Don't believe the Fear Mongers

Domestic spying far outpaces terrorism prosecutions - latimes

2008-05-12T18:24:00.000-07:00

does it occur to anybody else that maybe the threat of terrorism itself has simply been overstated? the propagandists have imbibed so much of their own kool-aid, they've forgotten that they exaggerated the severity of the threat in the first place.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-justice12-2008may12,0,5742042.story?track=rss

From the Los Angeles Times

Domestic spying far outpaces terrorism prosecutions

As more Americans are watched, fewer cases are made. The trend concerns civil liberties groups as well as some lawmakers and legal experts.

By Richard B. Schmitt
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

May 12, 2008

WASHINGTON — The number of Americans being secretly wiretapped or having their financial and other records reviewed by the government has continued to increase as officials aggressively use powers approved after the Sept. 11 attacks. But the number of terrorism prosecutions ending up in court -- one measure of the effectiveness of such sleuthing -- has continued to decline, in some cases precipitously.

The trends, visible in new government data and a private analysis of Justice Department records, are worrisome to civil liberties groups and some legal scholars. They say it is further evidence that the government has compromised the privacy rights of ordinary citizens without much to show for it.

The emphasis on spy programs also is starting to give pause to some members of Congress who fear the government is investing too much in anti-terrorism programs at the expense of traditional crime-fighting. Other lawmakers are raising questions about how well the FBI is performing its counter-terrorism mission.

The Senate Intelligence Committee last week concluded that the bureau was far behind in making internal changes to keep the nation safe from terrorist threats. Lawmakers urged that the FBI set specific benchmarks to measure its progress and make more regular reports to Congress.

These concerns come as the Bush administration has been seeking to expand its ability to gather intelligence without prior court approval. It has asked Congress for amendments to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to make it clear that eavesdropping on foreign telecommunications signals routed through the U.S. does not require a warrant.

Law enforcement officials say the additional surveillance powers have been critically important in ways the public does not always see. Threats can be mitigated, they say, by deporting suspicious people or letting them know that authorities are watching them.

"The fact that the prosecutions are down doesn't mean that the utility of these investigations is down. It suggests that these investigations may be leading to other forms of prevention and protection," said Thomas Newcomb, a former Bush White House national security aide. He said there were half a dozen actions outside of the criminal courts that the government could take to snuff out potential threats, including using diplomatic or military channels.

Although legal experts say they would not necessarily expect the number of prosecutions to rise along with the stepped-up surveillance, there are few other good ways to measure how well the government is progressing in keeping the country safe.

"How does one measure the success? The short answer is we aren't in a great position to know," said Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor. With prosecutions declining, he said, the public is left with imperfect and possibly misleading ways to gauge progress in the Bush administration's war on terrorism -- such as the number of secret warrants the government issues or the number of agents it assigns to terrorism cases.

"These are the only tracks in the snow left by terrorism investigations, if there are no more counter-terrorism prosecutions," Richman said. "This is why, more than ever, there is a pressing need for congressional oversight, for accountability at the top of the [Justice] department, and for public confidence in the department."

Changing numbers

A recent study showed that the number of terrorism and national security cases initiated by the Justice Department in 2007 was more than 50% below 2002 levels. The nonprofit Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, which obtained the data under the Freedom of Information Act, found that the number of cases brought declined 19% in the last year alone, dropping to 505 in 2007 from 624 in 2006.

By contrast, the Justice Department reported last month that the nation's spy court had granted 2,370 warrant requests by the department to search or eavesdrop on suspected terrorists and spies in the U.S. last year -- 9% more than in 2006. The number of such warrants approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has more than doubled since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The department also reported a sharp rise in the use of national security letters by the FBI -- from 9,254 in 2005 to 12,583 in 2006, the latest data available. The letters seek customer information from banks, Internet providers and phone companies. They have caused a stir because consumers do not have a right to know that their information is being disclosed and the letters are issued without court oversight.

The inspector general of the Justice Department has found numerous cases in which FBI agents failed to comply with rules and guidelines in issuing the letters, often gaining access to information they were not entitled to. The FBI has responded by taking a number of measures to tighten its internal procedures.

Civil liberties groups say the new data reveal a disturbing consequence of the government's post-Sept. 11 expanded surveillance capabilities.

"The number of Americans being investigated dwarfs any legitimate number of actual terrorism prosecutions, and that is extremely troubling -- for both the security and privacy of innocent Americans as well as for the squandering of resources on people who have not and never will be charged with any wrongdoing," said Lisa Graves, deputy director of the Center for National Security Studies, a Washington-based civil liberties group.

A mixed record

But Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman, said statistics on court-approved FISA applications and statistics on criminal prosecution were "apples and oranges."

"There are a variety of factors that may account for the increase in court-approved FISA applications since 9/11," he said. Boyd said he could not comment on those factors, but said, "It is important to remember that surveillance under FISA is authorized by an independent court and used carefully and judiciously to protect the country from national security threats."

Certainly, the government has pursued a number of high-profile terrorism cases of late. A U.S. sailor was convicted in March of providing support to terrorists by passing classified information regarding movements of a Navy battle group to operators of an Internet site suspected of terrorist leanings.

The record in court has been somewhat mixed, however. Federal prosecutors in Miami twice have failed to secure verdicts in the cases of six men accused of plotting to destroy Chicago's Sears Tower and several FBI offices. After two mistrials, the "Liberty City Seven" case is due in court in January.

Even some former government officials concede many intelligence investigations fail to yield evidence of a serious threat to the U.S. "Most of these threats ultimately turn out to be wrong, or maybe just the investigating makes them go away," said Washington lawyer Michael Woods, former head of the FBI national security law unit. "A lot more information is going to pass through government hands, and most of that is going to be about people who turn out to be innocent or irrelevant."

rick.schmitt@latimes.com

toast

2008-05-08T17:09:00.000-07:00

so this is what popped out of my toaster yesterday morning. I thought about selling it on ebay and donating the funds to help offset the 6.4 mil that hil just lent herself, but then I thought, nah - I'll just go ahead and eat it with a little butter and marmalade - mmm mmmm good!

bill moyers tells it like it is

2008-05-08T16:50:00.000-07:00

obama's speech - a more perfect union

2008-03-20T12:35:00.000-07:00

obama's speech and michael meyer's response

2008-03-20T11:35:00.000-07:00

an op-ed piece appeared in today's latimes written by former assistant national director of the NAACP michael meyers, entitled Obama Blew It. not since niall ferguson's response to harold pinter's Nobel Acceptance Speech in december 2005, have I read a more gross misrepresentation and misinterpretaion of a person's words. meyers cherry-picks the speech obama delivered, and seems to intentionally miscontrue obama's words in an apparent attempt to mislead and misinform the newspaper-reading public. I'll post my response to the article below.

dear mr meyers,

did you listen to the speech? your third paragraph that begins, "he should have..." leads me to think you missed some of it. in regard to the rest of this essay, I'm forced to wonder about the world you live in. your perception of the racial situation in america seems a combination of wishful thinking, delusion and denial. racial differences do still exist, and there are social and political and economic injustices in our country, for obama to have denied that would have been dishonest and naive - as well as simply out of touch with reality. your credit as a former national director of the naacp speaks well for your authority, but your words don't show the insight I would expect from somebody having had the experience of serving in that position.

you criticize obama for looking backward, a criticism that again makes me wonder how closely you paid attention to his speech. yes he did present the american racial divide in a historical context, to not do so would have been irresponsible - far too often our national leaders fail to look at history, resulting in the repetition of mistakes that can lead to unnecessary war or economic downturns - but although he alluded to the past he clearly stated, and I'll quote here for your benefit;

"The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen - is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper."

I don't know how much more forward thinking you want than that - and if you do, there's plenty more where that came from - that is just an excerpt I quickly grabbed from the text of the speech easily available online. you have fallen into the unfortunate trap of essayists who sometimes choose their facts to fit their thesis and ignore anything that doesn't. the danger inherent in articles like yours is that they can mislead people who haven't the time, interest, or motivation to refer directly to the original source. by misrepresenting and misinterpreting obama's words you serve as a propagandist for those who would like to see him fail, rather than a servant for truth. were your criticism accurate and fairly presented I would applaud your efforts, but having read this article i simply wonder about your personal motivation and agenda.

the facts behind the us use of the atomic bomb

2008-03-20T11:22:00.000-07:00

yesterday morning at the coffeeshop, in regard to the comments by obama's minister - the rev jeremiah a. wright jr. - the subject of the us decision to bomb hiroshima and nagasaki came up. I was surprised to discover that two of my friends were still under the impression that the decision in 1945 was made for the sake of saving lives and bringing the war to a speedy end. they, being intelligent and reasonably well-informed people, I assumed would be up to date on the actual facts, but sadly I was mistaken. one of them referred to my explanation of the events as "a conspiracy theory" the other simply expressed his incredulity and asked why, if this information was well documented, it was not more generally known. that, I thought was a good question and he encouraged me to do what I could to spread the information. a quick google search provided me with the details and so, I sent him an email which I'll post here for the benefit of others... and as a way to fulfill my obligation to myself.

file this under "be careful what you ask for" combined with "what happens when joe finds your business card in his wallet"... or maybe just "more than you want to know about nagasaki".

the following is excerpted from a review of a book called

Why Hiroshima Was Bombed:
The 'Utopians' Duped a Nation
by William Jones

there are other sources readily available, but this is a pretty good outline the events and the decisions leading up to the atomic bomb droppings and the spinning of those events and decisions after the fact. I've excerpted passages in the hope that at least the following will be read, however more detail and documentation is available at http://new-federalist.com/other/2002/reviews/2943hiroshima.html, and of course the William Jones book itself would presumably provide an even more thorough explanation (although I haven't read it myself) if you're interested.

This information is readily available - I found it simply by googling "us reasons for bombing hiroshima" the sad truth is that it's generally unknown, I think largely because it's a painful and shameful truth that people - americans in particular - don't want to be faced with. your suggestion that I disseminate this information was a good one, because you're right - I shouldn't be frustrated at people's ignorance if I don't make some effort to correct it. so here you go, I hope you take the time to read this.

