June 4, 2009
Politics
June 2, 2009
American Taliban
Sunday’s cowardly assassination of abortion doctor George Tiller demonstrates once again that the US is not all that different from Pakistan.
One thing that these two violent societies share is having a group of rabid religious fundamentalists who are each on a jihad against those in their nation with whom they disagree, and who are ready to kill and maim their enemies without mercy or hesitation. The other thing—perhaps the more dangerous thing—that they share is a government apparatus in which certain elements are overtly or surreptitiously supportive of the jihadists, hoping to use them for their own political advantage, and in which other elements are cowed into silence and inaction. ...
If we want to take the parallel further, we can see President Barack Obama acting like a string of Pakistani leaders who have refused to take a stand against the jihadists in their midst, seeking instead, accommodation. Even after Tiller’s murder—the ninth in a string of murders of abortion doctors across the country (and 17 attempted murders), not to mention uncounted numbers of attacks on abortion clinics—Obama said benignly that “however profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence.”
Fine, even-handed words of conciliation, as usual, from our silver-tongued president, but note that there was not a word of condemnation for those who have provoked that violence, nor was there any word of defense or praise for a doctor who was simply and courageously acting under the law to provide women with appropriate medical services. ...
We are not that different, either in terms of our own jihadist movements or our political establishment and leaders, from the countries and movements that we are currently attacking.
human rights
June 1, 2009
Common ground: the murder of Dr. Tiller
... Having been nose to nose with anti-abortion leaders in front of clinics, and sometimes between them and doctors, for decades, I know them as the active base of a deeply dangerous, Christian theocratic, and fascist movement. They believe, as Randall Terry screamed in my face in 1987, that women must be kept subservient to men. Their god is a vengeful god, they remind us, and we deserve death for not obeying him. ... They believe that this country’s laws should be based on their interpretation of their God’s law, so you, too, would have no choice in the matter. And they want to kill us: the women who aren’t subservient, and the doctors who foster our agency. ...
What about the “leaders” of the Democratic Party who counsel us to find common ground with these fascists and religious fanatics? You have a president who invites an outspoken homophobe to give his inaugural prayer, citing “common ground” with this as somehow a step forward. You have a president who won’t come out in favor of gay marriage, tacitly encouraging many of his supporters to vote FOR Proposition 8 in California. You have a president who bends over backwards to give legitimacy to the anti-abortion cause and to the honesty of their leaders’ convictions.
If you watched the scene developing in May, weeks before Barack Obama’s appearance at the Notre Dame commencement, as Randall Terry and hundreds of others were getting arrested on the campus, and working themselves into a frenzy – all carefully covered by the national media – and you saw Obama give a speech that didn’t confront them for being wrong, you knew a murder like this would happen. The “pro-choice” movement, for its part, has surrendered its activism and resources almost completely to the Democratic Party and its “common ground” strategy. ...
Jill McLaughlin writes:
I've just learned the news of the cold blooded killing of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas City. He was one of the very few doctors in the country to perform late term abortions He was shot at his church this morning.
While I'm sickened by this, I'm not surprised. Why am I not surprised, you may ask? Well, I'm not surprised because this is what happens from seeking common ground with those who do not want common ground with you. Our President has talked about common ground throughout his campaign and up to his controversial appearance at Notre Dame. Sunsara Taylor has spoken at length about the deadly illusion that somehow there is common ground to be had and puts that question of whether we should even seek common ground with Christian fascists on trial.
The “pro-life” crowd, as they like to call themselves, have no respect for life or reality as it is. The reality is that a fetus is not a person. The reality is that women are not the property of men, nor are their bodies nor are they the property of any god that these men and women believe in. They do not respect women in the least if they continually insist that somehow it's their duty to determine what a woman does with her body.
Sadly, the pro-choice movement has been blunted so much by the politics as usual and politics of the possible so that there is a lack of a real voice of resistance to these onslaughts by Christian fascists. They too are enamored by the illusions and delusions that they can find common ground with these folks. It's time they start acting like they want there rights and lives respected and do so without apology. They need to start acting like the advocates for women's rights that they consider themselves to be.
I have written this in raw anger and without apology. I will not back down.
Sunsara Taylor wrote (before the murder of Dr. Tiller):
In the weeks leading up to Barack Obama’s delivery of the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame, the national eye was drawn once again to the question of women’s right to abortion. Anti-abortion Catholics and Christian fundamentalists, many of whom have been at the heart of some of the most violent tactics against doctors, women and clinics, descended on the campus. They trespassed. They got arrested. They put up billboards. More than 70 bishops condemned Notre Dame’s decision.
