maintain massive databases on citizens including, e.g., their library, credit card, and travel records, to detain indefinitely without charge, to interfere with dissidents' right to travel via the "watch" list, to infiltrate and monitor political and religious groups, permanently to retain data collected on innocent citizens in the course of criminal investigations, to authorize torture, to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely without charge or due process, to declare a public emergency and round up "disorderly" citizenry, to place the president in charge of all three branches of government in the event of "extraordinary" disruption.

Don't Tase me bro

2007-12-04T16:19:00.001-08:00

I just saw for the first time the video of the student, Andrew Meyer, who was tased while asking John Kerry why he capitulated in the 2004 election. It was perhaps the student's holding Greg Palast's book Armed Madhouse that caused the police to consider him a danger.

Walter Kronkite on what U.S. should do in Iraq

2007-12-04T15:18:00.000-08:00

Walter Cronkite tells why we are still in Iraq and what we should do.

Rigging the Presidential "Debates"

2007-11-30T08:24:00.000-08:00

A video piece by Bill Moyers explains the "Commission on Presidential Debates" which does not allow the participants to address each other, and which excludes third party candidates who historically have raised critical issues that the major parties eventually co-opt. Third parties are responsible for the abolition of slavery, women's suffrage, public power, public education, social security, unemployment compensation, the direct election of senators, the formation of labor unions. The list goes on and on. Only now, the "Commission" (sounds official, doesn't it?) makes sure they no longer get to debate the "major" candidates.

Goon School

2007-11-28T13:44:00.000-08:00

Conn Hallinan described yesterday how serving as an occupying force in Iraq and Afghanistan is reshaping the sensibilities of our young soldiers, making them contemptuous of the inhabitants of the lands they are occupying, and bringing into fruition their potential for sadistic brutality.

When Science and Faith Collide

2007-11-27T13:14:00.000-08:00

James Watson, who shared the Nobel Prize in 1953 for deducing the double helix structure of DNA, is, after all a man of science. But when he said on October 14, 2007 in effect that average intelligence is different in different races, and was censured, it was not on the science. "All Men are Created Equal" is a matter of faith. And Watson had committed a breach of faith.

The way science is spozed to work is that he would be asked what evidence does he have supporting whatever assertion he is making, and people would evaluate the credibility and relevance of the evidence. But that's not the way these things go. He was censured for having an incorrect faith.

Discussing the matter from a scientific vantage is Created Equal, published November 18 in Slate.

Perhaps typical of discussions of the matter based on unshakable convictions (faith) is False Prophets published November 1 in The Nation. That "all men are created equal", should eventually have become taken literally might not be too surprising, nor that such a matter of faith might collide with the science. The result: misrepresentation of the science, and a final sentence that decries what she considers not a "legitimate question for debate". Of course there's that little matter of Watson's penchant to hand his critics a bounty of absurd and bigoted slurs directed at group after group, including races.

I find I am content to learn that East Asians have a higher average IQ than "white" Americans like me. That, of course, is because I'm not downstream from 250 years of having my people enslaved, followed by another 150 years of Jim Crow. Contemplating how that might feel, I might be inclined to suggest we can wait another 400 years before juggling these assertions about averages, and spend that time learning how to get over our tribalisms and learning how to get along.

Vincent Bugliosi: "They Got By With It"

2007-11-27T09:42:00.000-08:00

Vincent Bugliosi was interviewed on C-Span Book TV on November 4, and it was repeated on the 11th. From 2:06:00 - 2:12:15 in the 3 hour interview, he explains the U.S. Supreme Court's December 12, 2000 ruling handing the election to George Bush, about which he wrote None Dare Call It Treason , and then turned it into the book The Betrayal of America. In this interview, Bugliosi skips past much of the critism of the decision, such as Justice Stevens's dissent, which includes

What must underlie petitioners' entire federal assault on the Florida election procedures is an unstated lack of confidence in the impartiality and capacity of the state judges who would make the critical decisions if the vote count were to proceed. Otherwise, their position is wholly without merit. The endorsement of that position by the majority of this Court can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land.