____________________

By the Spring of 1945, it was clear to all that the end of the war in the Pacific was close at hand. The successful island-hopping strategy of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, moving always for the strategic flank of the Japanese army rather than fighting for every foot of land occupied by its tenacious and fanatical soldiers, had given the greatest victory to U.S. arms with the minimum casualties, a feat perhaps unequaled in the annals of U.S. military history. Now, what terms should be presented to the Japanese to bring the Pacific war to a close?

____________________

"It was quite evident from a study of the context of the messages, that the Japanese realized further resistance was futile, and were willing to grant any concessions to halt the war, providing the Emperor remained as the spiritual head of the country," Kenney wrote.

By the Spring of 1945 these peace-feelers were coming in fast and furious. On May 7, 1945, the OSS representative in Portugal informed President Truman that the Counsellor of the Japanese Legation in Portugal had told a source that the Japanese were ready to cease hostilities provided they were allowed to retain possession of the home islands and that the terms "unconditional surrender" not be employed in the actual peace terms.

Other OSS sources working with the Vatican's Cardinal Giuseppe Montini (later Pope Paul VI), were also in touch with the Japanese, who were in the process of working out the terms of an eventual Japanese surrender—again with the proviso that the institution of the Emperor be retained.

___________________

The stated policy of the United States had been that of "unconditional surrender." This had been stated by President Roosevelt, almost fortuitously, when he met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at Casablanca in January 1943. And yet, with Roosevelt, the consummate politician, there was always room for finding a way out of a dilemma if the conditions warranted it. Roosevelt did, in fact, deviate from the "unconditional surrender" formula when Italy agreed to surrender in 1944. But by May 1945, Franklin Roosevelt was dead, and his new Vice President, Harry Truman, had been sworn in as President of the United States.

(http://new-federalist.com/other/2002/reviews/2943hiroshima.html explains the political positioning behind truman having been placed into the vice presidency, and you're probably already aware of the tensions between fdr and truman - scroll down to the last paragraph in the section headed "japan prepares to surrender")

___________________

The Japanese were also aware that Russian refusal to renew the Neutrality Pact would mean that they would also have Russia to fight. The signals of a Japanese willingness to surrender then began to multiply.

__________________

The test in Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 14, 1945, produced results beyond anyone's imagination. As reports streamed back to Washington, the mood was almost ecstatic among the Utopians. Indeed, Stimson felt that the effect of the bomb was so great that he advised Truman the weapon might enable the United States to force the Soviet Union to abandon or radically alter its entire system of government.

_________________

With the successful test of the bomb, the issue now became whether to use it—and, if so, against whom? With the surrender of Nazi Germany already a fact, Japan was really the only candidate. But what if the Japanese also surrendered before the bomb was actually used in war, as all indicators were showing they intended to do? Testing the bomb in a real-time situation required, therefore, delaying such a surrender for as long as possible in order to use the bomb to end the war—and demonstrate in an unequivocal and stark, terrifying manner, the raw power now possessed by the United States.

_________________

In the light of this policy shift, the appearance of Japanese peace-feelers now became a threat that might obviate the use of the atomic bomb in war. Anything that would permit the Japanese to surrender before its use against Japan was therefore to be squelched. The envisioned entry of the Russian forces into Manchuria had therefore to be delayed for as long as possible.

Some people in Washington saw clearly what was in the works. Acting Secretary of State Joseph Grew, a former ambassador to Japan, caught wind of what was happening—and it frightened him. Grew renewed his efforts to quickly get a statement of intent from the United States which would guarantee a retention of the Emperor, and facilitate a rapid Japanese surrender—before the bomb could be used. More generally, Grew realized that there was a substantial peace party in Japan, and that the peace-feelers the Allied intelligence forces were picking up, were for real. The position of the United States, he felt, should be supportive of that peace party, and immediately clarifying the role of the Emperor in the peace terms was absolutely essential if peace were to be quickly achieved.

___________________

Many leading Republicans were also calling for such a statement. On July 3, the New York Times reported that the Senate Republican minority leader, Wallace White, "declared that the Pacific war might end quickly if President Truman would state, specifically, in the upper chamber, just what unconditional surrender means for the Japanese." The War Department's Operations Division advised on July 12, 1945 that "the present stand of the War Department is that Japanese surrender is just possible and is attractive enough to the U.S. to justify us in making any concession which might be attractive to the Japanese, so long as our realistic aims for peace in the Pacific are not adversely affected."

Indeed, by this time the Japanese peace-feelers were becoming a drumbeat. On July 12, as Truman was travelling to Potsdam aboard the Presidential yacht, the Augusta, Emperor Hirohito was declaring in a meeting of the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, that although war planning had to continue, it was also "necessary to have a plan to close the war at once." A cable intercepted on July 12 from Foreign Minister Togo to Japanese Ambassador Sato in Moscow, and given to Truman aboard the Augusta on his way to Potsdam, stated: "We are now secretly giving consideration to the termination of the war because of the pressing situation which confronts Japan both at home and abroad." Unlike the previous peace-feelers, these were very official and very high-level, even involving the leadership of the Japanese Army, the only real hold-outs for continued fighting. By the time of the Potsdam meeting it was also known that Japan was asking Russia, with which it still had a neutrality treaty, to help it get out of the war.

______________________

But Truman, with an entirely different agenda, was not ready for peace—not yet at any rate. Indeed, arriving at Potsdam, the United States was already taking measures to delay Russian entry into the war in the Pacific.

At Yalta it had been agreed that Russia would enter the Pacific theater in exchange for several conditions: It would receive the Kurile Islands from Japan, regain control over the Chinese Far Eastern and South Manchurian railroads as well as the ports of Dairen and Port Arthur, and the "independence of Mongolia would be assured." In turn, Stalin agreed to sign a treaty with Nationalist China. Roosevelt had assured Stalin that he would convince Chiang Kai-shek to accept concessions to Russia in Manchuria.

The signing of an agreement between China and the Soviet Union would therefore be the immediate prelude to Soviet entry into Manchuria. With Truman's new agenda, and the successful demonstration of the atomic bomb, the brakes had to be put on the signing of such an agreement. On July 6, as he was leaving for Potsdam, Jimmy Byrnes instructed Averell Harriman, the key contact with the Soviets, to "inform both the Soviet Government and T.V. Soong [the Chinese Foreign Minister then in Moscow for negotiations with the Russians] that as a party to the Yalta Agreement we would expect to be consulted before any arrangement is concluded between the Soviet and Chinese governments."

_______________________

It was also at Potsdam that Churchill was informed of the successful test. British Chief of Staff Field Marshal Sir Alan Brookesby wrote that Churchill "was completely carried away. It was no longer necessary for the Russians to come into the Japanese war; the new explosive alone was sufficient to settle the matter. Furthermore, we now had something in our hands which would redress the balance with the Russians."

_______________________

The decision to bomb was, however, meeting with considerable resistance. The initial reaction came from those who were most in the know on the subject—the Manhattan Project scientists. A nervous Groves was keenly aware of the growing opposition among the scientists to the use of the bomb without warning. In a poll taken among 150 of the scientists working at the Manhattan Project's Chicago facility, almost half of those polled also recommended "a military demonstration" to be followed by renewed opportunity for surrender "before full use of the weapon is employed."

_______________________

More significant opposition came from the military leadership of the country, most of whom were adamantly opposed to the use of the atomic bomb. Alperovitz documents this resistance quite extensively in separate chapters dealing with the reaction from each of the uniformed services; all regarded the bombing as militarily unnecessary. Stimson himself, when in Europe for the Potsdam talks, saw fit to solicit the opinion of Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Commander-in-Chief of Allied Forces in Europe. "The incident took place in 1945 when Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan," Eisenhower would later write in his autobiography, Mandate for Change. "I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act.... The Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent. During the recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression, and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment, I thought no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face.' The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude, almost angrily refuting the reasons I gave for my quick conclusions."

Although Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the Pacific theater commander, wasn't informed of the existence of the atomic bomb until five days before it was dropped on Hiroshima, he had already, in the Spring of 1945, sent his air force chief, Maj. Gen. George Kenney, to Washington to explain his view that the Japanese were close to surrender. When Kenney came to Washington and explained this to Gen. George Marshall, Marshall called in his top advisers. Kenney would report to MacArthur later that he had not succeeded in convincing them. MacArthur, until his death, insisted that bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki had no military value whatsoever.

Truman's Chief of Staff, Adm. William Leahy, who chaired the meetings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, continually insisted that the Japanese were on the brink of surrender. As late as July 16, Leahy was urging the British Chief of Staff to have Churchill get Truman to modify the term "unconditional surrender." Leahy would later say, quite accurately, of the decision: "Truman told me it was agreed they would use it, after military men's statements that it would save many, many American lives, by shortening the war, only to hit military objectives. Of course, then they went ahead and killed as many women and children as they could, which was just what they wanted all the time."

Adm. Ernest King, the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Fleet, was convinced that the successful blockade of Japan was bringing Japan to its knees. There was no need to invade Japan proper, King argued, because Japan was as good as defeated. This analysis would later be fully corroborated by the Strategic Bombing Survey, which in 1946 examined the destruction caused in Japan by a combination of the blockade and the incessant conventional bombing. The Survey concluded that Japan would likely have surrendered in 1945 without atomic bombing, a Soviet declaration of war, or an American invasion.

________________________

On Aug. 6 at 8:16 in the morning the bomber Enola Gay dropped "Little Boy," with a yield equivalent to 12,500 tons of TNT, on the city of Hiroshima, with a population of 290,000 civilians and 43,000 soldiers. When calculations were made at the end of August, the death toll was in the realm of 100,000, but many more would die soon thereafter from the effects of the bombing. By the end of 1950, the toll had reached 200,000, with death rates calculated at 54%! On Aug. 9, "Fat Man" was dropped on Nagasaki, with 70,000 dead calculated by the end of 1945 and a total of 140,000 dead within the next five years. On hearing of the successful bombing of Hiroshima, Truman commented, "This is the greatest thing in history!" General MacArthur was dumbfounded, as MacArthur's pilot, Weldon E. Rhoades, noted in his diary on the day after the bombing: "General MacArthur definitely is appalled and depressed by this Frankenstein monster. I had a long talk with him today, necessitated by the impending trip to Okinawa. He wants time to think the thing out, so he has postponed the trip to some future date to be decided later."

