A few weeks ago I was talking with a good friend about the current political climate. When the subject of Abortion rights came up she stated that the main reason she felt the right to such procedures needs to be upheld and strengthened is the simple fact that, no matter what the law is, women in certain circumstances will seek access to them in whatever form they are being offered under whatever laws exist at the time.
Another passage from one of my favorite writers' novellas published in the anthology Different Seasons:
In those days [1935], a married pregnant woman was a radiant woman, sure of her position and proud of fulfilling what she considered to be the function God put her on Earth for. An unmarried pregnant woman was a trollop in the eyes of the world and apt to be a trollop in her own eyes as well. They were, in Ella Davidson's word, "easy," and in that world and that time, "easiness" was not quickly forgiven. Such women crept away to have their babies in other towns or cities. Some took pills or jumped from buildings. Others went to butcher abortionists with dirty hands or tried to do the job themselves; in my time as a physician I have seen four women die of blood loss before my eyes as the result of punctured wombs--in one case the puncturing was done by the jagged neck of a Dr. Pepper bottle that had been tied to the handle of a whiskbroom. It is hard to believe now that such things happened, but they did, gentlemen. They did. It was, quite simply, the worst situation a healthy young woman could find herself in.
The novella spans from the early 1970's to its culmination in the telling of the final tale, exerpted above, in 1980. 1980, when Roe v. Wade was still a fresh decision and the Pro Life movement had yet to grow into the multi headed beast it is today.
Arthur Silber:
There are a great many aspects of today's world that are variously horrifying, ghastly, destructive and appalling -- and among the very worst is an idea that appears to be rapidly gaining support: the noxious notion that all questions relating to abortion rights should be returned to the states. For many reasons, only a few of which are discussed below, this idea is completely incoherent as a matter of political theory, and it undercuts any defense of individual rights on the most fundamental level.If you give a damn at all about the liberty of a single human being, you should oppose all such attempts to your last breath.
The human being to which I refer is not the developing fetus, but the woman who carries the child. I well understand that many people believe that the fetus is a human being long before birth, with all the rights that attend to that designation. In the political context, I consider all such beliefs irrelevant, no matter how sincerely and deeply held. Only one ultimate point matters here: whether you think the developing fetus is a human being or not, the fetus is contained in and supported by the woman's body. If the woman's body did not exist, neither would the fetus. Only the woman's existence makes that of the fetus possible.
The fetus only exists because of the woman's body -- not yours, not that of some possibly corrupt and stupid politician in Washington, and not the body of some possibly ignorant and venal politician in a state legislature.
And now we find that there are instances of those rights being placed in the hands of individual Pharmacists:
Last week, a Federal court ruled that, despite Illinois law, pharmacists in Illinois can refuse to dispense emergency contraception. The state passed a law in 2005 that requires all pharmacies to dispense EC. As a result, Wal-Mart (and other companies) have disciplined pharmacists that refused to follow the rule. Then came the lawsuits and the bad news.
U.S. District Judge Jeanne Scott denied a request Tuesday by Wal-Mart to throw out a lawsuit filed by pharmacist Ethan Vandersand. Scott sided with Vandersand, who had claimed he was legally protected from discipline by the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act when he declined to dispense Plan B.
What's next? Pharmacists refusing to dispense physician prescribed
medications for diseases they might believe were contracted by behavior they might think is illegal or immoral? Where does the line get drawn? As Arthur went on to say in his post:
This is, finally, what the battle about abortion concerns. To the extent people choose to limit a woman's right to her own body, they accept and reinforce this endlessly destructive cultural tradition -- and they believe in Original Sin, even if they are atheists. Religion holds no exclusive claim to irrationality of this kind. They seek to control abortion because they seek salvation, whether they recognize that fact or not. To bring salvation nearer, women must be eternally subordinate, and they cannot be allowed to do anything other than what men allow.
And as George Carlin pointed out in his HBO special Back In Town:
If you're pre-born, you're fine, if you're pre school, you're fucked. Conservatives don't give a shit about yo until you reach military age. Then they think you are just fine, just what they've been looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers.
Pro Life. Pro Life. These people aren't pro life, they're killing doctors! What kind of pro life is that? What, they'll do anything they can to save a fetus, but if it grows up to be a doctor, they just might have to kill it?
They're not pro life. You know what they are? They're Anti Woman.
It all boils down to this point:
Posted by theal2 on 08-03-2007 01:40 AM:
quote:Originally posted by live4love
How about some laws that would control men's bodies, like ...say.... it's illegal to ejaculate without the express intent to create life ?? How do you think men would feel about that ?
