One Utah

One should drink with smart people.

A while back, I had the opportunity to drink with a very smart woman who said, “Hillay will have an almost impossible time dropping out of this race unless Obama actually wins enough delegates.  She is a good second wave feminist and it is her turn.  She’s waited.  She’s earned her turn to be president.”

I’ve been thinking about that this week.  For Hillary Clinton - who is smart and qualified - the nomination should have been a lock but she’s had to fight tooth and nail to lose. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night was the annual meeting of the Coalition of Religious Communities (CORC).  The Coalition represents 20+ denominations thoughout Utah.  Members of CORC work on a broad array of social justice issues, primarily issues of economic justice - although we were also one of the leading groups supporting effective hate crimes legislation.  CORC’s leadership is drawn from among pastors, lay leaders, and other group leaders.  CORC’s member communities include Quakers, Episcopalians, Unitarians, UCC, Lutherans, Methodists, Mennonites, MESJ (Mormons for Equity and Social Justice), Buddhists, Muslims, Jewish groups, and Church Women United (those are just the groups I remember from last night).  Broadly speaking, CORC members speak for well over 250,000 Utahns.

Last night’s meeting was one of my favorites.  The steering committee planned responded to requests to better understand the legislative process - from the very beginnings of “How does an idea become a bill ?” to how does a bill become a law.  So we created and planned a simulation designed to recreate the experience of the state legislature - from creating talking points in favor of your bill, to sending in notes and talking to legislators, to trying to persuade the leadership to fund a proposal.  We had two goals - first to illuminate the process by which ideas become laws and second to give people a chance to practice their lobbying skills.

The process worked better than I ever imagined it would.  Our “legislators” were every bit as passionately stuffy as the real thing, they even managed to use the arcane language known as “legislatese.”  We had amendments, we had “strike and replace.”  We had some fun debate and great conversations.

We also learned valuable things.

When talking to legislators, be prepared and organized.  Make your points quickly, succinctly and be prepared with more information.

Don’t try to fake it.  If you don’t know, say you don’t know and let them know you’ll get the information and get back with them.

Make certain you introduce yourself - name and who you represent and don’t be afraid to state up front what you want - i.e. “I’m Glen Brown and I’m a member of the Coalition of Religious Communities and I’m here today to ask you to support HB 931 - payday lender and check casher reporting requirements.”

Last but not least, don’t be intimidated by legislators.  A lot of people get intimidated and fritter around and get apologetic and never get to the point:  “Well I know that I’m not an expert on these things and I’m so glad you’re taking time to talk to me and hear what I have to say and what I’ve to say is really important because it’ll help poor people and babies and apple pie and if you vote for it you’ll do a lot of good.  So really, you taking time to talk to me is so important and I know I’m just a citizen who comes up here and my voice isn’t very important but . . .”  and ten minutes later the legislator is still baffled as to who this person and what he/she wants. 

CORC is a unique group - one that employs the religious passion for social justice to get people active and to get them united in ways they might not do on their own.  CORC’s work in the community has done a tremendous amount of good in Utah.  Our latest and biggest successes has been getting the sales tax on food reduced.  There was no action on this for years, no legislator interested in taking it on.  CORC members around the state organized and talked to legislators and created sufficient buzz in every corner of Utah that state legislators heard about it wherever they went - it’s time to remove the sales tax on food.  It’s time to remove the sales tax on food.  It’s time to remove the sales tax on food.  The sales tax on food isn’t all gone, but much of it is (basically you’re paying the city and county portion these days, not the state portion).  CORC has consistently taken the lead on this issue for years.  And it pays off, it takes time, but it pays off.  And that is the secret of success in social change.

Via The Washington Independent we learn that Helen Thomas went to Tuesday’s White House press briefing with Dana Perino and asked the questions few dare to ask, even of the most unpopular administration ever:

THOMAS: Yesterday, according to The New York Times, we dropped a bomb on a home in Sadr City and burned alive a pregnant woman and her children. How long is the siege of Sadr — how long are we going to keep bombing Iraqis?

PERINO: Well, I’m not aware of that particular report. I have not — I’ve not seen it.

THOMAS: Well, it was pretty buried in the story.

PERINO: Okay. Well, the operation against the militias in Sadr City will continue until they root them out. And that is expressly in order to protect people like you just mentioned.

THOMAS: Root who out, Iraqis, in their own country?

PERINO: It is Prime Minister Maliki’s government which is going after the militia, which is appropriate.

THOMAS: Why are we bombing these people?

PERINO: Any time anyone that is an innocent civilian is hurt in a conflict, we obviously regret it, and we go out of our way to make sure it doesn’t happen.