_________________________

More significant, perhaps, than the arduous plodding through the files to get a clear step-by-step picture of the events leading up to the decision, are the revelations by the Alperovitz team of the growing U.S. domestic reaction to the bombing and the frantic efforts by the perpetrators to cover their tracks—a story which has received very little publicity.

Reports of the terrible facts and consequences of the atomic bombings—most especially, author John Hersey's "Hiroshima," which filled the August 1946 issue of The New Yorker magazine and sold hundreds of thousands of copies—had a strong impact on the American public. A steady stream of criticism of the bombing came from key religious leaders in the United States. The effect of what James Conant derided as "this type of sentimentalism" moved Conant—now president of Harvard—to ask his friend Harvey Bundy to get Stimson to counterattack. Conant agreed with Bertrand Russell that the demonstration of the atomic bomb in a war situation had been essential to force the world into a control regime. But the American citizen had to be "convinced" by a counter-story on Japan.

At the time Stimson was working on his memoirs, being assisted by Harvey Bundy's son, McGeorge Bundy. The two now readily undertook the task of providing the "cover-up" for the atom bomb decision. McGeorge Bundy would write a draft for Stimson's perusal and signature. After his discussions with Conant, Harvey Bundy himself had drafted a number of "pointers" that he felt should be included in such an article: namely, that the bomb decision was primarily ordered with the thought that it would save American lives; that no major person in authority thought that Japan would surrender on terms acceptable to the Allies; that the Interim Committee had rejected targets "where the destruction of life and property would be the very greatest"; that the committee had discussed "intensively" whether the bomb should be used at all; and that the committee had also considered the possibility of a demonstration prior to its use in war. In particular he wanted to downplay any inference that the bomb played any role in U.S. relations with the Soviet Union.

With "old Bundy's" notes in hand, "young Bundy"—who later, as National Security Adviser to Kennedy and Johnson, would help to maneuver these Presidents into the jungles of Vietnam—went to work on the draft. Various people, including Groves, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, Secretary of War Robert Patterson, and Bernard Baruch, who would shortly present Truman's first draconian nuclear control plan to the United Nations, had their say in the draft. Groves underlined the basic lie of the piece: that the dropping of the bomb shortened the war by months and saved many human lives which the planned invasion of Japan would have exacted.

Conant himself wanted to make the point that, given the tremendous destruction of the conventional bombing of Japan, the atom bomb was just like any other bomb, only a bit more destructive. Tellingly, Conant urged Bundy to drop all reference to the issue of the Emperor in the paper.

In the final draft, Bundy so exaggerated the figures that it stated twice that the dropping of the bomb had saved over a million lives. And yet, the best estimates given to General Marshall of the possible casualty rates of American forces in a full-scale invasion, were always in the range of 40,000 to 46,000. The big lie just kept getting bigger.

The essay was published in the February 1947 issue of Harper's magazine. Breaking all precedent as regards copyright, Harper's gave permission for anyone who wanted to reproduce the article to do so. It was therefore quickly reprinted in the Washington Post, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Omaha World Herald, Reader's Digest, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and many other papers. McGeorge Bundy quipped to Stimson, "The Harper's article has been read by everyone I meet, and it seems to have covered the subject so well that I find no follow-up work needed.... I think we deserve some sort of medal for reducing these particular chatterers to silence."

Not everyone felt that the effect was sufficient, however. Conant had Karl Compton, the president of MIT, launch a parallel defense of the bombing in the Atlantic Monthly, upping the ante in terms of the outrageous claims of the number of lives saved. "I believe, with complete conviction, that the use of the atomic bomb saved hundreds of thousands—perhaps several millions—of lives, both American and Japanese," Compton wrote. This was, for them, not merely an attempt to justify their actions. "If the propaganda against the use of the atomic bomb had been allowed to grow unchecked," Conant wrote Stimson, "the strength of our military position by virtue of having the bomb would have been correspondingly weakened, and with the weakening would have come a decrease in the probabilities of an international agreement for the control of atomic energy." Indeed this, and not the defeat of Japan, had been the real Wellsian purpose of the bomb project to begin with.

members of congress who voted against overriding the president's veto of H.R. 2082

2008-03-12T23:04:00.000-07:00

today's fear monger award is shared by the 188 members of congress who voted against overriding the president's veto of the bill that would place a ban on waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques. the "nay" votes are the ones who favor the use of waterboarding by american intelligence officers. all I can ask is, "what has our countery become?" but while I pose the question, I think we all know the answer, although it's painful to face it.

I would like to also express my thanks to the members of congress who voted "yea". thanks for trying, although I wish you could have somehow swayed more opposing members.

the following list of votes is from http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2008-117

Please note that there is a slight glitch in this voting record. GovTrack could not identify all of the voters from the original source data. Some voters are listed as 'Unknown Person', and the Party Breakdown table may be inaccurate.

Vote to overrride presidential veto of H.R. 2082: Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 - March 11th, 2008