However, on March 17, when graduation day finally arrived, Obama received a standing ovation upon entrance, a glowing introduction from the Catholic president of the university, and repeated cheers as he spoke.
In his speech, Obama called for “fair-minded words” on both sides of the abortion issue. He called on people to express their differences but not to demonize those who think differently than themselves. He called for “common ground” and pointed to where he felt this could be found, as well as some of the challenges he sees in achieving it.
To many, these were reasonable words. To many, the response to him by the overwhelming majority of the student body -- together with a significant number of prominent Catholic figures -- represents motion in a positive direction.
But, when Obama speaks of “common ground” on abortion, he is not standing on some neutral “middle ground” -- he is accepting the terms of the anti-abortion movement and adapting aspects of a pro-choice position into that framework while gutting the heart of the abortion-rights position. In so doing, he is legitimizing and strengthening a viciously anti-woman program while both abandoning the much needed fight to expand access to abortion and birth control and giving up the moral and ideological basis on which the pro-choice position stands.
Much of what is wrong with Obama’s approach is concentrated in a few key sentences of hiss speech, where he speaks directly to the question of abortion:
“Maybe we won’t agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make, with both moral and spiritual dimensions. So let’s work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoptions more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term.”
First, and very importantly, abortion is not a “heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make.” A great many women are not conflicted at all about their abortions. Many feel relief and even joy at having their lives and their futures more fully back in their control.
This is as it should be. The simple fact is that a fetus is not a baby, it is a subordinate part of a woman’s body. A woman has no moral obligation to carry a fetus to term simply because she gets pregnant. And a woman who chooses at whatever point and for whatever reason to terminate a pregnancy, should feel fine about doing so and should be able to.
When it comes to abortion, there really is only one moral question: Will women be free to determine their own lives, including whether and when they will bear children, or will women be subjugated to patriarchal male authority and forced to breed against their will?
By denying the experience of the many women who feel positively about their abortions, Obama is undermining the legitimacy of this response and reinforcing all the many voices in society that tell women they should feel heart-wrenched for terminating a pregnancy.
As for the fact that many women do feel conflicted or even deeply guilty about getting an abortion, this doesn’t prove that abortion is a morally complex issue any more than the fact that many women feel guilty or ashamed after being raped makes rape a morally complex issue. ...
From here, Obama moves forward, stating that “common ground” can be found by working “together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions” and to “reduce unintended pregnancies.”
But, as I wrote previously,
To talk today of reducing the number of abortions is to talk about strengthening the chains on women. The goal should NOT be to reduce the number of abortions. The goal should be to break down the barriers that still exist in every sphere of society to women’s full and equal participation as emancipated human beings. In this society, right now, that means there will be -- and therefore should be -- more abortions.Right now, as you read, real women’s lives are being foreclosed and degraded due to lack of accessible abortion services.
This is because there are many, many women who want abortions who are unable to get them due to the tremendous legal, social and economic obstacles that have been put in their way. These obstacles include parental notification laws, mandatory waiting periods, anti-abortion fake clinics that disorient and delay women, the fact that 84% of counties have no abortion providers at all, and countless other cruel and humiliating restrictions.
As for reducing unintended pregnancies, it would be truly wonderful if all young people received frank and scientific education about their bodies, their sexuality, and how to form healthy and mutually respectful emotional and physical relationships. It would be truly wonderful if birth control were widely and easily available and its use was popularized. This would be the best and most effective way to reduce unintended pregnancies. However, this is not something that the forces behind the “pro-life” movement will agree to. The same biblical scripture that drives these forces to try to force women to carry every pregnancy to term also drives them to oppose birth control. There is not a single “pro-life” organization that supports birth control.
At its core and from its inception, the “pro-life” movement has been driven by the biblical mandate that women must leave it up to god to decide how many children they have. This mandate is rooted in the Christian mythology of “original sin” and its repercussions.
As the Bible tells it, “god” created man (Adam) first, and then made a woman (Eve) out of his rib. These two lived in innocent bliss in the “Garden of Eden” until a serpent tempted Eve and Eve tempted Adam to eat the “forbidden fruit.” For this “original sin,” Adam and Eve were cast out of paradise and ever since—so the myth goes—mankind has had an evil nature which has led to all the horrors humankind has inflicted on each other ever since.