Bugliosi focuses on problems with the Equal Protection rationale for the decision, in plain though sloppy English:

... They based their ruling on a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Here's what they said. The various Florida counties had different techniques, or different means, of determining voters' intent, ok?. Different ways. So the supreme court ... said well the problem is that some of these under-votes in some counties might be disqualified, and in other county they would qualify. So that's a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, because of these different standards that the various counties have. Now if the court was so concerned about these under-voters, as they so fervently claimed to be, why would they in effect then say we're so concerned that some of you under-voters may lose your votes, because of the different standards, that we're going to solve the problem by making sure that none of your votes are going to be counted. Is that what you do when you're trying to help people? We're going to make sure that none of you under-voters are going to have your votes counted.
[ed note: Bugliosi skirts the possibility of having more under-votes in, say, counties with a more minorities.]

Number 2. Law professors, legal scholars around the country overwhelmingly said this was a dishonorable, politically motivated ruling.

Number 3. There are probably 7 or 8, but I'm going to give you a couple, then I'm going to give you the main reason. If they had followed their own legal precedent, fundamental legal principles, Scalia himself has articulated these very words: You do not have a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment unless the discrimination is quote intentional. Or quote purposeful, OK? It's got to be intentional. We're to believe that these canvasing boards in these various Florida counties when they were coming up with their own way, their own standards to determine votes, were intentionally trying to discriminate against the voters of other counties. That's preposterous. [Here Bugliosi seems to lack imagination, and it is not clear why he would say 'other counties'. If one party controls the rules and knows that the majority of the voters in certain voters would likely cast their votes for the opposition party, they may well have an incentive to suppress the votes in those counties.]

Now let me give you as close to a confession as I can give you of what these criminals were up to. They're not going to confess, but I'm going to give you something that's as close to a confession as you're going to get in this case. Again, Scalia himself has said, and it's well known. The primary function of the United States Supreme Court is to set legal precedent. To set forth principles of law that the courts throughout the land have to follow. That's why they're there. To establish legal precedent. Now let me tell you what they did which is tantamount to a confession and which tells all reasonable people that their ruling only had one objective, and that objective was to put their guy in the Oval Office.

For the first time in the 210 year history of the court, first time ever, their ruling, on Equal Protection, they said was quote limited unquote to the case before them. Are you listening to what I'm saying here now? For the first time in 210 years they were not establishing legal precedent. They said their ruling was limited to this case in front of them. Now why? Because they knew that if they were establishing legal precedent as they had been doing for 210 years it would set aside elections throughout the entire country. Because the various states all have different methods of counting voutes, even different methods of voting, and they certainly didn't want to set elections aside throughout the country. So they had the unmitigated gall. They took audacity to symphonic and operatic levels. They said they're going to limit this ruling to this case. Because they knew it's a bogus ruling. So it was unlawful. And you know the bad thing about it, what's scary about it? It's that they got by with it...

I think most legal scholars concur. E.g., UCLA constitutional law and legal history professor Clyde Spillenger called it "The very antithesis of the rule of law". The decision was criticized by Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz, asserting in Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000 that "the decision in the Florida election case may be ranked as the single most corrupt decision in Supreme Court history, because it is the only one that I know of where the majority justices decided as they did because of the personal identity and political affiliation of the litigants. This was cheating, and a violation of the judicial oath."

I think we should not confuse the smokescreen around the decision with the idea that reasonable people disagree about what happened.

Coming Together

2007-11-26T14:11:00.000-08:00

Want a hit of Americana? Try this.

Or this: YouTube - Autistic Basketball

When War Vets Come Home

2007-11-26T12:41:00.000-08:00

120 War Vets Commit Suicide Each Week

America in the Time of Empire

2007-11-26T11:28:00.000-08:00

A grandiloquent rant by Chris Hedges: America in the Time of Empire

Wikileaks

2007-11-26T10:54:00.000-08:00

I heard about Wikileaks this morning on Democracy Now. The site is long on leaked documents, and still relatively short on analysis and interpretation. One way in is to use google along the lines site:wikileaks.org torture

Definr

2007-11-24T19:26:00.000-08:00

Fastest dictionary evr. Type in a word. Blink as you hit Enter see if you can get your eyes back open before the definition is displayed. definr - incredibly fast dictionary.

E8

2007-11-23T22:02:00.000-08:00

On November 15 we touched on Garret Lisi's explorations of E8 as The Fabric of the Universe. On Thursday, the Economist weighed in on E8 and Garrett Lisi, with a brief article Geometry is All.