THOMAS: Thank you.

UNICEF reports that 150,000 civilians are trapped by the fighting in Sadr City, and thousands more have fled. Those unable to leave their homes face shortages of water, food and medicine. Civilian casualties so far have exceeded 1,000 people killed and 2,500 wounded.

Helen Thomas is a national treasure. Why is she the only MSM reporter asking these questions?

All the Bush administration can say is that our forces are killing these noncombatants to “protect” them.

UPDATES:
Residents flee battered Sadr City in search of safety, food
Iraq prepares for Baghdad exodus
Baghdad stadium to shelter Iraqis fleeing Sadr City danger

“I’m asking you to believe.  Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington . . . I’m asking you to believe in yours.”

This week’s “very special kind of stupid” award goes to Kathleen Roberson, of Dove Creek, Colorado. Her letter in the Trib has a special mix of “bumpkin” and pearl-clutching, “Get me my smellin’ salts, Vern, I’ve got the vapors” kind of stupid and moral indignation:

During a visit to Salt Lake City, just blocks from Temple Square at the Gateway Mall, I was aghast to see in the Victoria Secret’s display window a sexually positioned mannequin dressed in skimpy black underwear with garters and black stockings. I credit them for not including whips and chains, but the implication was surely there for the world to see - including small children and teenagers. A nice little Mormon family outing turned into a lesson on immorality with an explanation to my kids why they should wear their temple garments after they are endowed in the temple . . . It is sad to see that Babylon prospers so well in Zion, and that apparently no one cares enough to protest the perils of pornography. Well, I’m standing up to protect children from exposure to it.

It’s nigh on impossible to adequately mock Ms. Roberson.

How empty does your life have to be that a store mannequin causes you some sort of crisis? Are you kidding me? This - THIS! - is what gets you upset enough to write the Trib? I feel like Stewie Griffin:

“Yes Meg, this is what’s going to ruin you socially. Not your years of awkward social graces, not your grotesque appearance or the Felix Ungerish way you clear your sinuses, this is going to ruin you socially.”

Fixed fortifications are monuments to man’s stupidity.
– General George S. Patton, Jr.

U.S. Army soldiers from 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment of the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division guard construction of a concrete wall running through the Shiite enclave of Sadr City, Baghdad, on Sunday, May 4, 2008.

Why is the U.S. Army building a wall in Sadr City? To separate the southern portion of this section of Baghdad from the Mahdi Army-controlled north, according to Bill Roggio of The Long War Journal. That’s right, even after the so-called “surge,” which made 2007 the bloodiest year of the war, the occupation forces still aren’t strong enough to control all of Iraq’s capital.

The main reason for the wall is tactical. The other side is beyond mortar range of the Green Zone, 7 kilometers away. But the Mahdi Army’s Iranian-made 107mm Katyusha rockets have an effective range of 9 km, and their 122mm rockets can do better than that. Also, there is very little to prevent Mahdi Army rocket and mortar teams from displacing to firing locations outside Sadr City.

How’s that wall coming along? After a month, it’s only half finished according to NBC’s Richard Engel. It’s being built under fire the whole way, because the enemy always knows exactly where our soldiers are. Sometimes, the firefights are so fierce they can only put up eight wall sections in a day. The wall is creating a swath of destruction as one building after another becomes a military target.

Saw this at PZ Myers’ place and decided it was simply too weird to be true but apparently not . . .

 Land ‘O Lakes, Florida — The stories in the news about inappropriate relationships between teachers and students have been overwhelming.  There was even a substitute teacher in New Port Richey who got in trouble after investigators say she had a relationship with an underage student.

Well, another Pasco County substitute teacher’s job is on the line, but this time it’s because of a magic trick.

The charge from the school district — Wizardry!

Substitute teacher Jim Piculas does a 30-second magic trick where a toothpick disappears then reappears.

But after performing it in front of a classroom at Rushe Middle School in Land ‘O Lakes, Piculas said his job did a disappearing act of its own.

“I get a call the middle of the day from head of supervisor of substitute teachers.  He says, ‘Jim, we have a huge issue, you can’t take any more assignments you need to come in right away,’” he said.

When Piculas went in, he learned his little magic trick cast a spell and went much farther than he’d hoped.

“I said, ‘Well Pat, can you explain this to me?’  ‘You’ve been accused of wizardry,’ [he said]. Wizardry?” he asked.

I’m not sure if I should laugh or cry.  You have to be completely totally fucking insane to actually complain about a teacher practicing “wizardry” and even more completely fucking batshit insane to take that complaint seriously.