After all every sperm is a potential life right ??
Gee if we had some laws like that we would rarely need any abortions !!
( ridiculous right ? Just as ridiculous as trying to control womens' biological functions with laws )
Guys...if you don't want babies and don't want to have to pay for them them keep it in your pants or get a vasectomy. If you do want kids then make sure you discuss this before you have relations with a women. Find a partner that wants the same as you do !!
JMO
L4L
If men could get Pregnant, abortions would be legal at drive through fast food joints, the golf course, sports stadiums or whereever they choose.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Friday, August 10, 2007
Easy Money...
Is anything but.
1929:
The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Crash of ’29, was one of the most devastating stock market crashes in American history. It consists of Black Thursday, the initial crash and Black Tuesday, the crash that caused general panic five days later.
The crash followed a speculative boom that had taken hold in the late 1920s, which had led millions of Americans to invest heavily in the stock market, a significant number even borrowing money to buy more stock. By August 1929, brokers were routinely lending small investors more than 2/3 of the face value of the stocks they were buying. Over $8.5 billion was out on loan, more than the entire amount of currency circulating in the U.S. The rising share prices encouraged more people to invest; people hoped the share prices would rise further. Speculation thus fueled further rises and created an economic bubble. The average P/E (price to earnings) ratio of S&P Composite stocks was 32.6 in September 1929, clearly above historical norms.
1987:
Black Monday is the name given to Monday, October 19, 1987, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) fell dramatically, and on which similar enormous drops occurred across the world. By the end of October, stock markets in Hong Kong had fallen 45.8%, Australia 41.8%, the United Kingdom 26.4%, the United States 22.68%, and Canada 22.5%.
The most popular explanation for the 1987 crash was selling by program traders. Program trading is the use of computers to engage in arbitrage and portfolio insurance strategies. Through the 1970s and early 1980s, computers were becoming more important on Wall Street. They allowed instantaneous execution of orders to buy or sell large batches of stocks and futures.
2007:
Central banks on both sides of the Atlantic pumped billions into the financial system to calm nerves over an impending credit crunch today - but their actions only served to heighten alarm, prompting a fresh plunge in global share prices.
The European Central Bank injected an emergency €95bn (£64.5bn) into the markets in its first intervention since the turmoil triggered by the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC in 2001.
Bonddad;
2.) These are big funds -- 2 billion+ is not chump change. But the manager can't "``fairly'' value their holdings". That means the 2 billion + in total assets may not even be close to accurate. Remember -- Bear Stearns lost 6 billion in 2 funds just a few weeks ago.
3.) The ECB is flooding the market with liquidity. While this is a good thing in the short run because it eases some concerns, it may not be enough. The bottom line is we are seeing announcements of hedge fund/investment losses coming from all over the world. And the pace is snowballing.
4.) "investors aren't recycling their money back because of subprime concerns" Translation: either the ECC can continue to inject liquidity or we're going to have a continued problem in the markets.
5.) In the 1920s, the US banking system collapsed because of runs on the banks. A similar situation is happening with hedge funds right now:
Union Investment, Germany's third-biggest mutual fund manager, stopped withdrawals from one of its funds on Aug. 3 after investors pulled about 10 percent of the assets. Frankfurt Trust, the mutual fund manager of Germany's BHF-Bank, halted redemptions from a fund after clients removed 20 percent of their money since the end of July.
All because of greedy, bloodsucking, soulless people (primarily while males similar to myself save for the fact that they didn't allow themselves to follow any passion they might have had that didn't involve masses of cash) and their unslakeable lust for money and power:
KEITH ERNST: One of the interesting stories here underneath all of this is how these mortgages came about in the first place. You know, we like to think, or I think most Americans think, that mortgages are made by banks and depository institutions, but especially in the subprime market that's not the case. They're largely made through state-chartered finance companies that don’t have any bank deposits, and so they don’t have any bank regulators.
Where do they go for their money? They go to Wall Street. So Wall Street will supply them the money to make the loans, will buy the loans from these lenders, and then will repackage them into securities and sell them to investors. Now, again, in principle, that's fine. It can make low-cost capital available to families who need mortgages. The problem comes when the insatiable appetite builds for more and more mortgages and lenders get reckless with regard to the quality of the mortgages they’re originating.
Why do they allow themselves to get reckless? Why, because the loans aren't representative of families, or anything important like that. They're just numbers and levels of risk that are to be assumed...
1929:
The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Crash of ’29, was one of the most devastating stock market crashes in American history. It consists of Black Thursday, the initial crash and Black Tuesday, the crash that caused general panic five days later.