Imagine

2007-11-22T03:48:00.000-08:00

Imagine if there were a web site just like Amazon.com, but instead of buying things, whenever you felt outraged about something, or contrite about not helping, or just looking for something to do, you could search on a topic, or drill down and discover some little or big organization whose purpose is exactly what you were thinking of, and push a button which would send a little amount, whatever you have decided, along its way, out into this world we're passing through.

Compassion and Empathy

2007-11-22T01:59:00.000-08:00

The day that gratitude is on the lips. The year that Paul Potts won that contest. The connection? Something about the way that we connect with one another in ways that are almost completely beyond words.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

2007-11-20T16:03:00.000-08:00

Last Friday, Media Matters issued a new report, Debate Moderators overlook Key Questions, about the content of the 1500 questions asked in the 17 presidential debates so far this year. There was not a single question about FISA. Not a single question about renditions. The words "habeas corpus" have not once been spoken by a debate moderator. Not one question about telecom liability. No moderator has asked a single question of a single candidate about whether the president should be able to order the indefinite detention of an American citizen, without charging the prisoner with any crime. There was exactly one question about wiretapping.

Unlocking America

2007-11-20T15:33:00.000-08:00

In the United States, in 1970 there were fewer than 200,000 people in prison. By 2006, there were about 1,600,000 in state and federal prisons. It has grown by 8 times. Add another 750,000 in the nation's jails, and today the total number imprisoned in the U.S. on any given day is 2,200,000. The number continues to grow. The accompanying note, Land of the Free, compares the U.S. to the all the other countries in the world.

A new report Unlocking America [pdf] published Monday describes the causes and consequences.

Land of the Free

2007-11-20T11:41:00.000-08:00

Here are some Fun Facts: The International Centre for Prison Studies at Kings College in London maintains a list of Prison Population Totals by country. Now let's see, who wins?
Entire World - Prison Population Totals

1	United States of America	2,245,189
2	China	1,565,771
3	Russian Federation	889,598
4	Brazil	419,551
5	India	332,112
6	Mexico	216,290
7	Thailand	161,844
8	Ukraine	160,046
216	...	..

Well that's cause we're bigger, right? Sorry. They also maintain a list of Prison Population Rates across the world:

Entire World - Prison Population Rates per 100,000 of the national population

1	United States of America	750
2	French Guiana/Guyane (France)	630
3	Russian Federation	628
4	St. Kitts and Nevis	604
5	Virgin Islands (USA)	549
6	Cuba	c.531
7	Turkmenistan	c.489
8	Palau	478
9	Bermuda (UK)	464
9	Virgin Islands (United Kingdom)	464
11	Bahamas	462
12	Belize	461
13	Cayman Islands (United Kingdom)	453
14	Dominica	437
15	Belarus	426
16	Georgia	401
17	American Samoa (USA)	384
17	Barbados	384
19	Grenada	372
20	Netherlands Antilles (Netherlands)	364
211	. . .	..
211	Liberia	25
213	Central African Republic	24
214	Burkina Faso	23
214	Nauru	23
216	Congo (Brazzaville)	22

We won again.. Gee, that's awkward. The United States has more of its citizens in prison than any other country in the world on both a total AND a per-capita basis. That includes all those countries that we haven't yet freed yet, and even the ones that hate us for our ... help me out here. They hate us for our ... what was that saying again?

Zinedine Zidane

2007-11-20T00:07:00.000-08:00

best player.ever.

Daniel Ellsberg says Sibel Edmonds case 'Far more explosive than Pentagon Papers'

2007-11-19T14:49:00.000-08:00

Don't you just love a good whistleblower story? Sibel Edmonds was a translator for the FBI. That is, until she was fired in retaliation for her blowing the whistle on rampant malfeasance and cover-ups. Vanity Fair did a piece, An Inconvenient Patriot on her in 2005, and CBS/60 Minutes profiled her in Lost in Translation in 2004. Update: DailyKos published an update on the Sibel Edmonds case November 20, 2007.

Where are we?

2007-11-18T10:13:00.000-08:00

No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind.

Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War

Daniel Levin. That is a name we we might actually want to remember. In 2004, as acting head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Council, he set out to reconcile the Administration's actions with the legal standards applicable to torture (in case that link at usdoj.gov goes missing, the document is also here.) He submitted to water-boarding. His conclusions were clear. The opening sentence read "Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and to international norms." Of course, American law and values and international norms are not really in vogue these days, are they? So he was fired from the Justice Department. Where bad things happen to good people.