Postcard from the Green Zone, Baghdad, Iraq

The best thing about blogging is it takes no imagination, which is good because I would never be able to make this stuff up myself. Via Think Progress:

The AP reports that the Pentagon is backing a $5 billion dollar plan to “transform the U.S.-protected Green Zone” into a “centerpiece for Baghdad’s future,” resulting in “big paydays for early investors.”

An incentive for the five-year construction project, which would include hotels, resorts, a shopping mall and commercial development, appears to be lining the pockets of investors and allies rather than re-building Iraq’s economy. This comes on the heels of an already-ridiculed plan to build a Disneyland-style theme park next to the Green Zone.

While eight U.S. Army battalions are fighting in the streets of nearby Sadr City in a doomed effort to build a wall they hope will stop mortar and rocket attacks on the Green Zone, apparently planners are busy thinking up ways to further alienate the people of Iraq.

The sheer cluelessness of this plan is off the charts. It’s self-satirizing. As Spencer Ackerman points out, a luxury development in the Green Zone “would drain resources from a desperate population.” It’s as if the Bush administration officials living in Saddam’s old palaces “have begun to ape the habits of the old regime.”

More here:

Want to vacation in the Green Zone?
Planners Dream of Five Star Hotel for Green Zone
Pentagon Backs Plan To Build U.S. ‘Zone Of Influence’ Of Hotels And Resorts In Baghdad
Pentagon Now Implementing McCain “Hundred Years” Plan
And Then You Wonder Why They Burn Your Buildings Down

UPDATE: The “Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience” $500 million theme park is being fast-tracked by the Pentagon. In pitching his Disneyland idea to a deputy Baghdad mayor, financier Llewellyn Werner – displaying little sense for Iraqi culture – said the waterpark is “integral to the sex appeal” of the new amusement center. “I’m a businessman,” he continued. “I’m not here because I think you’re nice people. I think there’s money to be made here.”

Today the rest of this nation knows what some of us have known for seven years and counting. We have the most unpopular boob in American history running the country in the most frightening period of national history. His incompetence is legend. Let me name the ways:

First, of course, this war of choice, Bush’s war. With John McCain and Hillary Clinton and a majority of their colleagues, we went to war with a nation that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11, Iraq. And we will be in that quagmire for at least John McCain’s century, no matter which candidate wins. (Our only solace–we will be far better led by any of the three or, for that matter, by lot–throw darts at any phone book and annoint the sucker.) Our losses are already staggering. Megadeath unending, the sword, blood and fire for decades. In that century nuclear weapons will be had by many other states, by their own development and the fire-sales that surely will come. People are now starving, and anyone who thinks this can be stopped from full famine are either stupid or lying. Nuclear states will sell the store just to avoid, for a time, famine-induced panic and pandemic and, for so many poorly-led states, revolution.

Second, we’re rapidly out-sourcing our real energy producers, solar and wind power. See Thomas Friedmann’s prophetic piece in today’s Tribune. He has been wrong on the Iraq war since day one. But today’s article is right on. Solar power and wind power, though demanding heavy front-end cost, will give us the power to live without destroying the earth. Coal will continue to be used, hopefully much cleaner coal. But it will come at a huge cost to our environment. Nuclear power is in reality a dinosaur. It will tank, if we are lucky. If ever there was a prostituted word’s incarnation, it’s Energy/Solutions. Solutions it isn’t. The once - proud palace, the Salt Palace, has been had. We’re losing our position in inventing and producing wind and solar power to Asia and Europe. Never mind our sad loss in producing, once, the world’s greatest automobiles. Or our iron and steel industry. Sadly, much of this is long gone. But what should have been our future has been lost in these eight years of the worst presidency in our nation’s history, the production of solar and wind power.

Third, our nation’s economy is tanking. Mortage forclosures, unemployment, lack of affordable health care, the costs of oil and gas, cost of homes and sale of homes, all the home and hearth realities of middle America, are being lost due in large part to stupid in the pesidency. Almost a decade of a combination of no leadership and worse, leadership in the wrong direction, is truly terrrifying. Talk of Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s “chickens coming home to roost”. You better believe it. Why would any sane person run for president?

My solution. Hilary, Bush-McCain, or Barak, when you win, demand a recount.

ed firmage

It’s rare, but it happens.  I watched The Golden Compass last night and I have to say I think it was a better movie than book.  Interestingly, all the kerfuffle from conservative christians about the film was a mistake - the film’s supposedly anti-Christian content is all but missing.  To be honest, I expected more.