Flowing from this -- and central to the “right-to-life” movement -- a special additional curse is put on women. Right there, in Genesis, the “Lord” is quoted as saying to women, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Later, the Bible articulates that women can only redeem themselves by submitting to men and bearing children: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, providing they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.” (1 Timothy 2: 13-15)
There can be no “common ground” with this view, even in the aim of preventing unwanted pregnancies. And, by seeking to find “common ground” here, Obama is just moving the ball further down the court towards enforced motherhood; he is leading pro-choice people away from the fight that needs to be waged for abortion while at the same time setting the stage for another losing battle around sex education and birth control.
What’s perhaps even more outrageous is the fact that Obama -- rather than challenging the mandate embedded within the “original sin” mythology that women become obedient breeders -- himself cites and legitimates this farcical and very harmful myth. Earlier in his speech, Obama offers a non-explanation as to why “common ground” is often hard to find between, among others, “the soldier and the lawyer” who “both love this country with equal passion, and yet reach very different conclusions on the specific steps needed to protect us from harm” and between “the gay activist and the evangelical pastor” who “both deplore the ravages of HIV/AIDS, but find themselves unable to bridge the cultural divide that might unite their efforts.” He says, “part of the problem, of course, lies in the imperfections of men -- our selfishness, our pride, our stubbornness, our acquisitiveness, our insecurities, our egos; all the cruelties large and small that those of us in the Christian tradition understand to be rooted in original sin.”
No. “Common ground” is not hard to find because we demonize those who are fighting to subjugate women, those carrying out torture and war crimes against detainees, or those who want to deny fundamental rights to gay people. “Common ground” is not hard to find because we have big egos or are too prideful or insecure.
“Common ground” is difficult to find because those who uphold women’s right to abortion are coming from a point of view that is completely antagonistic to those who are trying to take away this right. In the same way, those who condemn torture are coming from a view that is antagonistic to justifying, covering up and continuing that torture. And those who recognize the basic rights and humanity of gay people as well as the need for real education about safe sex are coming from a view that is completely antagonistic to the biblical motivation that sees any sex outside of procreation as an abomination.
As I stated earlier, there is no such thing as a “neutral middle ground” between antagonistic positions. Even the illusion of “common ground” can only be achieved when one side capitulates to the terms of the other side. This is exactly what Obama has done. ...
Finally, Obama tips his hat entirely to the anti-abortion position when he says we can unite to “provide care and support for women who do carry their child to term.” Here, in one phrase he accepts the unscientific, anti-abortion rhetoric that refers to fetuses as children. Flowing from this, a woman who chooses to terminate is killing her “child.”
In many ways, the approach Obama has taken to abortion -- and what he mapped out in his speech -- could prove even more dangerous to women’s rights and women’s lives than the religious fascists who were gathered at the gate. This is because Obama is dragging along many women and men who ought to know better -- who, if there were outright attacks on the legality of abortion very well might be up in arms, but who are being lullabied to sleep by Obama’s calm and reasonable tone as he barters away women’s fundamental rights. ....
human rights
May 28, 2009
Land of the Safe, Home of the Afraid
David Bromwich, May 25, 2009:
... Obama's May 21 speech at the National Archives combined a general repudiation of the Bush-Cheney policies with a surprising concession to methods that the former vice president, Dick Cheney, tried to graft onto the Constitution. This approach the Constitution repels as surely as a healthy body rejects poison; for in the Cheney interpretation, the common-law right of prisoners to be charged with a crime and to have due process in challenging the accusation was abridged in cases specified by the executive. Cheney singled out for detention as "enemy combatants" persons suspected of being hard-core terrorists without there being sufficient identification to charge or sufficient evidence to convict them.
We may think ourselves a safe country, but we can hardly be the United States of 1776, of 1865, and of 1945 so long as we retain a power imported by Dick Cheney and his lawyers from the 17th century into the 21st -- the power of government to imprison and keep in jail a person against whom nothing has been proved and nothing charged. It is a bondage as complete as slavery; and like slavery, it can last for life. ...