The crash followed a speculative boom that had taken hold in the late 1920s, which had led millions of Americans to invest heavily in the stock market, a significant number even borrowing money to buy more stock. By August 1929, brokers were routinely lending small investors more than 2/3 of the face value of the stocks they were buying. Over $8.5 billion was out on loan, more than the entire amount of currency circulating in the U.S. The rising share prices encouraged more people to invest; people hoped the share prices would rise further. Speculation thus fueled further rises and created an economic bubble. The average P/E (price to earnings) ratio of S&P Composite stocks was 32.6 in September 1929, clearly above historical norms.
1987:
Black Monday is the name given to Monday, October 19, 1987, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) fell dramatically, and on which similar enormous drops occurred across the world. By the end of October, stock markets in Hong Kong had fallen 45.8%, Australia 41.8%, the United Kingdom 26.4%, the United States 22.68%, and Canada 22.5%.
The most popular explanation for the 1987 crash was selling by program traders. Program trading is the use of computers to engage in arbitrage and portfolio insurance strategies. Through the 1970s and early 1980s, computers were becoming more important on Wall Street. They allowed instantaneous execution of orders to buy or sell large batches of stocks and futures.
2007:
Central banks on both sides of the Atlantic pumped billions into the financial system to calm nerves over an impending credit crunch today - but their actions only served to heighten alarm, prompting a fresh plunge in global share prices.
The European Central Bank injected an emergency €95bn (£64.5bn) into the markets in its first intervention since the turmoil triggered by the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC in 2001.
Bonddad;
2.) These are big funds -- 2 billion+ is not chump change. But the manager can't "``fairly'' value their holdings". That means the 2 billion + in total assets may not even be close to accurate. Remember -- Bear Stearns lost 6 billion in 2 funds just a few weeks ago.
3.) The ECB is flooding the market with liquidity. While this is a good thing in the short run because it eases some concerns, it may not be enough. The bottom line is we are seeing announcements of hedge fund/investment losses coming from all over the world. And the pace is snowballing.
4.) "investors aren't recycling their money back because of subprime concerns" Translation: either the ECC can continue to inject liquidity or we're going to have a continued problem in the markets.
5.) In the 1920s, the US banking system collapsed because of runs on the banks. A similar situation is happening with hedge funds right now:
Union Investment, Germany's third-biggest mutual fund manager, stopped withdrawals from one of its funds on Aug. 3 after investors pulled about 10 percent of the assets. Frankfurt Trust, the mutual fund manager of Germany's BHF-Bank, halted redemptions from a fund after clients removed 20 percent of their money since the end of July.
All because of greedy, bloodsucking, soulless people (primarily while males similar to myself save for the fact that they didn't allow themselves to follow any passion they might have had that didn't involve masses of cash) and their unslakeable lust for money and power:
KEITH ERNST: One of the interesting stories here underneath all of this is how these mortgages came about in the first place. You know, we like to think, or I think most Americans think, that mortgages are made by banks and depository institutions, but especially in the subprime market that's not the case. They're largely made through state-chartered finance companies that don’t have any bank deposits, and so they don’t have any bank regulators.
Where do they go for their money? They go to Wall Street. So Wall Street will supply them the money to make the loans, will buy the loans from these lenders, and then will repackage them into securities and sell them to investors. Now, again, in principle, that's fine. It can make low-cost capital available to families who need mortgages. The problem comes when the insatiable appetite builds for more and more mortgages and lenders get reckless with regard to the quality of the mortgages they’re originating.
Why do they allow themselves to get reckless? Why, because the loans aren't representative of families, or anything important like that. They're just numbers and levels of risk that are to be assumed...
Benchmarks, or Highway Robbery
STIOL:
Overall, the law would secure the agenda of ExxonMobil, Chevon, and the other majors, robbing the Iraqi people of their most basic source of wealth. Much is at stake. With 115 billion barrels of proven reserves ($7 trillion worth at $64 per barrel) and another 215 billion possible or likely ($14 trillion), there’s nearly a million dollars of oil for every Iraqi citizen. It’s a vast and precious national resource—but only if Iraqis are allowed to control it themselves.
Overall, the law would secure the agenda of ExxonMobil, Chevon, and the other majors, robbing the Iraqi people of their most basic source of wealth. Much is at stake. With 115 billion barrels of proven reserves ($7 trillion worth at $64 per barrel) and another 215 billion possible or likely ($14 trillion), there’s nearly a million dollars of oil for every Iraqi citizen. It’s a vast and precious national resource—but only if Iraqis are allowed to control it themselves.
THIS. IS. A. REALLY. BAD. IDEA.