But that connects with my thoughts on something else - I see there is another Narnia movie coming out, Prince Caspian.  To be honest, I disliked The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe precisely because it was an accurate representation of Lewis’ theology.  In that movie (and the book) Aslan is supposed to be some sort of Christ character who sacrifices himself to save the world, but his sacrifice is portrayed as random and meaningless - it is because it has to be.  There’s no aspect of choice for Aslan nor is there any real sense of sacrifice since Aslan knows he will be resurrected.  In Narnia, what matters is going through the steps and then everything is fine.  There’s no need for meaning or thought or reflection - just follow the steps and all will be well:

Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls. Did we ask him to? Poor child Edmund, to blame for everything, must bear the full weight of a guilt only Christians know how to inflict, with a twisted knife to the heart. Every one of those thorns, the nuns used to tell my mother, is hammered into Jesus’s holy head every day that you don’t eat your greens or say your prayers when you are told. So the resurrected Aslan gives Edmund a long, life-changing talking-to high up on the rocks out of our earshot. When the poor boy comes back down with the sacred lion’s breath upon him he is transformed unrecognisably into a Stepford brother, well and truly purged. Read the rest of this entry »

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Before convicted criminal, Republican congressman, Bob Ney went to prison, he pushed the “Help America Vote Act (HAVA)” through congress under the false premise that it would help standardize the way America votes and come into compliance with the Federal Supreme court decision to break precedence and overrule states rights in the 2000 election contest between Gore and Bush. What Ney’s bill actually did was to introduce something into our elections that sent the Federal court’s decision, (to stop counting the votes in Florida because there were no “uniform voting standards”), running for it’s life!

Money!

Even when it was known that congressman Ney would likely be going to prison, he showed up at the only hearings* the Republicans had held, up to that time (July 19, 2006), on the contentious matter of the new machines. Tom Delay had previously prevented any debate coming to the floor even after both parties had voted to do so. At this hearing, Ney had the audacity to request 900 million more dollars for the voting machine vendors.

Here are a couple of paragraphs from a 2006 Rolling Stone magazine editorial calling for an investigation shortly before the hearings were held:

After the Florida fiasco in 2000, Diebold saw an opportunity. To persuade Rep. Bob Ney to promote its machines in a package of election reforms he was drafting called the Help America Vote Act, the company hired two lobbyists with close ties to the Ohio congressman. Diebold paid at least $180,000 to David DiStefano, Ney’s former chief of staff. And it shelled out as much as $275,000 to the lobbying firm of the best-connected man on Capitol Hill: Jack Abramoff.

Abramoff has now been convicted of bribing Ney – but Americans will be paying for the results of Diebold’s influence for years. As part of the Help America Vote Act, every precinct in America is now required to install at least one machine accessible to disabled voters — a mandate that has already fueled the spread of touch-screen technology and cost taxpayers almost $3 billion. ”These vendors have a Halliburton-like hold on the Republican leadership,” says Rep. John Conyers.

If this is all news to you, don’t feel bad. It’s probably not known to anybody but music magazines and the most seasoned voting rights activists in America due to an intentional nationwide blackout on the issue of electronic voting problems. They only come up sporadically and then disappear for months at a time.

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Now, as to the heading of this post, Hacking Democracy, HBO is re-airing it’s well researched, Emmy nominated documentary starting May 2nd through the end of May. If you want to see how real grass roots activism works, follow the uncomfortable adventures of a women named Beverly Harris as she starts a new kind of voting rights movement in America which is yet to be acknowledged by the media or even Democratic politicians.

*Voting Machines: Will New Standards and Guidelines Prevent Future Problems?

Here’s the Reverend Wright speech I referred to in my last two posts.
Reverend Wright, I HAVE NEED TO BE BAPTISED OF THEE & The Reverend Jeremiah Wright….Jeremiads are What the Bible Says

The sound bites being used to sell air time this week were clearly taken out of context. Wright said, ‘the black religious tradition, despite its long history, is in some ways “invisible to the dominant culture.”‘

In April, a week ago, Wright addressed an audience of 10,000 at a dinner sponsored by the Detroit chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. I worked for two years, on the staff of Hubert Humphrey, with Roy Wilkins, the legendary head of the NAACP. He without question was one of a very few people who, in fact, were my fathers. I’ve heard Martin Luther King, Jr. I’ve heard Roy Wilkins. I’ve heard and worked with Whitney Young, president of the Urban League. Hubert himself was one of the great stump speakers of all time. I’ve listened to FDR and saw and heard Harry Truman give ‘em hell. I’ve heard great talents in the Mormon world. Hugh B. Brown, a lonely little petunia in an onion patch, a dedicated FDR liberal Democrat and head of the state party in days gone by, was no slouch at speaking. He addressed a group of the faithful in southern Utah, mounting the only high ground, a manure pile, and began by saying, “excuse me for speaking on a Republican platform.” Quite frankly, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright equals the best and towers over any of his critics today. I was astounded at such erudition and sheer brilliance. I shouldn’t have been. Martin Marty, our most distinguished theologian and historian, from the University of Chicago, wrote strongly commending the Reverend Wright, in the New York Times, after the first firestorm. Wright is rightly named Jeremiah. He delivered truthful powerful jeremiads and all those people of power who do it for money winced. Some things never change.