Votes

Vote [Sort]	District [Sort]	Representative [Sort by Name] [Sort by Party]
Alabama
Nay	AL-1	Bonner, Jo [R]
Nay	AL-2	Everett, Terry [R]
Nay	AL-3	Rogers, Michael [R]
Nay	AL-4	Aderholt, Robert [R]
Aye	AL-5	Cramer, Robert [D]
Nay	AL-6	Bachus, Spencer [R]
Aye	AL-7	Davis, Artur [D]
Alaska
Nay	AK-0	Young, Donald [R]
Arizona
Nay	AZ-1	Renzi, Rick [R]
Nay	AZ-2	Franks, Trent [R]
Nay	AZ-3	Shadegg, John [R]
Aye	AZ-4	Pastor, Edward [D]
No Vote	AZ-5	Mitchell, Harry [D]
Nay	AZ-6	Flake, Jeff [R]
Aye	AZ-7	Grijalva, Raul [D]
Aye	AZ-8	Giffords, Gabrielle [D]
Arkansas
Aye	AR-1	Berry, Robert [D]
Aye	AR-2	Snyder, Victor [D]
Nay	AR-3	Boozman, John [R]
Aye	AR-4	Ross, Mike [D]
California
Aye	CA-1	Thompson, C. [D]
Nay	CA-2	Herger, Walter [R]
Nay	CA-3	Lungren, Daniel [R]
Nay	CA-4	Doolittle, John [R]
Aye	CA-5	Matsui, Doris [D]
No Vote	CA-6	Woolsey, Lynn [D]
Aye	CA-7	Miller, George [D]
Aye	CA-8	Pelosi, Nancy [D]
Aye	CA-9	Lee, Barbara [D]
Aye	CA-10	Tauscher, Ellen [D]
Aye	CA-11	McNerney, Jerry [D]
Aye	CA-13	Stark, Fortney [D]
Aye	CA-14	Eshoo, Anna [D]
Aye	CA-15	Honda, Michael [D]
Aye	CA-16	Lofgren, Zoe [D]
Aye	CA-17	Farr, Sam [D]
Aye	CA-18	Cardoza, Dennis [D]
No Vote	CA-19	Radanovich, George [R]
Aye	CA-20	Costa, Jim [D]
Nay	CA-21	Nunes, Devin [R]
Nay	CA-22	McCarthy, Kevin [R]
Aye	CA-23	Capps, Lois [D]
Nay	CA-24	Gallegly, Elton [R]
Nay	CA-25	McKeon, Howard [R]
Nay	CA-26	Dreier, David [R]
Aye	CA-27	Sherman, Brad [D]
Aye	CA-28	Berman, Howard [D]
Aye	CA-29	Schiff, Adam [D]
Aye	CA-30	Waxman, Henry [D]
Aye	CA-31	Becerra, Xavier [D]
Aye	CA-32	Solis, Hilda [D]
Aye	CA-33	Watson, Diane [D]
Aye	CA-34	Roybal-Allard, Lucille [D]
Nay	CA-35	Waters, Maxine [D]
Aye	CA-36	Harman, Jane [D]
Aye	CA-37	Richardson, Laura [D]
Aye	CA-38	Napolitano, Grace [D]
Aye	CA-39	Sanchez, Linda [D]
Nay	CA-40	Royce, Edward [R]
Nay	CA-41	Lewis, Jerry [R]
Nay	CA-42	Miller, Gary [R]
Aye	CA-43	Baca, Joe [D]
Nay	CA-44	Calvert, Ken [R]
Nay	CA-45	Bono Mack, Mary [R]
Nay	CA-46	Rohrabacher, Dana [R]
Aye	CA-47	Sanchez, Loretta [D]
Nay	CA-48	Campbell, John [R]
Nay	CA-49	Issa, Darrell [R]
Nay	CA-50	Bilbray, Brian [R]
Aye	CA-51	Filner, Bob [D]
Nay	CA-52	Hunter, Duncan [R]
Aye	CA-53	Davis, Susan [D]
Colorado
Aye	CO-1	DeGette, Diana [D]
Aye	CO-2	Udall, Mark [D]
Aye	CO-3	Salazar, John [D]
Nay	CO-4	Musgrave, Marilyn [R]
Nay	CO-5	Lamborn, Doug [R]
No Vote	CO-6	Tancredo, Thomas [R]
Aye	CO-7	Perlmutter, Ed [D]
Connecticut
Aye	CT-1	Larson, John [D]
Aye	CT-2	Courtney, Joe [D]
Aye	CT-3	DeLauro, Rosa [D]
Nay	CT-4	Shays, Christopher [R]
Aye	CT-5	Murphy, Christopher [D]
Delaware
Nay	DE-0	Castle, Michael [R]
Florida
Nay	FL-1	Miller, Jeff [R]
Aye	FL-2	Boyd, F. [D]
Aye	FL-3	Brown, Corrine [D]
Nay	FL-4	Crenshaw, Ander [R]
Nay	FL-5	Brown-Waite, Virginia [R]
Nay	FL-6	Stearns, Clifford [R]
Nay	FL-7	Mica, John [R]
Nay	FL-8	Keller, Ric [R]
Nay	FL-9	Bilirakis, Gus [R]
Nay	FL-10	Young, C. W. [R]
Aye	FL-11	Castor, Kathy [D]
Nay	FL-12	Putnam, Adam [R]
Nay	FL-13	Buchanan, Vern [R]
Nay	FL-14	Mack, Connie [R]
Nay	FL-15	Weldon, David [R]
Aye	FL-16	Mahoney, Tim [D]
Aye	FL-17	Meek, Kendrick [D]
No Vote	FL-18	Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana [R]
Aye	FL-19	Wexler, Robert [D]
Aye	FL-20	Wasserman Schultz, Debbie [D]
Nay	FL-21	Diaz-Balart, Lincoln [R]
Aye	FL-22	Klein, Ron [D]
Aye	FL-23	Hastings, Alcee [D]
Nay	FL-24	Feeney, Tom [R]
Nay	FL-25	Diaz-Balart, Mario [R]
Georgia
Nay	GA-1	Kingston, Jack [R]
Aye	GA-2	Bishop, Sanford [D]
Nay	GA-3	Westmoreland, Lynn [R]
Aye	GA-4	Johnson, Henry [D]
Aye	GA-5	Lewis, John [D]
Nay	GA-6	Price, Tom [R]
Nay	GA-7	Linder, John [R]
Nay	GA-8	Marshall, James [D]
Nay	GA-9	Deal, Nathan [R]
Nay	GA-10	Broun, Paul [R]
Nay	GA-11	Gingrey, John [R]
Aye	GA-12	Barrow, John [D]
Aye	GA-13	Scott, David [D]
Hawaii
Aye	HI-1	Abercrombie, Neil [D]
Aye	HI-2	Hirono, Mazie [D]
Idaho
Nay	ID-1	Sali, Bill [R]
Nay	ID-2	Simpson, Michael [R]
Illinois
No Vote	IL-1	Rush, Bobby [D]
Aye	IL-2	Jackson, Jesse [D]
Aye	IL-3	Lipinski, Daniel [D]
Aye	IL-4	Gutierrez, Luis [D]
Aye	IL-5	Emanuel, Rahm [D]
Nay	IL-6	Roskam, Peter [R]
Aye	IL-7	Davis, Danny [D]
Aye	IL-8	Bean, Melissa [D]
Aye	IL-9	Schakowsky, Janice [D]
Nay	IL-10	Kirk, Mark [R]
Nay	IL-11	Weller, Gerald [R]
Aye	IL-12	Costello, Jerry [D]
Nay	IL-13	Biggert, Judy [R]
Aye	IL-15	Johnson, Timothy [R]
Nay	IL-16	Manzullo, Donald [R]
Aye	IL-17	Hare, Phil [D]
Nay	IL-18	LaHood, Ray [R]
Nay	IL-19	Shimkus, John [R]
Indiana
Aye	IN-1	Visclosky, Peter [D]
Aye	IN-2	Donnelly, Joe [D]
Nay	IN-3	Souder, Mark [R]
Nay	IN-4	Buyer, Stephen [R]
Nay	IN-5	Burton, Dan [R]
Nay	IN-6	Pence, Mike [R]
Aye	IN-8	Ellsworth, Brad [D]
Aye	IN-9	Hill, Baron [D]
Iowa
Aye	IA-1	Braley, Bruce [D]
Aye	IA-2	Loebsack, David [D]
Aye	IA-3	Boswell, Leonard [D]
Nay	IA-4	Latham, Thomas [R]
Nay	IA-5	King, Steve [R]
Kansas
Nay	KS-1	Moran, Jerry [R]
Aye	KS-2	Boyda, Nancy [D]
Aye	KS-3	Moore, Dennis [D]
Nay	KS-4	Tiahrt, Todd [R]
Kentucky
Nay	KY-1	Whitfield, Edward [R]
Nay	KY-2	Lewis, Ron [R]
Aye	KY-3	Yarmuth, John [D]
No Vote	KY-4	Davis, Geoff [R]
Nay	KY-5	Rogers, Harold [R]
Aye	KY-6	Chandler, Ben [D]
Louisiana
Aye	LA-2	Jefferson, William [D]
Aye	LA-3	Melancon, Charles [D]
Nay	LA-4	McCrery, James [R]
Nay	LA-5	Alexander, Rodney [R]
Nay	LA-7	Boustany, Charles [R]
Maine
Aye	ME-1	Allen, Thomas [D]
Aye	ME-2	Michaud, Michael [D]
Maryland
Aye	MD-1	Gilchrest, Wayne [R]
Aye	MD-2	Ruppersberger, C.A. [D]
Aye	MD-3	Sarbanes, John [D]
Aye	MD-4	Wynn, Albert [D]
Aye	MD-5	Hoyer, Steny [D]
Aye	MD-6	Bartlett, Roscoe [R]
Aye	MD-7	Cummings, Elijah [D]
Aye	MD-8	Van Hollen, Christopher [D]
Massachusetts
Aye	MA-1	Olver, John [D]
Aye	MA-2	Neal, Richard [D]
Aye	MA-3	McGovern, James [D]
Aye	MA-4	Frank, Barney [D]
Aye	MA-5	Tsongas, Niki [D]
Aye	MA-6	Tierney, John [D]
Aye	MA-7	Markey, Edward [D]
Aye	MA-8	Capuano, Michael [D]
Aye	MA-9	Lynch, Stephen [D]
Aye	MA-10	Delahunt, William [D]
Michigan
Aye	MI-1	Stupak, Bart [D]
Nay	MI-2	Hoekstra, Peter [R]
Nay	MI-3	Ehlers, Vernon [R]
Nay	MI-4	Camp, David [R]
Aye	MI-5	Kildee, Dale [D]
Nay	MI-6	Upton, Frederick [R]
Nay	MI-7	Walberg, Timothy [R]
Nay	MI-8	Rogers, Michael [R]
Nay	MI-9	Knollenberg, Joseph [R]
Nay	MI-10	Miller, Candice [R]
Nay	MI-11	McCotter, Thaddeus [R]
Aye	MI-12	Levin, Sander [D]
No Vote	MI-13	Kilpatrick, Carolyn [D]
Aye	MI-14	Conyers, John [D]
Aye	MI-15	Dingell, John [D]
Minnesota
Aye	MN-1	Walz, Timothy [D]
Nay	MN-2	Kline, John [R]
Nay	MN-3	Ramstad, James [R]
Aye	MN-4	McCollum, Betty [D]
Aye	MN-5	Ellison, Keith [D]
Nay	MN-6	Bachmann, Michele [R]
Aye	MN-7	Peterson, Collin [D]
No Vote	MN-8	Oberstar, James [D]
Mississippi
No Vote	MS-2	Thompson, Bennie [D]
Nay	MS-3	Pickering, Charles [R]
Aye	MS-4	Taylor, Gene [D]
Missouri
Aye	MO-1	Clay, William [D]
Nay	MO-2	Akin, W. [R]
Aye	MO-3	Carnahan, Russ [D]
Aye	MO-4	Skelton, Ike [D]
Aye	MO-5	Cleaver, Emanuel [D]
Nay	MO-6	Graves, Samuel [R]
Nay	MO-7	Blunt, Roy [R]
Nay	MO-8	Emerson, Jo Ann [R]
Nay	MO-9	Hulshof, Kenny [R]
Montana
Nay	MT-0	Rehberg, Dennis [R]
Nebraska
Nay	NE-1	Fortenberry, Jeffrey [R]
Nay	NE-2	Terry, Lee [R]
Nay	NE-3	Smith, Adrian [R]
Nevada
Aye	NV-1	Berkley, Shelley [D]
Nay	NV-2	Heller, Dean [R]
Nay	NV-3	Porter, Jon [R]
New Hampshire
Aye	NH-1	Shea-Porter, Carol [D]
Aye	NH-2	Hodes, Paul [D]
New Jersey
Aye	NJ-1	Andrews, Robert [D]
Nay	NJ-2	LoBiondo, Frank [R]
Nay	NJ-3	Saxton, H. [R]
Aye	NJ-4	Smith, Christopher [R]
Nay	NJ-5	Garrett, E. [R]
Aye	NJ-6	Pallone, Frank [D]
Nay	NJ-7	Ferguson, Michael [R]
Aye	NJ-8	Pascrell, William [D]
Aye	NJ-9	Rothman, Steven [D]
Aye	NJ-10	Payne, Donald [D]
Nay	NJ-11	Frelinghuysen, Rodney [R]
Aye	NJ-12	Holt, Rush [D]
Aye	NJ-13	Sires, Albio [D]
New Mexico
Nay	NM-1	Wilson, Heather [R]
Nay	NM-2	Pearce, Steven [R]
Aye	NM-3	Udall, Tom [D]
New York
Aye	NY-1	Bishop, Timothy [D]
Aye	NY-2	Israel, Steve [D]
Nay	NY-3	King, Peter [R]
Aye	NY-4	McCarthy, Carolyn [D]
Aye	NY-5	Ackerman, Gary [D]
Aye	NY-6	Meeks, Gregory [D]
Aye	NY-7	Crowley, Joseph [D]
Aye	NY-8	Nadler, Jerrold [D]
Aye	NY-9	Weiner, Anthony [D]
Aye	NY-10	Towns, Edolphus [D]
Aye	NY-11	Clarke, Yvette [D]
Aye	NY-12	Velazquez, Nydia [D]
Nay	NY-13	Fossella, Vito [R]
Aye	NY-14	Maloney, Carolyn [D]
No Vote	NY-15	Rangel, Charles [D]
Aye	NY-16	Serrano, José [D]
Aye	NY-17	Engel, Eliot [D]
Aye	NY-18	Lowey, Nita [D]
Aye	NY-19	Hall, John [D]
Aye	NY-20	Gillibrand, Kirsten [D]
Aye	NY-21	McNulty, Michael [D]
Aye	NY-22	Hinchey, Maurice [D]
Nay	NY-23	McHugh, John [R]
Aye	NY-24	Arcuri, Michael [D]
Nay	NY-25	Walsh, James [R]
Nay	NY-26	Reynolds, Thomas [R]
Aye	NY-27	Higgins, Brian [D]
Aye	NY-28	Slaughter, Louise [D]
Nay	NY-29	Kuhl, John [R]
North Carolina
Aye	NC-1	Butterfield, George [D]
Aye	NC-2	Etheridge, Bob [D]
Nay	NC-3	Jones, Walter [R]
Aye	NC-4	Price, David [D]
Nay	NC-5	Foxx, Virginia [R]
No Vote	NC-6	Coble, Howard [R]
Aye	NC-7	McIntyre, Mike [D]
Nay	NC-8	Hayes, Robin [R]
Nay	NC-9	Myrick, Sue [R]
Nay	NC-10	Mchenry, Patrick [R]
Aye	NC-11	Shuler, Heath [D]
Aye	NC-12	Watt, Melvin [D]
Aye	NC-13	Miller, R. [D]
North Dakota
Aye	ND-0	Pomeroy, Earl [D]
Ohio
Nay	OH-1	Chabot, Steven [R]
Nay	OH-2	Schmidt, Jean [R]
Nay	OH-3	Turner, Michael [R]
Nay	OH-4	Jordan, Jim [R]
Nay	OH-5	Latta, Robert [R]
Aye	OH-6	Wilson, Charles [D]
Nay	OH-7	Hobson, David [R]
Nay	OH-8	Boehner, John [R]
Aye	OH-9	Kaptur, Marcy [D]
Nay	OH-10	Kucinich, Dennis [D]
Aye	OH-11	Jones, Stephanie [D]
Nay	OH-12	Tiberi, Patrick [R]
Aye	OH-13	Sutton, Betty [D]
Nay	OH-14	LaTourette, Steven [R]
No Vote	OH-15	Pryce, Deborah [R]
Nay	OH-16	Regula, Ralph [R]
Aye	OH-17	Ryan, Timothy [D]
Aye	OH-18	Space, Zackary [D]
Oklahoma
Nay	OK-1	Sullivan, John [R]
Aye	OK-2	Boren, Dan [D]
Nay	OK-3	Lucas, Frank [R]
Nay	OK-4	Cole, Tom [R]
Nay	OK-5	Fallin, Mary [R]
Oregon
Aye	OR-1	Wu, David [D]
Nay	OR-2	Walden, Greg [R]
Aye	OR-3	Blumenauer, Earl [D]
Aye	OR-4	DeFazio, Peter [D]
No Vote	OR-5	Hooley, Darlene [D]
Pennsylvania
Aye	PA-1	Brady, Robert [D]
Aye	PA-2	Fattah, Chaka [D]
Nay	PA-3	English, Philip [R]
Aye	PA-4	Altmire, Jason [D]
Nay	PA-5	Peterson, John [R]
Nay	PA-6	Gerlach, Jim [R]
Aye	PA-7	Sestak, Joe [D]
Aye	PA-8	Murphy, Patrick [D]
Nay	PA-9	Shuster, William [R]
Aye	PA-10	Carney, Christopher [D]
Aye	PA-11	Kanjorski, Paul [D]
Aye	PA-12	Murtha, John [D]
No Vote	PA-13	Schwartz, Allyson [D]
Aye	PA-14	Doyle, Michael [D]
No Vote	PA-15	Dent, Charles [R]
Nay	PA-16	Pitts, Joseph [R]
Aye	PA-17	Holden, Tim [D]
Nay	PA-18	Murphy, Tim [R]
Nay	PA-19	Platts, Todd [R]
Rhode Island
Aye	RI-1	Kennedy, Patrick [D]
Aye	RI-2	Langevin, James [D]
South Carolina
Nay	SC-1	Brown, Henry [R]
Nay	SC-2	Wilson, Addison [R]
Nay	SC-3	Barrett, James [R]
Nay	SC-4	Inglis, Bob [R]
Aye	SC-5	Spratt, John [D]
Aye	SC-6	Clyburn, James [D]
South Dakota
Aye	SD-0	Herseth Sandlin, Stephanie [D]
Tennessee
Nay	TN-1	Davis, David [R]
Nay	TN-2	Duncan, John [R]
Nay	TN-3	Wamp, Zach [R]
Aye	TN-4	Davis, Lincoln [D]
Aye	TN-5	Cooper, Jim [D]
Aye	TN-6	Gordon, Barton [D]
Nay	TN-7	Blackburn, Marsha [R]
Aye	TN-8	Tanner, John [D]
Aye	TN-9	Cohen, Steve [D]
Texas
Nay	TX-1	Gohmert, Louis [R]
Nay	TX-2	Poe, Ted [R]
Nay	TX-3	Johnson, Samuel [R]
Nay	TX-4	Hall, Ralph [R]
Nay	TX-5	Hensarling, Jeb [R]
Nay	TX-6	Barton, Joe [R]
Nay	TX-7	Culberson, John [R]
Nay	TX-8	Brady, Kevin [R]
Aye	TX-9	Green, Al [D]
Nay	TX-10	McCaul, Michael [R]
Nay	TX-11	Conaway, K. [R]
Nay	TX-12	Granger, Kay [R]
Nay	TX-13	Thornberry, William [R]
Aye	TX-14	Paul, Ronald [R]
Aye	TX-15	Hinojosa, Rubén [D]
Aye	TX-16	Reyes, Silvestre [D]
Aye	TX-17	Edwards, Thomas [D]
Aye	TX-18	Jackson-Lee, Sheila [D]
Nay	TX-19	Neugebauer, Randy [R]
Aye	TX-20	Gonzalez, Charles [D]
Nay	TX-21	Smith, Lamar [R]
Aye	TX-22	Lampson, Nicholas [D]
Aye	TX-23	Rodriguez, Ciro [D]
Nay	TX-24	Marchant, Kenny [R]
Aye	TX-25	Doggett, Lloyd [D]
Nay	TX-26	Burgess, Michael [R]
Aye	TX-27	Ortiz, Solomon [D]
Aye	TX-28	Cuellar, Henry [D]
Aye	TX-29	Green, Raymond [D]
Aye	TX-30	Johnson, Eddie [D]
Nay	TX-31	Carter, John [R]
Nay	TX-32	Sessions, Peter [R]
Utah
Nay	UT-1	Bishop, Rob [R]
Aye	UT-2	Matheson, Jim [D]
Nay	UT-3	Cannon, Christopher [R]
Vermont
Aye	VT-0	Welch, Peter [D]
Virginia
Nay	VA-1	Wittman, Robert [R]
Nay	VA-2	Drake, Thelma [R]
Aye	VA-3	Scott, Robert [D]
Nay	VA-4	Forbes, James [R]
Nay	VA-5	Goode, Virgil [R]
Nay	VA-6	Goodlatte, Robert [R]
Nay	VA-7	Cantor, Eric [R]
Aye	VA-8	Moran, James [D]
Aye	VA-9	Boucher, Frederick [D]
Nay	VA-10	Wolf, Frank [R]
Nay	VA-11	Davis, Thomas [R]
Washington
Aye	WA-1	Inslee, Jay [D]
Aye	WA-2	Larsen, Rick [D]
Aye	WA-3	Baird, Brian [D]
Nay	WA-4	Hastings, Doc [R]
Nay	WA-5	McMorris Rodgers, Cathy [R]
Aye	WA-6	Dicks, Norman [D]
Aye	WA-7	McDermott, James [D]
Nay	WA-8	Reichert, Dave [R]
Aye	WA-9	Smith, Adam [D]
West Virginia
Aye	WV-1	Mollohan, Alan [D]
No Vote	WV-2	Capito, Shelley [R]
Aye	WV-3	Rahall, Nick [D]
Wisconsin
Nay	WI-1	Ryan, Paul [R]
Aye	WI-2	Baldwin, Tammy [D]
Aye	WI-3	Kind, Ronald [D]
Aye	WI-4	Moore, Gwen [D]
Nay	WI-5	Sensenbrenner, F. [R]
Nay	WI-6	Petri, Thomas [R]
Aye	WI-7	Obey, David [D]
Aye	WI-8	Kagen, Steve [D]
Wyoming
Nay	WY-0	Cubin, Barbara [R]