Now where are we again with respect to torture?

2007-11-18T09:26:00.000-08:00

Oh let's take this little tidbit:

President Bush's nominee for attorney general told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that he does not know whether waterboarding is illegal. He pledged to study the matter and to reverse any Justice Department finding that endorses a practice that violates the law or the Constitution.

-- AP, October 30th, 2007

For some perspective, glance at these:

Article 1

1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

2. This article is without prejudice to any international instrument or national legislation which does or may contain provisions of wider application.

Article 2

1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.

2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political in stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

Article 3

1. No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

...

That's early on in the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, to which we are signatories. Do you think this might be relevant to the discussion of "enhanced interrogation practices"?

The man who saved the world.

2007-11-17T13:49:00.000-08:00

On September 1, 1983, the Soviet Union shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, killing 269 passengers and crew, including US congressman Lawrence McDonald. The KGB issued alerts to prepare for a possible nuclear first strike by the U.S. On September 26, Russian lieutenant colonel Stanislav Petrov was the officer on duty at the Serpukhov-15 bunker in Moscow, monitoring the skies for signs of an impending nuclear missile attack against the Soviet Union. At 12:40am, the computer reported that a military missile had been launched by the U.S., heading toward Moscow. Seconds later, a second missile was detected, then a third, then a fourth. Petrov defied military protocol and decided that it was a computer error. It turned out of course that he was right, and no one knows what would have been the outcome if he had decided differently.

His reward? His actions revealed imperfections in the Soviet early warning system and showed his superiors in a bad light. He was blamed for the incident and considered to be unreliable. His career was ended, he was forced into early retirement at US$200 per month, and suffered a nervous breakdown.

Just because you're isolated and shunned, doesn't mean you didn't just save the world.

The Fairest

2007-11-15T22:19:00.000-08:00

What would happen if you created an automatic system where:
1. people can submit images;

2. people are presented pairs of images and vote on which of two images they think are prettier; and

3. every few minutes the server analyzes the votes and displays the top choices.

The result may not be your idea of the prettiest, but it's probably the fairest.

The government's top watchdog warns of a coming catastrophe.

2007-11-15T21:23:00.000-08:00

On November 14, Newsweek, posted an interview with David Walker, US Comptroller General and head of the GAO since 1998, in which he describes our fiscal 'tsunami'.

The dog that didn't bark

2007-11-15T16:26:00.000-08:00

In Arthur Conan Doyle's 1892 story Silver Blaze, there is an exchange between Scotland Yard Detective Gregory and Sherlock Holmes:

Gregory: "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"; Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."; Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."; Holmes: "That was the curious incident."

Which brings us to the news stories not in the news. In October, Project Censored published their Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008. If you still find yourself in 2007, try Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007 . As a bonus item, there's always this un-news. It's un-stood the test of un-time.

The Fabric of the Universe

2007-11-15T13:19:00.001-08:00

Is it E8, the largest simple exceptional Lie group? No, not that kind of lie group . Amazing the stuff that goes through a surfer's mind . You knew there was a pattern. But did you know in two dimensions the connections between things may look sort of like this?

Troublemakers

2007-11-14T11:18:00.000-08:00

"The job of the spiritual friend is to insult you. If you ask why that is so, it's because in order to become a completely loving person, to become flexible, you have to see where you're hookable. There is a practice you can do which is called "heightened neurosis"... If you don't see where you get provoked, with an honesty and directness without guilt but just a straight look, where you get stuck, then you're always going to have that blind spot and it's always going to be there to drag you down. So if you really want liberation, if you really want freedom, you need to have people around who are going to be provoking you, to show you, where you have work to do..." Troublemakers.

So what if 2004 exit poll data implied widespread subversion of election results?

2007-11-14T10:17:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the persistent theme shared in these postings is "Things that are surprising". There was a discrepancy between the 2004 exit poll data and the final tallies in the swing states. In Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida, the differences between Bush's final tallies and his earlier exit poll percentages were, respectively, 6.7%, 6.5%, and 4.9%, all favoring Bush. If this occurred in some other country, we would declare the election invalid. That is surprising, yes. But what is much more surprising is that that doesn't seem to matter to us Americans. Smart people like Chomsky talk about why it doesn't matter to us, for example in this 7 minute video, but it's still surprises me.