Might it be, fellow countrymen, thay you erred? I pray you, reconsider. Did you really like Martin Luther King, Jr., while he was alive? Or when he was safely dead? Like we do with Francis Assisi, when he’s not bothering the rich, while he lived, but is now safely in his birdbath?

Check THIS!

I recommend the recent Bill Moyers interview.


MoveOn.org has come up with the best way to commemorate five years of mission accomplishment in Iraq. Heckuva job. If you can’t see YouTube, it’s a “Mission Accomplished” birthday cake… and the five candles keep multiplying until there are a hundred.

At today’s White House press briefing, Helen Thomas wanted to know how President Bush was going to mark the fifth anniversary of “Mission Accomplished.” I thought maybe he could serve cake and Kool Aid in the press room. MoveOn read my mind!

More info:
MoveOn.org
McCain’s Century Of War
Editor & Publisher: ‘Mission Accomplished’: How the Media Covered the Bush Pronouncement 5 Years Ago — and its Aftermath

UPDATE: MoveOn’s cake can’t match my favorite Iraq cake. John McCain says he’s still “digging for the pony,” well look no further!

shit like this happens:

In September of 2007, the principal at Hollis F. Price Middle College High told teachers she wanted the names of all student couples, “hetero and homo,” because she wanted to monitor them personally to prevent students from engaging in public displays of affection.

The principal heard about them through another student, then wrote their names on a list she posted next to her desk, in full view of anyone who entered her office . . . Although the boys had never been observed by any school staff engaging in any sort of display of affection, the principal called Nicholas’s mother Nichole.  . . . According to Nichole, the principal said things like “Did you know your son is gay?” repeatedly and went on to say that she didn’t like gay people and wouldn’t tolerate homosexuality at her school.

Both students say they’ve had to deal with verbal harassment from both teachers and students since word got out around the school about their principal’s actions.

According to Nicholas, he also suffered another consequence of the principal’s discrimination.  He had submitted extensive paperwork and several recommendations from teachers for a school trip to New Orleans to assist in rebuilding efforts.

Having a long history of community service, he was considered a shoo-in to be selected to go before the incident, but then a teacher told Nicholas some faculty were afraid he might “embarrass the school” or engage in “inappropriate behavior.”

A few days later, another student who hadn’t even applied to go on the trip was selected in his place.

I think it’s fair to make a couple points here. 

First the principal has no god-damned business asking such questions or posting such lists.  What the hell is the matter with the principal?

Second, the idea that a gay student would do something embarrassing or inappropriate simply because he’s gay is called bigotry and it’s nothing but grade A bullshit.

Third, what the f**k is the matter with a town that puts up with this crap?

Think back to when President Bush and the neocons wanted to justify the invasion of Iraq. We heard the same words over and over. The Iraqis were “terrorized, tortured, and brutalized” by Saddam Hussein. Saddam “used weapons against his own people.” After it was clear that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction, the alleged benefits of deposing a terrible dictator morphed into the number one reason for going to war.

Now, let’s observe the present situation. Iraq has no effective national government, but Nouri al-Maliki’s Green Zone regime has ordered the deaths of thousands of Iraqis in torture chambers and in the streets of Iraqi cities. Over the last two months, Maliki has advocated violence against his fellow Shiites. Many policemen and soldiers refused to carry out his orders. Now the battles in Baghdad, Basra and other cities are being fought primarily by American and British soldiers.

The US Army is building a wall to divide the densely populated section of Baghdad known as Sadr City, home to three million people and an unknown number of Mahdi Army fighters loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr. The wall is intended to keep the Mahdi Army from setting up Katyusha rocket launchers within range of the Green Zone. It is unclear how this is going to work. The wall is being built at approximately the 7 km mark and the 107mm rockets have a reported effective range of 9 km, however at the limit of their range they are accurate only to a 1 km radius of the intended target.

The Mahdi Army gets these rockets from Iran (either bought from arms smugglers or provided by the Iranian military). It’s worth noting that Iran has much longer-range rockets, such as the types they provide to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

As noted in a previous post, our attack on Sadr City is causing as many or more casualties among innocent civilians than among the Mahdi Army fighters who are defending the area.