good news and bad news

2008-03-10T00:06:00.000-07:00

the nice thing about having good news and bad news is that it's a lot better than having all bad news.

it's not often I find good news waiting for me when I check the headlines, but things are goin' alright tonight. first, zapatero won reelection in spain, which I was really pessimistic about - the conservatives and the catholics were throwing around the family values and fear mongering pretty heavily - it's very gratifying to see the spaniards not being swayed by it. then, with just a brief interruption, that I'll get to in a minute , I read this little gem - Girl in Clinton ad supports Obama here's an excerpt:

Sun Mar 9, 6:30 PM ET
BONNEY LAKE, Wash. - Casey Knowles didn't much like a recent campaign commercial for Hillary Clinton — even though she's in it as a sleeping 8-year-old.
After all, she about to turn 18 now and is a big supporter of Barack Obama.

"What I don't like about the ad is its fear-mongering," Knowles told ABC's "Good Morning America Weekend Edition" on Sunday. "I think it's a cheap hit to take. I really prefer Obama's message of looking forward to a bright future."

Way to go Casey Knowles! You win the first ever anti-fear monger award! Click here to read the rest.

the little interruption I mentioned was the article I read in between the other two, and while it was not good news, it was hardly surprising as I tend to keep track of these things. anyway the story I'm referring to is this one - Studies: Iraq costs US $12B per month - I did the math on that figure as soon as I read it and realized that that's $40 a month for every single american, man, woman, child - each of us. if you're married and have three kids, this war of ours in iraq just cost your family $200 last month, and it'll cost you another $200 next month, how do you like those family values? - think about that when april 15th rolls around and you're paying your taxes. how do you feel about where your tax dollars are going now? bytheway, in one of my earlier posts I mentioned that although estimates on how many iraqis we've killed in the past five years vary, it's a pretty fair estimate that we spend about a million dollars per iraqi head and there have been a lot of heads - think about that on april 15th too.

and let me mention one more time - the iraq war was not begun because of a terrorist threat and there are many dangers more serious facing us than terrorism. our continued attempts to stop violence with violence are only going to escalate the problem and cost our economy dearly.

maybe I should move to vermont

2008-03-06T08:46:00.000-08:00

so, I just glanced at the post from last week on my way to write this new posting and noticed that the first sentence has come to be ambiguous since tuesday's election - so to clarify, for those who haven't followed earlier posts or don't notice the date, the reference to hillary clinton having "won twice lately" is in regard to her being presented (by me) the "fear monger of the day" award - not her having more recently been awarded, by those susceptible to her fear mongery, the primaries in texas and ohio. so there you go.

but speaking of that, it is exactly those elections and the manner of their being won that I want briefly comment on. my primary concern (enjoy the pun if you wish, groan if you must) about the way things turned out in texas and ohio... and I won't forget rhode island - is that after weeks of a narrowing clinton lead in the polls - reflecting the general trend towards obama as voters gained familiarity with him - there was a last minute reversal, which can really only be explained by clinton's resorting to extremely negative and inflammatory (and unfounded) campaign methods - and (now we get to it) at the heart of those methods is fear mongery. grrrrr!