McClatchy:
WASHINGTON — President Bush charged Thursday that Iran continues to arm and train insurgents who are killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and he threatened action if that continues.
[Note the word charged. It implies suspicion without any corroborating evidence.]
Vice President Dick Cheney several weeks ago proposed launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iran run by the Quds force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy.
This is totally illegal, regardless of whether the suspicions of the Shrub are accurate in the least. There is no active PUBLIC discussion about authorizing military action against Iran, either within our own government or with the cooperation of the U. N. Security Council. Whether or not it can be technically classified as legal under the Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution is left to the devious skills of the student-twisters of the law that currently occupy the White House and aid and abet the administration in its current course of action:
Authorization for Use of Military Force
September 18, 2001
Public Law 107-40 [S. J. RES. 23]
107th CONGRESS
JOINT RESOLUTION
To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.
NO.
IRANIANS.
WERE.
ON.
ANY.
OF.
THE.
FOUR.
PLANES.
Want to guess who was on the planes?
AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHT 11
7:45 a.m.: Departed Boston for Los Angeles.
8:46 a.m.: Crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center.
Mohamed Atta, pilot and group leader
Age: 33.
Nationality: Egyptian.
Abdulaziz Alomari
Age: Unknown.
Nationality: Saudi.
Satam M.A. Al Suqami
Age: 25.
Nationality: Saudi.
Wail M. Alshehri
Age: 28.
Nationality: Saudi.
Waleed M. Alshehri
Age: 22.
Nationality: Saudi.
UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT 175
7:58 a.m.: Departed Boston for Los Angeles
9:02 a.m.: Crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center
Marwan al-Shehhi, pilot and group leader
Age: 23.
Nationality: United Arab Emirates.
Fayez Rashid Ahmed Hassan Al Qadi Banihammad
Age: 28.
Nationality: Saudi.
Ahmed Alghamdi
Age: 21.
Nationality: Saudi.
Hamza Alghamdi
Age: 20.
Nationality: Saudi.
Mohand Alshehri
Age: 21.
Nationality: Unknown.
AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHT 77
8:10 a.m.: Departed Washington Dulles for Los Angeles
9:40 a.m.: Crashed into the Pentagon
Hani Hanjour, pilot and group leader
Age: 29.
Nationality: Saudi.
Nawaf Alhazmi
Age: 25.
Nationality: Unknown.
Majed Moqed
Age: Unknown.
Nationality: Unknown.
Khalid Almihdhar
Age: Unknown.
Nationality: Unknown.
Salem Alhazmi
Age: Uknown.
Nationality: Saudi.
UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT 93
8:42 a.m.: Departed Newark for San Francisco
10:01 a.m.: Crashed in Stony Creek Township, Penn.
Ziad Samir Jarrah, pilot and group leader
Age: 26.
Nationality: Lebanese.
Saeed Alghamdi
Age: 25.
Nationality: Saudi.
Ahmed Ibrahim A. Al Haznawi
Age: 20.
Nationality: Saudi.
Ahmed Alnami
Age: 23.
Nationality: Saudi.
Hmmmm, no Iraqis, no Iranians, and a whole bunch of Saudis.
Interesting.
I wonder what we're doing about Saudi Arabia? Oh, right:
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United States is developing a proposed $20 billion, 10-year arms sales package for Saudi Arabia, a senior administration official confirmed on Saturday.
Why, you may ask. Well, aside form the obvious nepotism laden reasons, there's this load of bunkum:
The proposed sale, first reported in The New York Times, is intended to upgrade the Saudi military's ability to counter possible Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf region, the official said.
"This is all about Iran," said the official, who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity because discussions with the Saudis are still going on and the arms sale deal has not been completed.
How about a better, more constructive idea?
Sure, Iran has not suspended its uranium-enrichment program as initially requested by the United Nations Security Council exactly a year ago, but Iran has complied with other aspects of the council's, and the IAEA's, demands pertaining to greater nuclear transparency, access, and the resolution of "outstanding questions".
If the IAEA's reports of Iranians slowing down on the centrifuge program and openly entertaining the "time out" option do not constitute progress and a major plus, then what does? Any undue impatience with the diplomatic approach is uncalled for and indicative of a lack of a sound policy approach by the White House, seemingly riveted by contradictory influences by the moderate-hawk voices coming from different branches of the government.
Alas, it would seem that the words "sound policy approach" and "Bush White House" relate to each other in a manner similar to that of Matter and Anti-Matter.
WASHINGTON — President Bush charged Thursday that Iran continues to arm and train insurgents who are killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and he threatened action if that continues.