Tahseen al-Sheikhly, the spokesman for the civilian side of Baghdad security operations, said Wednesday that a total of 925 people had died and 2,605 were wounded in Sadr City. A member of the Iraqi Accord Front (biggest Sunni bloc in parliament) Ahmed Radhi, who was in Sadr City on Sunday as part of the multi-party sit-in, said: “The majority of those who are being killed are civilians, and not armed persons.”

Helicopters were grounded by a sandstorm yesterday, so the US Army unleashed heavy artillery on Sadr City, using a Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) battery. Each MLRS fires guided 227 mm rockets at a rate of 12 per minute. The barrage lasted for hours, killing 24 civilians and wounding 60. Most were reported to be women and children. The US Army reports that 28 Mahdi Army fighters died in the battle, some probably killed by the artillery.

The Associated Press reported that at least three buildings were destroyed by the heavy artillery fire.

AFP photo: An Iraqi cries over the dead bodies of his neighbors and relatives on the ruins of a house hit by US artillery.

AP Television News footage showed a school that had been badly damaged by an explosion on Tuesday. Parts of the two-floor building had pancaked as the result of the blast. Desks were hanging down from the slanting classrooms where the outer walls were blown out by the blast.

In Sadr City, the US Army is killing many more civilians than enemy combatants. This is an apparent violation of the law of land warfare, as explained in Army Field Manual FM 27-10 (PDF).

“[L]oss of life and damage to property incidental to attacks must not be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage expected to be gained.”
(HR, art. 23, par. (g); GC, art. 53)

This rule is based on prohibitions contained in international law, specifically the Annex to Hague Convention No. IV, 18 October 1907, embodying the Regulations Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (HR) and the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, 12 August 1949 (GC).

US military spokespeople always emphasize that our forces do not deliberately target civilians. However, as noted above, that is not enough. The prohibitory effect of the law of war is not minimized by military necessity. Every violation of the law of war is a war crime.

Why are we doing this? I got into a somewhat heated discussion yesterday on the The Long War Journal. Some said that the assault is being conducted at the behest of the Maliki Green Zone regime, which desires to defeat a rival Shiite militia. Others claimed that General Petraeus planned this, and he must know what he’s doing because he’s a four-star general. Nobody argued that anybody in Washington was in control, although I find it interesting that this fiasco-within-a-fiasco got started just after VP Dick Cheney paid a visit to Maliki.

See after the jump for updates, including links to video of the aftermath of the artillery barrage…
Read the rest of this entry »

I’m flabbergasted at the difference between my take of what the Reverend Jeremiah Wright said and what the national 24/7 cable stations are saying. I saw all of the Reverend Wright’s speech in the Middle West. It was, as I said, perhaps the finest sermon I’ve ever heard. I saw parts of his appearance before the National Press Club, but I didn’t see the question and answer period, on which some criticism focused.

The drama of a good preacher, in this case I believe a truly great preacher, holds and hopefully motivates others to change for the good. Conversion, or a turning, is the object. Reaching the brain without the passion of the soul doesn’t work. So he whoops and hollers sometimes. Me too. And if that is what you DON’T LIKE, then don’t, I pray, vote for a seventy-two year-old candidate for a presidency that, with two terms, would make someone, I won’t say who, eighty. A little mania is no fun, though sometimes funny.

If the preacher is a person of God, as I believe Reverend Wright is, he likely will tell the audience what they don’t want to hear. The others, all too often, tell a nation what they want to hear, while waging a war of aggression. Or tell rich parties and people that “all is well in Zion,”and never mind the poor, those without health care, those whose homes are being foreclosed, those who are starving in a land of plenty.” Saying,” be ye warmed and filled,” says James, the brother of Jesus, demands that we DO it. Our leaders say the words but they are hypocrites. They do nothing. From his long life’s story, the Reverend Wright does what he preaches. Reverend Jeremiah Wright is a man of God.

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright is well-named. He’s casting Jeremiads at a nation murdering hundreds of thousands of people since World War Two. He compared American troops world-wide, as Roman Empire look-alikes. Which is exactly what they are. But wait. Not quite. Rome produced the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome. Not so, Bushed America. Bush has given us a world splintered even though 9/11 produced almost universal sorrow and support for the United States of America. We are at war, world-wide. No peace in sight. No fault of the brave troops, Roman or American. Now we have tyranny, torture, the obliteration of the Bill of Rights, and almost universal distain, if not hatred, for our great country. “Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and……Bush?” It doesn’t play. No. A Pox on our “leaders.” Yes, that dumb ass in the White House and his spiritual adviser, Cheney.