I was thinking these sort of thoughts yesterday morning as I walked to stroh's deli on abbot kinney here in lovely, almost springtime venice to get my morning coffee and newspaper... the result of my thoughts was my arrival at a conclusion that brought about in me a peculiarly grumpy mood for such an otherwise lovely morning. It was this: clinton's success in texas and ohio is going to prove to her and anybody else who's watching that negative, inflammatory, campaigning, preying on the fears of the constituency in an effort to win votes - the realization that, to many voters even the hint of danger, an innuendo suggesting incompetence in a rival - is enough to sway them to vote for the person feeding their fears - and that, it seems is most often the person who in actuality has their best interests least at heart. my moodiness was only aggravated when I got my la times and was greeted with a, just above the fold and just beneath the candidate's photos, headline stating, "Going negative proved positive in comeback" - so they saw it too, but far from condemning it, it is simply reported and recognized as sound strategy... the politics of fear clearly continues and has a strong following that accepts it without question. the article was continued on page A13 where it was headed by the words "Negatavism wins for Clinton" - well, if it wasn't clear before... but still, negatavism is simply seen by the media and because of it, by the general public, as a tactic, a method, a tool to be used when necessary. grrrr...

it's all very discouraging - not simply because politicians aren't above such deceitful manipulation, but also and maybe most so, because people are so damn susceptable to it - that is why I believe it is absolutely crucial that we DON'T BELIEVE THE FEAR MONGERS! however days like yesterday force me to acknowledge the uphill struggle in this fight against fear mongery - it will continue to be used as long as we allow it to work.

on a more optimistic side, many voters in ohio and texas were not swayed, I'm not alone in expressing concern, rosa brooks had a pretty good opinion piece in the paper today, I heard a fair amount of chatter about the effects of clinton's strategy on npr yesterday... and so clearly there are like-minded people out there and maybe they're not even in the minority... nevertheless it doesn't take many to sway a close election and I think clinton's strategists are counting on just that... sway the fearful few and that will be enough to leverage there way into position - and that's the best they can hope for - it's too late to win on pledged delegates, but if they can build momentum and then make an argument to the convention... well, like I said, that's there only hope so it must be what they're working towards... oh but I forgot - you can't run a campaign on hope... so why are they still doing it? hmmm. I'll have to think a bit about that.

and finally I just briefly want to acknowledge my appreciation to the state of vermont for not only giving obama a clear win but also for this.

hillary - who you gonna call?

2008-02-29T22:12:00.000-08:00

ok, here we go - she's won twice lately, but I'm just now getting around to the poster... I guess I'll have to do that blond lady from the view sometime soon too, although it's sad to mthink she has enough impact to warrant fear monger status... but I suppose the ugly truth is that she does - probably has more influence than any of the others. anyway, here's hillary and we'll see about the other later.

ok, here we go - she's won twice lately, but I'm just now getting around to the poster... I guess I'll have to do that blond lady from the view sometime soon too, although it's sad to mthink she has enough impact to warrant fear monger status... but I suppose the ugly truth is that she does - probably has more influence than any of the others. anyway, here's hillary and we'll see about the other later.

hillary wins again!

2008-02-29T16:21:00.000-08:00

once again hillary clinton wins the fear monger of the day award - and I've really got to find the time to make a poster, but not right now - in a bit of a rush. you've probably all already seen it and heard the controversy, but here it is anyway. admittedly, she's not as much of a fear monger as a lot of 'em, but she's a democrat fear monger and that pisses me off even more - she really ought to know better and so should her advisors... but obviously they're just not getting it.

click the arrow to play this video

stagflation - variations on a theme

2008-02-28T16:15:00.001-08:00

in some ways of course, it really is about the economy... anyway, here are a few poster designs.

there is no terrorist threat!

2008-02-21T11:35:00.000-08:00

vindication! a friend of mine mentioned an unrelated bit of trivia that led me to michael moore's website - while there, I was shocked to see my own words staring me in the face! for more than a year, I've repeatedly used the phrase, "there is no terrorist threat" to convey the point that we've been manipulated by our government officials and by the news media to believe that there is danger where in fact there is not - this has allowed us to be manipulated by fear and has had a devastating impact on the quality of life of most americans. the threat from terrorists to an average american is so minuscule compared to virtually all other dangers that it hardly bears attention or concern at all, and yet many of us have been convinced that this is a major issue and concern and justifies gigantic expenditures for defense and homeland security. the truth of course is that if terrorists wanted to attack us again, they could find any number of ways to do so no matter how diligent the efforts of homeland security are. the only conclusion that can be made is that there is in fact no (or at least only an extremely small) terrorist threat here in the u.s.

so anyway I was very gratified to read the heading "there is no terrorist threat" leading to this article from michael moore's website. clearly I'm not entirely alone and there are others who seem to see through the smokescreen.

by the way, I've been busy lately and haven't made any "fear monger" portraits, but recent winners that I'll try to get to soon are hillary clinton, who keeps talking about how we need somebody with experience in office as president because we are in such danger from the terrorists - grrr, democratic fear mongering! and that blond lady from the view - which I happened to watch recently, what's scary is that that program is where countless american women turn for their political information... i just don't have a solution for that one... I guess we need an alternate morning talk show with women who remember political events beyond the past few days media manipulations and propaganda - even barbara walters seems to go out of her way to confound and confuse the simplest of issues - grrr again.

john boehner is a fear monger

2008-02-14T18:41:00.000-08:00

I don't remember ever reading or hearing anything about john boehner that didn't make him seem like a pompous idiot. he wins the fear monger of the day award - happy valentine's day, and don't believe the fear mongers. see below for an excerpt of the story.

Bush criticizes Congress on terror bill

By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer

In a day of political brinkmanship, President Bush pressured the House on Thursday to finish a bill giving the government more leeway to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mails of suspected terrorists. House Democrats didn't budge and angry Republicans staged a walkout down the Capitol steps.

From the White House, Bush argued that the House has plenty of time to pass a bill before modifications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act expire at midnight Saturday. The president plans to leave on a five-nation trip to Africa on Friday afternoon, but said he'd delay his departure and stay in Washington "if it will help them complete their work on this critical bill."

On Capitol Hill, House Republicans stormed out of the House chamber to boycott a vote to hold two presidential confidants in contempt for failing to cooperate with an inquiry into whether federal prosecutors were ousted for political reasons.

"We have space on the calendar today for a politically charged fishing expedition, but no space for a bill that would protect the American people from terrorists who want to kill us," said Rep. John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, the minority leader.

"Let's just get up and leave," he told his colleagues, before walking out with scores of Republicans in tow.

mitt romney - fear monger of the day

2008-02-07T12:36:00.000-08:00

mitt romney ended his campaign in the most fear mongeringly asinine way possible today:

"I must now stand aside, for our party and our country, If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror," Romney, speaking to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. (full story here).

need I say again, there are real dangers facing us, terrorism is not one of them. an article appeared today stating that Tobacco Could Kill 1 Billion by 2100 - that beats the shit out of terrorism as far as threats to us go, but you don't see it having much of an impact on policy do you? and while we're at it, I also read today that;

The CDC (that's the centers for disease control) reports that from 1999 to 2004, unintentional poisoning death from prescription drugs sleeping pills, antidepressants and tranquilizers grew 84 percent to 20,950 deaths, overtaking cocaine and heroin combined as the leading cause of lethal overdose.

please note two things about the above quote - 20,950 deaths in five years! once again kicks terrorism's ass. and two, it even outnumbers deaths from heroin and cocaine - but we're not likely to declare war on the pharmaceutical companies are we? yet we still use the "war on drugs" slogan when it suits us... remember the war on drugs? that was the other make believe war we waged until the newer sexier war on terrorism distracted us. but never fear, even though we've forgotten the war on drugs, it's still marching on as plenty of south (and central) americans could tell you... were they ever given a voice with which to do so.

so anyway. mitt romney wins the fear monger of the day award.

Rain forests fall at 'alarming' rate

2008-02-02T15:49:00.000-08:00

by way of clarification - when I talk/write about fear mongers, I'm talking about people who preach fear in such a way as to overstate a threat, usually for their own selfish reasons, but sometimes just through falling prey to the misinformation and propaganda of others. however, there are real dangers and threats that must be addressed and the people who are shouting those warnings are not fear mongers since the dangers are real and the concern justified - and the agenda is unselfish - that's why I continue to try to expose fear mongers when I encounter them - to distinguish them from those who are desperately trying to convey important messages to an unheeding world. I'm including an excerpt from an article about shrinking rainforests below to call attention to a real threat and to show why john mccain's statement quoted in my previous post is so repugnant to me. there are clearly many more important challenges facing the world during this coming century than "radical Islamic extremism".

the following is from Rain forests fall at 'alarming' rate.

From Brazil to central Africa to once-lush islands in Asia's archipelagos, human encroachment is shrinking the world's rain forests.

The alarm was sounded decades ago by environmentalists — and was little heeded. The picture, meanwhile, has changed: Africa is now a leader in destructiveness. The numbers have changed: U.N. specialists estimate 60 acres of tropical forest are felled worldwide every minute, up from 50 a generation back. And the fears have changed.

Experts still warn of extinction of animal and plant life, of the loss of forest peoples' livelihoods, of soil erosion and other damage. But scientists today worry urgently about something else: the fateful feedback link of trees and climate.

Global warming is expected to dry up and kill off vast tracts of rain forest, and dying forests will feed global warming.

"If we lose forests, we lose the fight against climate change," declared more than 300 scientists, conservation groups, religious leaders and others in an appeal for action at December's climate conference in Bali, Indonesia.

The burning or rotting of trees that comes with deforestation — at the hands of ranchers, farmers, timbermen — sends more heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than all the world's planes, trains, trucks and automobiles. Forest destruction accounts for about 20 percent of manmade emissions, second only to burning of fossil fuels for electricity and heat. Conversely, healthy forests absorb carbon dioxide and store carbon.