[Note the word charged. It implies suspicion without any corroborating evidence.]
Vice President Dick Cheney several weeks ago proposed launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iran run by the Quds force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy.
This is totally illegal, regardless of whether the suspicions of the Shrub are accurate in the least. There is no active PUBLIC discussion about authorizing military action against Iran, either within our own government or with the cooperation of the U. N. Security Council. Whether or not it can be technically classified as legal under the Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution is left to the devious skills of the student-twisters of the law that currently occupy the White House and aid and abet the administration in its current course of action:
Authorization for Use of Military Force
September 18, 2001
Public Law 107-40 [S. J. RES. 23]
107th CONGRESS
JOINT RESOLUTION
To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.
NO.
IRANIANS.
WERE.
ON.
ANY.
OF.
THE.
FOUR.
PLANES.
Want to guess who was on the planes?
AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHT 11
7:45 a.m.: Departed Boston for Los Angeles.
8:46 a.m.: Crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center.
Mohamed Atta, pilot and group leader
Age: 33.
Nationality: Egyptian.
Abdulaziz Alomari
Age: Unknown.
Nationality: Saudi.
Satam M.A. Al Suqami
Age: 25.
Nationality: Saudi.
Wail M. Alshehri
Age: 28.
Nationality: Saudi.
Waleed M. Alshehri
Age: 22.
Nationality: Saudi.
UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT 175
7:58 a.m.: Departed Boston for Los Angeles
9:02 a.m.: Crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center
Marwan al-Shehhi, pilot and group leader
Age: 23.
Nationality: United Arab Emirates.
Fayez Rashid Ahmed Hassan Al Qadi Banihammad
Age: 28.
Nationality: Saudi.
Ahmed Alghamdi
Age: 21.
Nationality: Saudi.
Hamza Alghamdi
Age: 20.
Nationality: Saudi.
Mohand Alshehri
Age: 21.
Nationality: Unknown.
AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHT 77
8:10 a.m.: Departed Washington Dulles for Los Angeles
9:40 a.m.: Crashed into the Pentagon
Hani Hanjour, pilot and group leader
Age: 29.
Nationality: Saudi.
Nawaf Alhazmi
Age: 25.
Nationality: Unknown.
Majed Moqed
Age: Unknown.
Nationality: Unknown.
Khalid Almihdhar
Age: Unknown.
Nationality: Unknown.
Salem Alhazmi
Age: Uknown.
Nationality: Saudi.
UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT 93
8:42 a.m.: Departed Newark for San Francisco
10:01 a.m.: Crashed in Stony Creek Township, Penn.
Ziad Samir Jarrah, pilot and group leader
Age: 26.
Nationality: Lebanese.
Saeed Alghamdi
Age: 25.
Nationality: Saudi.
Ahmed Ibrahim A. Al Haznawi
Age: 20.
Nationality: Saudi.
Ahmed Alnami
Age: 23.
Nationality: Saudi.
Hmmmm, no Iraqis, no Iranians, and a whole bunch of Saudis.
Interesting.
I wonder what we're doing about Saudi Arabia? Oh, right:
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United States is developing a proposed $20 billion, 10-year arms sales package for Saudi Arabia, a senior administration official confirmed on Saturday.
Why, you may ask. Well, aside form the obvious nepotism laden reasons, there's this load of bunkum:
The proposed sale, first reported in The New York Times, is intended to upgrade the Saudi military's ability to counter possible Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf region, the official said.
"This is all about Iran," said the official, who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity because discussions with the Saudis are still going on and the arms sale deal has not been completed.
How about a better, more constructive idea?
Sure, Iran has not suspended its uranium-enrichment program as initially requested by the United Nations Security Council exactly a year ago, but Iran has complied with other aspects of the council's, and the IAEA's, demands pertaining to greater nuclear transparency, access, and the resolution of "outstanding questions".
If the IAEA's reports of Iranians slowing down on the centrifuge program and openly entertaining the "time out" option do not constitute progress and a major plus, then what does? Any undue impatience with the diplomatic approach is uncalled for and indicative of a lack of a sound policy approach by the White House, seemingly riveted by contradictory influences by the moderate-hawk voices coming from different branches of the government.
Alas, it would seem that the words "sound policy approach" and "Bush White House" relate to each other in a manner similar to that of Matter and Anti-Matter.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
I'll beat it out of 'em even if they do want to tell us!
I'm sitting here watching the Astros grudgingly work their way toward the end of a second win against the Cubs after watching the ending of The Great Raid, another of those formulaic WWII films which yearned to catch a ride on the coat tails of Saving Private Ryan with its template of glorifying the experience of the American fighting man during what was one of the most terrible conflicts in recorded history, not to mention one of the most far reaching in terms of how the ultimate outcome of it has shaped and is still shaping the world in countless ways right up to this very moment.