Our current wars of aggression have been well indicted in OneUtah.org. If you want to listen to the usual shit, choose among your abundant talking heads on Fox, and at least two on CNN. And tune in on the dark side of this campaign. Shame on the so-called national media. What a group of clowns demonstrating the intellect of a slug and the ethics of Al Capone. They are pretty people. And very very rich.

If you are Mormon and want to see class, or at least read brilliance, read the Jeremiads of J. Reuben Clark, Jr., during World War Two. Note: During the Second World War, while our troops were dying by the tens of thousands. What did Clark say? He said God would not forgive us for dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Or fire- bombing Tokyo and Dresden. He condemned without equivocation the deveopment and storage of biological and chemical and nuclear weapons in Utah. During a war. He condemned the use of our God-given land and air and water and people in the employ of making or storing or disposing of weapons of mass destruction here. Preaching at Hitler would serve no purpose in America, other than to increase the fanatical hatred already drenching a world at war. This was a man. An American to match the German clergy, those very few, who preached against Hitler while he controlled Germany. An American, a Mormon Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Ed Firmage

Via Dispatches From the Culture Wars, I saw this great article by Elizabeth A. Castelli about the persecution complex among America’s conservative Christians.  These whiny ass titty baby Christians start crying persecution and “War on Christians” whenever things don’t go their way.  They create arguments in which a pharmacist refuses to fill prescriptions for contraception is defending his (and have you ever noticed how it always seems to be a some guy?) freedom of religion.  A few key passages:

The Justice Sunday project consistently frames the issues involved in terms of religious freedom, arguing that Christians are the victims of bigotry, second-class status, and court-sanctioned injury. Speakers at Justice Sunday II sought to place their cause in a lineage that includes the civil rights movement and, in the case of one speaker (Zell Miller), the women’s suffrage movement. They repeatedly invoked martyrological themes, aligning their own cause with that of two quintessential American martyrs: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Lincoln. The invocation of Lincoln (framed as the great emancipator) and especially Martin Luther Ring, Jr. (singled out as the iconic leader of the civil rights movement) and their rendering as analogies and precursors for the Justice Sunday project are hardly accidental.

Tom DeLay spoke — for the last time before he resigned his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives because of his federal indictment for violations of campaign finance laws — the conference’s convener, Rick Scarborough, dismissed the legitimacy of the indictment, claiming that it simply reflects the fact that DeLay is “the target of all who despise the cause of Christ.” . . . . One sees in such moments how the rhetoric of “the war on Christians” operates outside of the empirical field, creating a self-referential and self-generating logic that begins from the premise that Christians are by definition perennially locked in battle with “the enemy” in a cosmic war without end.

The effects of the discursive production of the “war on Christians” are multiple: Read the rest of this entry »

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This moment in the political history of the United States is profound and unique for many reasons. A bankrupt and immoral administration is paving the way for a new administration to be led by (a) a warrior intending to carry out his predecessor’s agenda, more competently, but especially then with more disastrous consequences for the world, (b) an always-middle-talking and always-middle-walking woman offering a meager compromise between what is financially practical and what is ecologically necessary for human survival, or (c) a man who is courageous enough to speak a good distance beyond these “safer” options, articulating a vision of hope that has both energized a new community of first-time voters and infused many of the wisest minds alive with a similar hope: perhaps, finally, with Obama as President, we might just be able to bring the civil libertarian seekers of the right and the civil liberty seekers of the left together into a wholly new, structurally reformed Democratic Party.

My message today is a warning and a plea to superdelegates who now have no choice but to decide the question of the nominee who MUST be able not only to defeat John McCain, but to mark such a pivot in the affairs of U.S. relations in the world as to provide trusted leadership for crises far beyond those that preoccupy John McCain. Climate change, peak oil, food shortage, economic exhaustion, religious conflicts and the inevitable tendencies for social friction on a scale never seen since the Great Depression and the World Wars, perhaps far greater.

So let me state the conclusion first: if superdelegates overrule the pledges of delegates from state contests, or if any other machination is employed to disempower the undeniable public movement catalyzed by Barack Obama for the first time since JFK, I believe the result will be a catastrophic fragmentation and disaffection with the Democratic Party. Take note, superdelegates, of this fact above all: younger voters are not only registering in record-breaking numbers as a direct result of Obama’s inspiring vision of change, but because they finally feel that their voices matter. Compared to Clinton’s spin, Obama has truth to share. Compared to Clinton’s tactics, Obama offers strategy. Compared to the low road of Clinton’s Rovian tactics, Obama has worked hard to maintain Jeffersonian high ground.