"The stakes are so dire that if we don't start turning this around in the next 10 years, the extinction crisis and the climate crisis will begin to spiral out of control," said Roman Paul Czebiniak, a forest expert with Greenpeace International. "It's a very big deal."

there is no terrorist threat!

2008-01-31T13:08:00.000-08:00

I read with interest the article by greg krikorian in column one of today's latimes. the headline read - "Confronting terror, calmly" and the subheading was, "A top expert draws upon classified data as well as experience. His verdict? The threat is here to stay, but we can cope." fair enough, sounded like it was the kind of thing worth reading and the column one articles tend to be pretty good. past experience and disappointments have made me suspicious of articles about terrorism, but I try to keep an open mind, and regardless of my ability (or lack of it) to do so, I'm always curious to discover what is being written - and published - about terrorism these days.

the first few paragraphs only stoked my skepticism and I prepared myself to be frustrated and disappointed again, but I have to admit that despite the description of brian jenkins - the "top expert" - as having been seasoned in guatemala and vietnam and then having enjoyed a forty year tenure at the rand corporation - all of which set off warning signals with me - he comes off as being a pretty legit and insightful authority on all things terror related. here is a brief excerpt that led me to reconsider my initial suspicion and to read the rest of the article more carefully than I otherwise might have.

In some ways, Jenkins knows too much. He is immersed routinely in risk assessments and intelligence reports brimming with the stuff of nightmares. His assessment: "We are not going to end terrorism, not in any future I see."

Yet he exudes calm. His Southern California home -- neither fortress nor bunker -- is in a leafy, accessible neighborhood. He is a relaxed frequent flier, traveling more than 200,000 miles a year, much of it to terrorism conferences or briefings around the world.

And he thinks the country can cope as well.

"During the Cold War both the U.S. and Soviet Union spent a great deal of time and money understanding each other. To a great extent, that spared us from mutual annihilation," Jenkins says.

Similarly, he says, in the war on terrorism "we have to have a better understanding of what we're up against." Demonizing terrorists as "wicked and evil" plays into their hands, while learning about "their quantifiable goals and understandable motives" demystifies them.

Knowledge, he says, is the antidote to anxiety.

I mean, how refreshing is that? - here's an expert on terrorism actually calling for an understanding of terrorist motivation - even going so far as to characterize these motives as "understandable" and discouraging the over simplification of terrorists - the bush/cheney/et al. method - as "wicked and evil" (that's the "evil doers" of innumerable bush speeches).

so I continued reading optimistically looking for more well reasoned viewpoints. in reference to his first tour in vietnam as a green beret jenkins says,

That first combat tour would provide a valuable lesson, he says, in how not to fight terrorism.

"If in the process of going after terrorists you create terror, then you are going to be in conflict forever," he says. And accepting high levels of "collateral casualties" among the local population is sure to be "a losing strategy."

I absolutely agree. and so, as I read on I was more certain that the article would continue in this vein, but (not surprisingly I suppose) I was disappointed. no solutions or answers were forthcoming. what the article seemed on the verge of depicting was a new insight which I'm still yet to see printed - and that is that terrorism is simply a method (a weapon, if you prefer) that will continue to be used as long as circumstances lend themselves to that use. and if we are to minimize it or maybe even ultimately overcome it to a significant degree then we must work towards the eradication of the motivations behind it.

some month ago, curious about just what constitutes terrorism, I looked online for definitions. it turns out that in the realm of description, that for terrorism is somewhat evasive. I came across the wikipedia article headed "terrorism" which then led me to the article headed "definition of terrorism" - (as an aside, I just went back to these articles to review the information, and noticed that in the first of the two(the one headed just "terrorism", brian jenkins is quoted in reference to the subjectivity involved in applying the "terrorist" label) - the passage that stuck with me from that intial reading is this;

"As terrorism ultimately involves the use or threat of violence with the aim of creating fear not only to the victims but among a wide audience, it is fear which distinguishes terrorism from both conventional and guerrilla warfare. While both conventional military forces may engage in psychological warfare and guerrilla forces may engage in acts of terror and other forms of propaganda, they both aim at military victory. Terrorism on the other hand aims to achieve political or other goals, when direct military victory is not possible. This has resulted in some social scientists referring to guerrilla warfare as the "weapon of the weak" and terrorism as the "weapon of the weakest."

I think that too often the implications of this rather apt, I think, description go unheeded. terrorism it says, is the "weapon of the weakest" to me this suggests an obvious cause and an equally obvious solution. if one wants to limit or do away with terrorism, one must remove the circumstances that drive it, and the circumstances are essentially that terrorism is resorted to when all other options are absent. if we continue to deny voice to political and religious factions and give them no other method of being heard while we at the same time insistently (persistently?) impose our will upon them, then they will inevitably resort to terrorism as a last resort and tragic way of being heard. the wikipedia article on terrorism includes a list of causes of terrorism, which essentially describe situations surrounding those from whom power and opportunity have been taken away. terrorism, it appears, is the weapon of the disenfranchised.

as jenkins, I think sugggests, our methods in the current "war on terrorism" are counter-productive, only serving to exacerbate the problem - it is possible that that is not his viewpoint and perhaps I'm mistaken in that supposition because the article doesn't attribute that sentiment to him, nevertheless it seems implicit in some of his statements I've read both in this latimes article and elsewhere.

I'm pleased to see this article appear, but discouraged that it didn't follow its implications to these apparent conclusions. our "global war on terror is nothing more than a politically motivated tool designed to give us an excuse to exert our will on less powerful states and fuel our military driven economy. it does nothing at all towards achieving its purported goal of combatting terrorism - in fact it clearly promotes terrorist activity and encourages its continuance by playing into the hands of the very individuals and groups we claim to be struggling against. if this is as clear as it is to me, it must be clear to at least some of the people calling the shots, and I can only assume that that means the overcoming of terrorism is not the primary goal of our administration, anymore than the capturing of osama bin laden is - in fact, I fear that, the administration actually sees an advantage to promoting terrorism, as it gives them a much needed enemy in its effort to pour funds into our military - and for that matter, having osama bin laden at large as the "face of that enemy" is much more valuable than having him dead or behind bars.

we have fallen for this myth of terrorism and have created our enemy where there was none... and we continue to do so. if we want to end terrorism we must seek to end poverty and hunger and political and religious disenfranchisement. but alas, ending terrorism is not what this is all about, nor has it ever been.

the only way to end the war on terrorism is simply to declare it over, which incidentally would go a long way towards ending terrorism, as long as we continue to focus so heavily on terrorism, glorifying it and making it a viable weapon it will continue, and as long as we continue to exert our will on others and gain our wealth from their deprivation, terrorism will continue to exist.

and by the way, we are the victims of terrorism primarily because our leaders and our media have instilled the fear of terrorism in us - out of all proportion to its actual existence. in relation to all of the other potential dangers facing us as mortal human beings, the threat of terrorism is so miniscule as to be essentially non-existent, and that is why I say in addition to - don't believe the fear mongers - THERE IS NO TERRORIST THREAT!

john mccain is an idiot and he is not alone.

2008-01-30T16:20:00.000-08:00

maybe the form this blog should take is to simply report the most ridiculous or offensive bit of fear mongering, propaganda, media driven manipualtion or attempt at mind control to appear in the news each day.

this one was actually in an latimes article about john mccain that appeared monday - it's been sort of a busy week, so I'm just getting around to it now.

"I'm running for president of the United States because I believe the transcendent challenge of the 21st century is radical Islamic extremism," McCain told reporters at an airplane museum between Tampa and Orlando.

McCain, who compared Romney to Democrats who have pushed to end the war, said: "If we had, quote, set timetables, the outcome of the conflict would have been different and it would have entailed a much greater expenditure of American blood and treasure."

absolutely unbelievable - well, to me it is, but a lot of people gobble this stuff up and actually come back for more - this is the kool-aid the republicans have been handing out for the past six and a half years and we're drinking it now more than ever - to be fair, although the republican administration started it - a lot of democrats have chimed right in with it too. you are being manipulated by political leaders and newscasters who frighteningly have been drinking too much of their own propaganda spiked thirst quencher.

I've said it before and I'll keep saying it - don't believe the fear mongers.

and by the way, there is no terrorist threat.

Jose Padilla is sentenced to 17 years

2008-01-22T12:30:00.000-08:00

here's some background on this, in case you need filling in... and you might be interested in this.

well, I'm glad that they didn't give padilla a life sentence, but I hope it is even further reduced on appeal - I think it's ridiculous that he was ever charged with anything in the first place - the bush administration was clearly grasping at straws in a desperate attempt to justify its fabricated war on terror - the extremes that they had to go to, to find people they could accuse speaks volumes. the sad truth remains though that their propagandizing worked and they instilled fear on our country and have held us hostage ever since - that is precisely why the name of this blog is what it is - we must all be diligent in our efforts to resist succumbing to the fear mongers' influence - too often over the past six years our government and the news media have sought to promote an environment of fear, and because of their efforts, fear has invaded our societal psyche like a disease. we are not in the danger that they portray us to be - sure their are people who will use violence to further their cause and to draw attention to their efforts and vent their frustration and anger (and sure padilla was a potential danger - but note the judge's comments about the evidence - or lack of it - below), I'm certain there are even more of these people now than there were six years ago - but they aren't around every corner and they're not anxious to "attack us on our own soil" as our leaders have so often suggested - the reason we have not experienced a follow up attack since 9/11/2001 is not because of the billions of dollars and hard work by the dept of homeland security, it is simply because the threat as portrayed by the bush administration and the news media, is not real - if terrorists wanted to attack us they could - I can think of a dozen different ways to do it, and if I can they can - which simply means that if they haven't, they don't want to.

here's a link to the padilla article, I'll include a couple excerpts below in case you don't want to read the whole thing.

Prosecutors had sought a life sentence, but Cooke (she's the judge) said she arrived at the 17-year sentence after considering the "harsh conditions" during Padilla's lengthy military detention at a Navy brig in South Carolina.

"I do find that the conditions were so harsh for Mr. Padilla ... they warrant consideration in the sentencing in this case," the judge said. However, he did not get credit for time served.

Padilla's lawyers claimed his treatment amounted to torture, which U.S. officials have repeatedly denied. His attorneys say he was forced to stand in painful stress positions, given LSD or other drugs as "truth serum," deprived of sleep and even a mattress for extended periods and subjected to loud noises, extreme heat and cold and noxious odors.
_______________________________________________
Cooke said that as serious as the conspiracy was, there was no evidence linking the men to specific acts of terrorism anywhere.