In the Dark of the Moon

2007-11-13T08:56:00.001-08:00

you guessed it (?), a total solar eclipse, one of 11 images of earth

Are we in Iraq for the energy?

2007-11-11T09:32:00.000-08:00

When we hear numbers in the billions it's hard to see them in proportion. A stunning graph puts our expenditures in Iraq into perspective by comparing them to our energy R&D expenditures. It takes my breath away.

How to tell whether America is changing

2007-11-10T14:36:00.000-08:00

Maybe they'll start arresting people for wearing Peace T-shirts.
They have?

Mike Ferner

Stephen Downs

David Jahangiri

Laurel Student Arrested for Wearing T-Shirt at School

Jeff Rank

Arrested for wearing 'No Bush' T-Shirt

Cindy Sheehan

"We have no choice"

2007-11-10T08:14:00.000-08:00

Sophisticated opinion has it that we have the best intentions in supporting our Friend in Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf. Where do I get this feeling of deja-vu? Oh, it's starting to come back to me . Some of the Friends we've had during the 20th Century:

Abacha, Sani (Nigeria: 1993-2000)
Amin, Idi (Uganda: 1971-1979)
Banzer Suarez, Hugo (Bolivia: 1971-1978)
Batista, Fulgencio (Cuba: 1940-44/1952-1959)
Botha, P.W. (South Africa: 1978-1989)
Branco, Humberto (Brazil: 1964-1966)
Cedras, Raoul (Haiti: 1991)
Chiang Kai-shek (China: 1928-1949/Taiwan: 1949-1975)
Cordova, Roberto (Honduras: 1981-1985)
Diem, Ngo Dinh (S. Vietnam: 1955-1963)
Doe, Samuel (Liberia: 1980-90)
Duvalier, Francois (Haiti: 1957-1971)
Duvalier, Jean Claude (Haiti: 1971-1986)
Fahd bin'Abdul-'Aziz (Saudi Arabia: 1969-2002)
Franco, Francisco (Spain: 1937-1975)
Hassan II (Morocco: 1961-1999)
Hussein, Saddam (Iraq: 1979-1990)
Marcos, Ferdinand (Philippines: 1965-1986)
Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire: 1965-1997)
Musharraf, Pervez (Pakistan: 1999-2002)
Noriega, Manuel (Panama: 1983-1989)
Odria, Manuel (Peru: 1948-1956)
Omar, Mohamed (Afghanistan: 1996-2001)
Ozal, Turgut (Turkey: 1989-1993)
Pahlevi , Rezi (Iran: 1953-1979)
Papadopoulos, George (Greece: 1967-1973)
Pinochet, Augusto (Chile: 1973-1990)
Pol Pot (Cambodia: 1975-1998)
al-Qaddafi, Muammar (Libya: 1969-1971)
Salazar, Antonio (Portugal: 1932-1968)
Somoza Sr., Anastasio (Nicaragua: 1936-1956)
Somoza Jr., Anastasio (Nicaragua: 1963-1979)
Suharto, General (Indonesia: 1966-1999)
Trujillo, Rafael (Dominican Republic: 1930-1960)
Videla, Jorge (Argentina: 1976-1981)

Information abounds on their stories. I selected this
list from places like this article in CommonDreams.

Remember how Democrats need 60 votes in the Senate to pass anything?

2007-11-10T07:36:00.000-08:00

Mukasey was confirmed in the Senate on November 8 by a 53/40 vote. Wait a minute, don't the Democrats keep saying that they can't get anything done because they can't muster the 60 votes they need in the Senate? Glenn Greenwald looks at this curiosity here. (reprinted here).

The Dark Side

2007-11-08T17:38:00.000-08:00

Speaking of torture. So helpful, torture. We see it on 24. Thanks to Murdoch. Emperor Rupert. Oh the seductive power of the Dark Side! To paraphrase Allen Ginsberg:

Boys sobbing in armies! Old men
weeping in the parks!

Murdoch the incomprehensible prison!
Murdoch the crossbone soulless jailhouse
and Congress of sorrows!  Murdoch the vast
stone of war! Murdoch the stunned governments!