Ahhhh, the king of the run-on sentence is back in the HOUSE....
One of my issues with this series of films (which also includes Windtalkers and The Thin Red Line) is that while one of the apparent aims of all of them is to highlight the horrors of war that the professional fighting man is subjected to during the course of the conflict the main focus is on the experience of the United States fighting man with little attention paid to the opposition which, one must concede, is exposed to and must endure the exact same horrific episodes and conditions. The Japanese forces are shown as fellow Human Beings in a few scenes during Red Line, and there are briefs attempts at glimpsing the plight of the German Army regular soldier in Private Ryan (the surrendering soldiers shot with hands up at the end of the Normandy sequence opening the film, and Steamboat Willie), but they are tinged with humor that renders them without the appropriate weight for what they actually are: glimpses of the Jap or the Kraut as a fellow man in a plight that is chillingly similar to that of the average GI dogface stuck in a foxhole awaiting seemingly random orders from on high. One film that struck me with its (some would say unsuccessful) attempts at evenhandedness is Enemy At the Gates, which presented the plight of an invading army stuck in a circumstance where leadership has seemingly lost all initiative alongside the desperation of a defender pushed to the brink of logistical combat capabilities as well as Human survival in the form of the siege of Stalingrad. The narrow focus of the plot was the cat and mouse pursuit of a Russian sniper by a German master sniper, but the backdrop of a city the size of Cleveland transformed into a raging battlefront from block to block oozed from the back round during the entire film.
The bar to which all these films should be held is, of course, All Quiet on the Western Front, based on the novel by WWI German trench soldier Erich Maria Remarque.
But I digress.
Katherine Eban:
James Mitchell arrived at the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. He was one of America’s first high-value detainees. He was captured in March of 2002 in a firefight in Pakistan. He wound up in a safe house in Thailand. He was rushed to a hospital in order to save his life from infected wounds. The FBI had agents present at the scene, and because the CIA's interrogation team had not yet arrived, they began to interrogate Zubaydah.
And what they used was classic rapport-building techniques that almost every FBI agent is trained in, which is to find common ground with the person you’re interrogating, to treat them with humanity. And, lo and behold, Zubaydah responded and talked, and not only talked, but gave them the name of the person who had been the entire master planner of 9/11: K.S.M. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, referred to as Mukhtar. He identified him. He identified Jose Padilla. In other words, there was every indicator that rapport-building techniques were completely effective.
This first struck me as amazing, initially because it was one of the first occasions that I had heard about these techniques being used, without inflicting any pain or duress upon the subject, and then because the non pain and duress inductive methods were actually producing results in the form of credible information! Of course it couldn't last:
However, after those disclosures, the CIA interrogation team arrived with James Mitchell it tow and said, “Now, everything is going to change. We’re going to get him to say everything he knows, and we’re going to use these coercive techniques.” And, according to my sources, there was even a coffin present at the interrogation they were going to use to bury Zubaydah alive.
Now, the FBI agents who were present, once the CIA interrogation team introduced these harsh tactics -- basically there was the equivalent of a firefight within the safe house over what kind of tactics were going to be used. And the FBI ultimately deemed that its agents could not be present while coercive tactics were being used. You know, the FBI is a law enforcement agent. Their goal and their training is to bring people to trial using interrogation methods that are permissible at a trial, which don't include any of these coercive techniques. Of course, you couldn't bring anybody to trial saying that you had extracted a confession using these methods. And so, the result of the fight within the safe house between the FBI and the CIA was to give the CIA, which had much less experience with interrogations, control. And that’s how America's interrogation policies unfolded.
Or, as one of my fave authors phrased it in The Tommyknockers:
The FBI was on scene at 6:00 P.M., the CIA a 7:15 P.M. By 8:00, they were yelling about jurisdiction. At 9:15 P.M., a frightened, infuriated CIA agent named Speklin shot an FBI agent named Richardson. The incident was hushed up, but Bobbi and Gard would have understood perfectly--the Dallas Police were on the scene and in complete control of the situation.
All of this vengeful craziness seems to stem from the first few days after 9/11 and the soul searching that went on in the intelligence community about what wasn't done and why (so called 'human' intel and the types of contacts that needed to be initiated and fostered to gain such intel (with government money--who smells another Iran Contra scandal?)) and what needed to be done and whether or not we as a nation wanted to take a trip down that path (infiltrating the human networks and interpreting the intel gleaned from them). Based on the path that the administration has chosen, two conscious choices seem to have been made:
Infiltrating the human networks was going to be too slow and possibly not fruitful if the infiltration was detected and false intel was fed to the agents/assets, so members of the human networks needed to be seized whenever possible and intel was to be extracted from them.