President Obama did not mean to copy the tenor but he did curiously echo the phraseology of the Bush presidency. Obama said: "my single most important responsibility as President is to keep the American people safe." Such talk about safety rather than liberty and justice, as the paramount value of American life, had almost no history before the Bush-Cheney administration. There can be no doubt that safe was the favorite adjective of George W. Bush, just as protect was his favorite verb. Yet there is not one word in the Constitution about protecting the people. The good of safety is assumed, of course, and the words of the preamble say the constitutional framework will (among its other purposes) "provide for the common defense." Yet that is a purpose for which any government might be formed. The American government is admirable and original not in its ideas about defense but its ideas about liberty and justice. And the president's powers in time of war are so far from the essence of his duty that they are not included in the presidential oath, or even, very prominently, in the enumeration of the powers of his office. The president is required to see that the laws are faithfully executed. In the presidential oath, he swears to do his best "to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." Italics added, and italics, apparently, necessary. The president protects the people by protecting the laws. He does not protect the laws by protecting the "safety" of the people. Indeed, not the safety of all the people, every moment, but the substance of the laws themselves makes the value of the way of life of a free people over time. How odd to forget this. At the National Archives, Barack Obama was speaking in front of a copy of the Constitution itself.
But he told us first about safety: "That is the first thing that I think about when I wake up in the morning. It is the last thing that I think about when I go to sleep at night." He then did his best to play a part he likes far too much, that of the national healer. He urged Americans to believe that, in ordering the torture and imprisonment of persons whom they had deprived of legal rights, the leaders of the Bush administration may have done bad things but always did them entirely from good motives. "Our government made a series of hasty decisions. And I believe that those decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people."
Is this true? And should we sincerely believe it? When we look at the leaders of other countries that have gone wrong -- Argentina, say -- do we assume the leaders could only have acted badly from the most pure and selfless love of the good? This exertion of fellowship flies in the face of honesty and a common knowledge of human nature.
Obama added: "I also believe that -- too often -- our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight, and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, we too often set those principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford. And in this season of fear, too many of us -- Democrats and Republicans; politicians, journalists and citizens -- fell silent."
The result, he concluded, was that "we went off course." But: "I have no interest in spending our time re-litigating the policies of the last eight years. I want to solve these problems, and I want to solve them together as Americans."
This casting away an evil of the past by moderately changing the policies and ignoring the crimes of one's predecessor -- this is in fact impossible to do. The reason is that some of the people who took us off course have not yet given up the steering wheels at which they sit, in one sub-cabin or another of the republic. The only way to face the future is to understand the present, and the only way to understand the present is to inquire into the past. ...
President Obama committed himself, in this speech, to hold in indefinite captivity persons the United States does not charge with specific acts, and whom it does not mean to bring to trial. The reason for such indefinite detention can only be that we do not know who the prisoners are, exactly, and therefore do not know what the charges would be; or that we know we have given the prisoners cause to resent us, after their capture if not before. This points to a darker category: persons whom we cannot bring to trial because all of the evidence against them was obtained under torture. These people either are abused but guilty, or if originally innocent, may reliably be supposed full of hatred toward the people and country that did such things to them.
This last is the fifth of Obama's five categories: "those who cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people." What species of twilight creature is alluded to here? Someone, it seems, whom we know to be certainly dangerous to the American people but about the danger of whom we cannot possibly open evidence at a trial, or even venture to make specific charges.
Insight into this category of prisoners may be gained from William Glaberson's May 23 article in the New York Times on President Obama's detention plan.
"Some proponents of an indefinite detention system," writes Glaberson, "argue that Guantanamo's remaining 240 detainees include cold-blooded jihadists and perhaps some so warped by their experience in custody that no president would be willing to free them." Note the words so warped by their experience in custody. So once we have ruined them body and soul, with or without tenable initial grounds of suspicion, we grant ourselves the right to go on harming them forever. Set free, they would wreak too sure a vengeance or stand as too glaring a testimony against us. Note well: it is worse, in some ways, to have been innocent than to have been guilty at Guantanamo. The guilty man can at least stand trial. Regarding the innocent, our own guilt is so complete that to prevent its effects we must keep him in prison indefinitely. Thus we compound our crimes before trying the persons we think we can succeed in convicting as war criminals. ...