Murdoch whose  blood is running money!
Murdoch whose fingers are ten armies! 
Murdoch whose eyes are a thousand blind 
windows!
  
Murdoch whose love is endless oil
and stone!  Murdoch whose soul is
electricity and banks!  Murdoch whose 
poverty is the specter of genius!

Civic Engagement.

2007-11-08T05:51:00.000-08:00

Yesterday my friend wrote to me suggesting that I consider writing to Senators Schumer and Feinstein to tell them how I felt about their decision to vote to confirm the nomination of Michael Mukasey as attorney general. I had been stewing about it and this gave me a way to "get it off my chest" in maybe five minutes. I forwarded the invitation to several friends, one of whom offered the thoughtful reply:

I don't do petitions, protests, write my congressman or try to influence these people in any way..Nothing can get through to them..The last two presidential elections were clearly stolen and I have zero faith that anything can be accomplished through the system or around the system...Do you really think they care...They have been bought and sold so many times they don't know the truth from that that is not .... With all due respect, I think it is naive to think that anything can be accomplished with/through the system 'that we got'..Your thoughts please...

This cuts to the chase. My guess is that today, to a degree unparalleled in American history, the electorate is disenfranchised, disengaged, disenchanted, marginalized and cynical. Perhaps this reflects the ascendancy of corporate interests in steering the political process, making government less representative and participatory; the unholy alliance of corporatism, politics and the media in steering public opinion; distrust of government; increased partisanship yet stagnant political parties.

But my guess is that essentially, it has ever been so, that the question always before us has been whether "to bear the oppressor's wrong, ... the law's delay, the insolence of office...". I think that in the American Experiment there is the possibility of the individual's experiencing her own political efficacy. Probably, internet technologies and social structures that are still in their infancies will mature exponentially, to produce the sense, for example, that one individual, in minutes, can join forces with millions of like-minded to come to the support, for example, of the monks in Burma.

In conjunction with the gradually progressive ease with which I can express myself politically, comes the sense that over and above governance and institutions, is the question of what I choose for my own personal narrative. In this sense it becomes irrelevant if it is to some politician's interest that I be disengaged. That is outside my sphere of influence. But I get to counter that narrative with my own.

Shock and Awe

2007-11-07T12:46:00.000-08:00

I find myself missing those good old days when we in America would do one thing but say another. We would of course act as if the ends justify the means, but we used to exhibit the civility of cloaking the thing in some lovely rhetoric, about how high minded we are.

But now there no longer seems to be a need to do that. Now we no longer seem to need to obscure official policies on spying on our own citizens without warrants, using torture, disappearing people into a zone where no law applies, and commending dictators like General Musharraf, and dispensing with Habeas Corpus.

Remember Articles 4-6 of the Bill of Rights?

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger . . .

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

How did it happen that our Administration no longer needs to pretend it is acting lawfully?

Why start a blog

2007-11-06T12:41:00.000-08:00

Sometimes when I am sending someone an email, the truth is that the heart of my impulse is that:

there is something that I have discovered or observed and want to express; and
among everyone I know whom I feel free to write to, the person to whom I am writing feels to me the most receptive.

That's when the trouble begins. Well actually, it's already begun, because there is a good chance that person was not really that interested in getting that message at that time.

I notice a dynamic controlling people's response to this kind of email.

It turns out that the more passionate I am about whatever it was I laid on my poor friend, the less likely will he be to respond.
Of course the more fully I develop the idea, the more ponderous it is to the other.
The more citations I include in the form of links, well that makes it even more ponderous.
The more frequently I do this, well that pretty much squelches any possibility of getting a reply. It seems a likely conclusion on the part of the recipient of my unburdenings that if they reply they're more likely to get even more of this kind of stuff.
And of course, the more recipients, the less impelled any one person will be to answer.

So the way the equation goes, to the extent that something is important to me, the less likely I am to get any kind of response. And there's something about the vacuum of interstellar space that's disconcerting. I have no way of knowing, for example, whether a communication is so cryptic or abstruse as to be impenetrable, or whether it is self-evident, by virtue of either verbosity, or the subject's being old hat to the other person to begin with.

With blogging, the structure of the interaction seems to be better fitted than email, in that it is the reader who decides to show up, and not the writer who decides who wants to read what he or she has written.