This extraction was to be done in a shroud of secrecy, both due to its total illegality under U.S. and International law and also its total affrontery to human moral decency (when has that ever stopped anyone, though) and the potential fallout from the general population in the event of its diclosure as official policy (which we are witnessing currently, though not nearly on the scale we should be).
A portion of the inertia to enact these policies as well as large portions of the Patriot Act and the Authorization for the Use of Military Force came out of the all to Human emotion of fight when faced with a threat that has already inflicted damage and has the potential to inflict additional damage and flight is not a viable option. Flight to where? We were hit at home, in one of the most damaging episodes since the above mentioned WWII. However, we as a nation have also shown the ability to exercise restraint during the most advantageous of circumstances:
George Will:
Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson's opening statement, delivered in a city reeking from the decomposition of 30,000 bodies still buried in the rubble, said: "That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason."
Nuremberg, says Dodd, was "the place where America's moral authority in the second half of the 20th century was born." That perishable resource has, he thinks, been squandered by Bush administration decisions inimical to the Constitution and international law.
Whether we will ever get it back in the eyes of the world remains to be seen.
BTW, the Astros managed to pull it out in the end after all...
Ahhhh, the king of the run-on sentence is back in the HOUSE....
One of my issues with this series of films (which also includes Windtalkers and The Thin Red Line) is that while one of the apparent aims of all of them is to highlight the horrors of war that the professional fighting man is subjected to during the course of the conflict the main focus is on the experience of the United States fighting man with little attention paid to the opposition which, one must concede, is exposed to and must endure the exact same horrific episodes and conditions. The Japanese forces are shown as fellow Human Beings in a few scenes during Red Line, and there are briefs attempts at glimpsing the plight of the German Army regular soldier in Private Ryan (the surrendering soldiers shot with hands up at the end of the Normandy sequence opening the film, and Steamboat Willie), but they are tinged with humor that renders them without the appropriate weight for what they actually are: glimpses of the Jap or the Kraut as a fellow man in a plight that is chillingly similar to that of the average GI dogface stuck in a foxhole awaiting seemingly random orders from on high. One film that struck me with its (some would say unsuccessful) attempts at evenhandedness is Enemy At the Gates, which presented the plight of an invading army stuck in a circumstance where leadership has seemingly lost all initiative alongside the desperation of a defender pushed to the brink of logistical combat capabilities as well as Human survival in the form of the siege of Stalingrad. The narrow focus of the plot was the cat and mouse pursuit of a Russian sniper by a German master sniper, but the backdrop of a city the size of Cleveland transformed into a raging battlefront from block to block oozed from the back round during the entire film.
The bar to which all these films should be held is, of course, All Quiet on the Western Front, based on the novel by WWI German trench soldier Erich Maria Remarque.
But I digress.
Katherine Eban:
James Mitchell arrived at the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. He was one of America’s first high-value detainees. He was captured in March of 2002 in a firefight in Pakistan. He wound up in a safe house in Thailand. He was rushed to a hospital in order to save his life from infected wounds. The FBI had agents present at the scene, and because the CIA's interrogation team had not yet arrived, they began to interrogate Zubaydah.
And what they used was classic rapport-building techniques that almost every FBI agent is trained in, which is to find common ground with the person you’re interrogating, to treat them with humanity. And, lo and behold, Zubaydah responded and talked, and not only talked, but gave them the name of the person who had been the entire master planner of 9/11: K.S.M. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, referred to as Mukhtar. He identified him. He identified Jose Padilla. In other words, there was every indicator that rapport-building techniques were completely effective.
This first struck me as amazing, initially because it was one of the first occasions that I had heard about these techniques being used, without inflicting any pain or duress upon the subject, and then because the non pain and duress inductive methods were actually producing results in the form of credible information! Of course it couldn't last:
However, after those disclosures, the CIA interrogation team arrived with James Mitchell it tow and said, “Now, everything is going to change. We’re going to get him to say everything he knows, and we’re going to use these coercive techniques.” And, according to my sources, there was even a coffin present at the interrogation they were going to use to bury Zubaydah alive.