In the week before this Memorial Day, we saw a new president under unseemly attack, trying to catch his balance. He shared some good thoughts at the National Archives. Yet this speech was one more speech by Barack Obama that deferred action. It suggested the comprehension of an enormous wrong which it decided only partly to remedy. And it set several plainly unconstitutional designs on the way to enactment, for no better reason than that the public morale has sunk so low as to expect such action. But the idea of prolonged detention without charge or trial was new. It gave a shock that will last; that should not be absorbed. And the move was unexpected by lawyers with whom the president had conferred just before giving the speech. As Vincent Warren, the executive director of Center for Constitutional Rights, put it in an interview with Amy Goodman:
the idea of detaining people not because they've committed a crime, but because of their general dangerousness or that they may commit a crime in the future: that's something that the documents that President Obama was standing in front of, particularly the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, simply doesn't permit. And when I heard that in his speech, I was deeply, deeply shocked that he would go in that direction.
Let us say it: something is seriously wrong in this administration -- though we are not yet in a position to judge the cause. We do not know who the lawyers are that gave Barack Obama advice that goes against a long career of ostensible commitments. And it is too early yet to say at what point a new president, confused by the depth of his burdens and uncertain how much even now he believes of what he used to say, becomes instead a man we are compelled to see as lacking in convictions. It cannot be a virtue that he sheds the Constitution with a gentler demeanor than George W. Bush.
The former vice president is engaging in a public refusal of the transfer of power. He embodies to perfection his party's failure to learn "the habit of trained and disciplined good temper towards the opposite party when it fairly wins its innings." Yet President Obama is unconsciously abetting that refusal when -- out of fear, or a wish for leverage elsewhere, or a wish to stand in the middle -- he treats justice as a desirable but not an all-important good.
A misjudged statesmanship has allowed Obama to think himself magnanimous when he declines to expose the wrongs he has come to know. The way to right a wrong is not to install a somewhat reformed version of the wrong. People, by that means, may be spared embarrassment, but their instinct for truth will be corrupted. It is a false prudence that supposes justice can come from a compromise between a lawful and a lawless regime. On the contrary, the less you tell of the truth, the more prone your listeners will be to commit the next barbarous act that is proposed to them under the cover of a national emergency or a necessary war.
MR. OBAMA: RESIGN NOW
We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama's inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through. ...
I refer here to Obama's plan for "preventive detentions." If a cop or other government official thinks you might want to commit a crime someday, you could be held in "prolonged detention." Reports in U.S. state-controlled media imply that Obama's shocking new policy would only apply to Islamic terrorists (or, in this case, wannabe Islamic terrorists, and also kinda-sorta-maybe-thinking-about-terrorism dudes). As if that made it OK.
In practice, Obama wants to let government goons snatch you, me and anyone else they deem annoying off the street.
Preventive detention is the classic defining characteristic of a military dictatorship. Because dictatorial regimes rely on fear rather than consensus, their priority is self-preservation rather than improving their people's lives. They worry obsessively over the one thing they can't control, what Orwell called "thoughtcrime" -- contempt for rulers that might someday translate to direct action.
Locking up people who haven't done anything wrong is worse than un-American and a violent attack on the most basic principles of Western jurisprudence. It is contrary to the most essential notion of human decency. That anyone has ever been subjected to "preventive detention" is an outrage. That the President of the United States, a man who won an election because he promised to elevate our moral and political discourse, would even entertain such a revolting idea offends the idea of civilization itself.
Obama is cute. He is charming. But there is something rotten inside him. Unlike the Republicans who backed Bush, I won't follow a terrible leader just because I voted for him. Obama has revealed himself. He is a monster, and he should remove himself from power. ...
The Old Grey Lady explains why Obama wants this "entirely new chapter in American law" in a boring little sentence buried a couple past the jump and a couple of hundred words down page A16: "Yet another question is what to do with the most problematic group of Guantánamo detainees: those who pose a national security threat but cannot be prosecuted, either for lack of evidence or because evidence is tainted."
In democracies with functioning legal systems, it is assumed that people against whom there is a "lack of evidence" are innocent. They walk free. In countries where the rule of law prevails, in places blessedly free of fearful leaders whose only concern is staying in power, "tainted evidence" is no evidence at all. If you can't prove that a defendant committed a crime -- an actual crime, not a thoughtcrime -- in a fair trial, you release him and apologize to the judge and jury for wasting their time.
It is amazing and incredible, after eight years of Bush's lawless behavior, to have to still have to explain these things. For that reason alone, Obama should resign.
Health care can wait, tax breaks for wind industry can't
Click the title of this post to read the whole story at National Wind Watch.
wind power, wind energy, human rights
May 27, 2009
More wind = more backup
-- William Opalka, Energy Biz, May/June 2009
wind power, wind energy