I like Hillary. I believe she is smart, competent, experienced, courageous and ready to be commander in chief on day one. She would likely be the most competent president since JFK. She blows Bush (Jr), Clinton (Bill), Bush (Sr), Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon and Johnson out of the water. But that is not good enough now. Our challenges are greater than the ones those men faced. And in any case, she is not electable now, since among her talents is the slickness of Bill, and we progressives have the fear that it will anesthetize the left with measures far more meager than required of us now, putting us asleep in false comfort. She has unfavorable ratings that WILL NOT be overcome. In large part this is because, like her husband, she parses the truth with such obviousness to smart citizens on the right and left that there can be no excuse.

She’s won the popular vote already? Come on. Only in a tally that did not reflect a competitive or fair campaign in Michigan or Florida. Does she live in fantasy land where the MOST gifted Web surfers — 18 to 36 year olds — don’t know this? Hence, she becomes a liar in their eyes. To claim it is fair to include such votes is, simply, bullshit. She knows it, but somehow thinks that her audience doesn’t. Well informed voters know it. The fact that Hillary claims this vote reinforces the appraisal of so many that she simply will say anything to be elected. Anyone — man or woman — who plays such petty games with truth does not deserve the Oval Office, particularly in these times.

There is absolutely no way Hillary Clinton can overcome the negatives that the Clintons have earned in the course of building the DLC into a middle-party-elite election machine, possibly more dangerous than the neocons, since at least we know the latter are truly crazy.

More practically speaking, Obama can retake the Reagan Democrats. Hillary cannot. He can take purple states, maybe even red states. Hillary cannot. No serious superdelegate should consider for a nanosecond Hillary’s argument that “she has won the states Democrats must win in November.” So what? Do you REALLY believe that Obama cannot take those states, given a reasonable opportunity to familiarize himself with their hurting voters, in contrast to McCain?

Barack Obama represents the best hope this country presently has to address every crisis we face. He can go to Iraq and reclaim our honor. He can go to Iran and reclaim our stature and beneficent power. He can go to China and demonstrate how a disadvantaged people deserve the potential to become the leaders of free nations. He can command the attention of educated wealth, to appreciate that only two options exist: share with those with lesser means, or ultimately reap the storm of mass discontent which no physical or electronic security wall will ever contain.

Obama is an historic figure. If the DLC band of political gangsters maneuvers around Obama, the new Democratic base — the millions of 18-36 year old voters representing the only future possible for the party — will immediately lose hope, as will the civil libertarians on the right who are ready to embrace a brilliant black statesman who truly understands, not just parrots, their pain. If the Clinton “kitchen sink” machine prevails, the divorce in the Democratic base will be as close to permanent as Dick Cheney and Karl Rove could possibly hope.

Hillary has lost the Democratic nomination. I hope superdelegates will move swiftly to close down the debate. Don’t pull a George W. Bush on its new core, just as it emerges to believe in the genuine power of democracy again.

Choose wisely…

Joe Firmage
April 28, 2008

I’ve just heard the finest sermon or speech I’ve ever heard in my life, given by The Reverend Jeremiah Wright. I’m old enough to have heard great speakers. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt after a shaky start in that venue; Hugh B. Brown, Harry Truman standing on the platform of the caboose in the last presidential election on the Union Pacific Railroad, me sitting on my Dad’s shoulders, in Provo, Utah; Mary Luke Tobin of the Sisters of Loretto and the only woman with speaking privileges at Vatican Two; Sister Rosemary Lynch, a beloved friend and Franciscan to her core. LeGrand Richards, Richard L. Evans; Roy Wilkins, director of the NAACP and my second daddy; Hubert Horatio Humphrey, my third daddy; Whitney Young of the Urban League, and The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., on several occasions; Adelai Stevenson, my grandfather Brown’s favorite man in the secular world (I liked Ike).

I’ve read Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan at their best. I will except the unmatched brevity and brilliance of Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson, though the latter was no better, in my opinion, than the two live broadcasts I heard of The Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Brigham Young could give a four hour blast that tested the bladders of young men and women, let alone someone over 40. Benedict Xl comes close, very close to Wright, in utter brainpower and spirituality. I didn’t think anyone could top Benedict in Renaissance learning, but they could be brothers, and of course, they are.

But for absolute brilliance none were better, and only two or three came close to the Reverend Wright’s Mid-Western speech, live on CNN. And I thoroughly enjoyed his stunning spirituality and renaissance learning so obvious in the Mid-West speech, and before the National Press Club.

As God and Thomas Jefferson as my witnesses, and my heroes as well, St. Paul and Abigail and John A