"There is no evidence that these defendants personally maimed, kidnapped or killed anyone in the United States or elsewhere," she said.
_______________________________________________
"It is definitely a defeat for the government," said Hassoun lawyer Jeanne Baker.

"The government has not made America any safer. It has just made America less free," said William Swor, who represents Jayyousi.
_______________________________________________

Padilla's arrest was initially portrayed by the Bush administration as an important victory in the months immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, and later was seen as a symbol of the administration's zeal to prevent homegrown terrorism.
Civil liberties groups and Padilla's lawyers called his detention unconstitutional for someone born in this country.

hillary, mlk and what is it really all about?

2008-01-21T10:02:00.000-08:00

so, I've been thinking about starting a blog to comment on political topics and items in the news. every day, it seems like there is something I feel like spouting off about, but have thus far managed to keep my comments to myself or else only impose them on the unfortunates who happen to stop by my table in front of stroh's on abbot kinney while I'm reading the paper in the morning. it's been a fairly easy thing to procrastinate on the creation of this blog, I've been aided by my natural disinclination to take on any unnecessary commitments or obligations, and am very aware that a blog can be a nagging demand on one's time - having allowed my old blog to go neglected for ages and ages and atrophy into a mere storehouse for various little art projects and announcements, that don't quite fit in on my website. I've also refrained from starting a blog of this sort because I'm well aware that the internet/blogosphere suffers from a terrible glut of blogs by people expressing viewpoints that readers will either agree with or disagree with but seldom be swayed by, and not only does this add to my general belief in the futility of making the effort, it also brings up the issue of ego and pride because of course I don't want to cast myself in with all the other quacks and self-righteous pundits.

nevertheless, I find myself with a bit extra free time today and since I seem to be lacking in what little restraint I usually have, I've given into the temptation and am beginning this blog - we'll see how diligently I stick with it.

today is martin luther king jr day and that will serve as the impetus for this initial entry. not specifically mlk, or the holiday, but what I want to comment on are the accounts of hillary clinton's statement at the abyssinian baptist church in harlem yesterday. every report I've read about this has had the same quote by her regarding her teenage experience of going on a trip with members of her church youth group to hear dr king speak in chicago; "It was a transforming experience for me, He made it very clear that the civil rights movement was about economic justice.'' here's an latimes article and here's one from the washington post. but there are countless others (actually, according to the google news search I just did, there are 778 related stories - but I think "countless" was a fair estimate). I find this unsettling. I mean, yeah sure economic justice was a part of it, but there was more to it wasn't there ? maybe not...

so anyway, I did a little research, first I found this webpage, that explained to me just what it was that hillary heard. apparently she attended an event hosted by the Chicago Sunday Evening Club where king delivered his "Remaining Awake through a Revolution" sermon on April 15, 1962 (which incidentally, was a day after my grandmother's 55th birthday and three days prior to my sister's first - I believe neither of them however, were in chicago that evening).

I can understand how an impressionable teenage girl would come away from that speech with the impression that "the civil rights movement was about economic justice.'' quite a lot of the speech does in fact focus on the importance of overcoming poverty - you can read the whole speech here, but if you're in a hurry, I'll include a brief pertinent excerpt;

There is another thing closely related to racism that I would like to mention as another challenge. We are challenged to rid our nation and the world of poverty. Like a monstrous octopus, poverty spreads its nagging, prehensile tentacles into hamlets and villages all over our world. Two-thirds of the people of the world go to bed hungry tonight. They are ill-housed; they are ill-nourished; they are shabbily clad. I’ve seen it in Latin America; I’ve seen it in Africa; I’ve seen this poverty in Asia.

he goes on to talk about the opportunity that america (the us) has "to help bridge the gulf between the haves and the have-nots." but the important thing to keep in mind is that this is only one part of his speech and this speech is only one of many that he gave and the eradication of poverty and pursuit of economic justice is only one part of the civil rights movement.

don't get me wrong - I'm all for the eradication of poverty - I think I'm more in favor of it than hillary - way more. but I think that reading these words she spoke yesterday, quoted over and over in news articles, ellicited a negative reaction in me for a few reasons.

first, I really believe that the civil rights movement is about much more than "economic justice," I believe that it is about social justice and political justice and racial, ethnic and gender justice. I believe that it is about changing the very nature of the way our society and culture think - to allow for acceptance of our fellow human beings even when they are to greater or lesser degrees different than we ourselves are, or even when they believe in things or see things differently than we ourselves do. hillary clinton's statement, by focusing on economic justice cheapens the civil rights movement by portraying it as a materially based rather than a spiritually based thing.

second, I can't help but interpret her words as a jaded use of mlk's legacy to further her own agenda. I don't believe for a minute that hillary's idea of economic justice is remotely similar to mlk's vision of ending poverty through our nation's wealth and the 20th century's scientific and technological advances. hillary wants improve our economy, and she will try to do what she deems necessary to accomplish that and if history and precedent is any gauge she will do that at the expense of not only our most poor citizens, but also the impoverished throughout the world - and as the economy improves, the actual beneficiaries will be those who already had and once again the have nots will be left behind. mlk was looking at the big picture - he was not talking about improving our national economy for the sake of our nation's wealth, he was talking about ending poverty throughout the world - using our nation's wealth and power to end poverty at home and abroad - and not, by the way just economic poverty, but the poverty of opportunity (" if a man doesn’t have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists.") and finally, the thing that really bugged me about all these articles quoting hillary's comment is that the more times I read it, the more I kept expecting to read about somebody questioning it, but I haven't found one single instance of even a raised eyebrow over the supposition that "the civil rights movement was about economic justice.'' - and again, I'm not saying that the pursuit of economic justice is not an important part of the civil rights movement, but I am saying that it is not the only part or necessarily even the primary part, and I think it's important to ask just what a politician means when they use that phrase - the implication from the way the news articles presented her comments was that economic justice (whatever she meant by that) is what mlk and the civil rights movement were working for - but that misses the point of so many other social and cultural and political aspects to the movement... or at least I think it does.

so that's it, I'd be interested to hear any responses to this. maybe I'm just naive when it comes to things like this and maybe "it [really i]s the economy stupid" and maybe all people want is wealth or the perception of it for themselves at any cost, let the chips fall where they may, and maybe all the other stuff is just fancy talk. I honestly don't know. but I've always thought the civil rights movement was about change of a different sort than mere economics.

which does bring me to what I see as a tragically missed opportunity by the clinton camp - although a telling one - as I said, I think it's fair and unsurprising that a teenage girl would walk away after hearing king's "Remaining Awake through a Revolution" sermon and think that the civil rights movement was only a call economic justice, but it seems that as an adult running for office and alluding to the experience publically, it seems that she - or at least one of her people - would've reread it to see what else he was saying, and had they done so, they would've found this;

I want to say one other challenge that we face is simply that we must find an alternative to war and bloodshed. Anyone who feels, and there are still a lot of people who feel that way, that war can solve the social problems facing mankind is sleeping through a great revolution. President Kennedy said on one occasion, "Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind." The world must hear this. I pray God that America will hear this before it is too late, because today we’re fighting a war.

I am convinced that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world. Our involvement in the war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva Accord. It has strengthened the military-industrial complex; it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation. It has put us against the self-determination of a vast majority of the Vietnamese people, and put us in the position of protecting a corrupt regime that is stacked against the poor.

It has played havoc with our domestic destinies. This day we are spending five hundred thousand dollars to kill every Vietcong soldier. Every time we kill one we spend about five hundred thousand dollars while we spend only fifty-three dollars a year for every person characterized as poverty-stricken in the so-called poverty program, which is not even a good skirmish against poverty.

Not only that, it has put us in a position of appearing to the world as an arrogant nation. And here we are ten thousand miles away from home fighting for the so-called freedom of the Vietnamese people when we have not even put our own house in order. And we force young black men and young white men to fight and kill in brutal solidarity. Yet when they come back home that can’t hardly live on the same block together.

ok, you get the idea, and I'm sure you don't need me to suggest you replace the vietnam references to iraq ones. it seems to me, that if hillary was really against the war, she would've brought up this part of king's speech too... but I don't think she really is against the war, except when it works to her benefit - and I don't think she felt that bringing this comparison up would've worked to accomplish her goals - because she's not against war - in fact I think she sees a lot of economic advantages to it, and so it would be awkward to touch on mlk's statements, so she didn't bother. to be fair, obama is pretty ok with the whole war in general thing too, much more than I'd like him to be - kucinich is the only one who truly believes in peace, and alas I don't think he stands much of a chance...

oh, and by the way - just because I love a little math problem, I wanted to update mlk's figures. it turns out that figuring the cost of the war in iraq at 487 billion (I looked it up here and rounded down) and the number of iraqi deaths at 150, 000 (I know there're lots of uncertainties about that figure, but it seems a pretty reasonable estimate) then we as a nation of tax payers it costs us 3.25 million dollars to kill an iraqi. hmmm - there's somethin' to think about.

and just for fun, I used the figure 500,000 for the number of iraqi deaths - and even if that estimate is the accurate one, we still pay about a million per scalp.

happy mlk day!

Don't believe the Fear Mongers

Domestic spying far outpaces terrorism prosecutions - latimes

Domestic spying far outpaces terrorism prosecutions

toast

bill moyers tells it like it is

obama's speech - a more perfect union

obama's speech and michael meyer's response

the facts behind the us use of the atomic bomb

members of congress who voted against overriding the president's veto of H.R. 2082

Votes

Alabama

Alaska

Arizona

Arkansas

California

Colorado

Connecticut

Delaware

Florida

Georgia

Hawaii

Idaho

Illinois

Indiana

Iowa

Kansas

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good news and bad news

maybe I should move to vermont

hillary - who you gonna call?

hillary wins again!

stagflation - variations on a theme

there is no terrorist threat!

john boehner is a fear monger

Bush criticizes Congress on terror bill

mitt romney - fear monger of the day

Rain forests fall at 'alarming' rate

there is no terrorist threat!

john mccain is an idiot and he is not alone.

Jose Padilla is sentenced to 17 years

hillary, mlk and what is it really all about?