Now, the FBI agents who were present, once the CIA interrogation team introduced these harsh tactics -- basically there was the equivalent of a firefight within the safe house over what kind of tactics were going to be used. And the FBI ultimately deemed that its agents could not be present while coercive tactics were being used. You know, the FBI is a law enforcement agent. Their goal and their training is to bring people to trial using interrogation methods that are permissible at a trial, which don't include any of these coercive techniques. Of course, you couldn't bring anybody to trial saying that you had extracted a confession using these methods. And so, the result of the fight within the safe house between the FBI and the CIA was to give the CIA, which had much less experience with interrogations, control. And that’s how America's interrogation policies unfolded.
Or, as one of my fave authors phrased it in The Tommyknockers:
The FBI was on scene at 6:00 P.M., the CIA a 7:15 P.M. By 8:00, they were yelling about jurisdiction. At 9:15 P.M., a frightened, infuriated CIA agent named Speklin shot an FBI agent named Richardson. The incident was hushed up, but Bobbi and Gard would have understood perfectly--the Dallas Police were on the scene and in complete control of the situation.
All of this vengeful craziness seems to stem from the first few days after 9/11 and the soul searching that went on in the intelligence community about what wasn't done and why (so called 'human' intel and the types of contacts that needed to be initiated and fostered to gain such intel (with government money--who smells another Iran Contra scandal?)) and what needed to be done and whether or not we as a nation wanted to take a trip down that path (infiltrating the human networks and interpreting the intel gleaned from them). Based on the path that the administration has chosen, two conscious choices seem to have been made:
Infiltrating the human networks was going to be too slow and possibly not fruitful if the infiltration was detected and false intel was fed to the agents/assets, so members of the human networks needed to be seized whenever possible and intel was to be extracted from them.
This extraction was to be done in a shroud of secrecy, both due to its total illegality under U.S. and International law and also its total affrontery to human moral decency (when has that ever stopped anyone, though) and the potential fallout from the general population in the event of its diclosure as official policy (which we are witnessing currently, though not nearly on the scale we should be).
A portion of the inertia to enact these policies as well as large portions of the Patriot Act and the Authorization for the Use of Military Force came out of the all to Human emotion of fight when faced with a threat that has already inflicted damage and has the potential to inflict additional damage and flight is not a viable option. Flight to where? We were hit at home, in one of the most damaging episodes since the above mentioned WWII. However, we as a nation have also shown the ability to exercise restraint during the most advantageous of circumstances:
George Will:
Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson's opening statement, delivered in a city reeking from the decomposition of 30,000 bodies still buried in the rubble, said: "That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason."
Nuremberg, says Dodd, was "the place where America's moral authority in the second half of the 20th century was born." That perishable resource has, he thinks, been squandered by Bush administration decisions inimical to the Constitution and international law.
Whether we will ever get it back in the eyes of the world remains to be seen.
BTW, the Astros managed to pull it out in the end after all...
FISA'd
A developing situation in my small world has precluded my posting frequecy lately, but in light of recent happenings I would feel remiss if I don't jump into the pool for a dip. Besides, Arthur has snapped off an impressive number of lengthy, thought provoking and enraging (if you're not enraged after reading some of the most recent posts you need to check your pulse, priorities, and possibly status as a human being) entries after a lengthy period of recuperative silence.
Cenk Uygur:
Here we go again. I was going to write a nice, fun piece about Matt Damon on a lovely Sunday afternoon when the Democrats went and ruined everything, as usual.
Well, I'll go ahead and comment on the latest installation of the Bourne franchise. I saw it Saturday night. The theater was packed to the gills, and we had to grab the remaining two adjacent seats in the front row slightly off to the left. I'm going to have to go back and see it again from further back in the auditorium, but the experience was still a good one. The film is great fun visually from start to finish, with very few (brief) opportunities given the audience to catch their breath. Damon and the supporting cast do a great job with the script. It's pretty good, once one accepts the convention (continuing a trend which established in the first two films) that the only similarities between the films and the Ludlum novels. The detail featured in these films that strikes me as poignant is the highlighting of the typical use of technology and practice which are precisely at the heart of the surveillance and wiretapping programs that has been in place for years now under the NSA and which Congress signed into law on Saturday, ruining the weekend for anyone who is a fan of the Fourth Amendment, may it rest in peace.
These insidious ways of flagging and tracking people are employed during all three of the major sequences in Ultimatum, to varying degrees of success, since, of course, our intrepid amnesiatic hero can never be a step behind his pursuers... Data Mining and Satellite Tracking play a huge role in the action and forward movement of the plot of the film.
In actuality, the film Enemy of the State touched on these precise issues several years ago, albeit with less critical and popular acclaim and success. In the interest of full disclosure, the story left quite a bit to be desired. Smith and Hackman did as much as they could with their roles and the story, but it seemed kinda rough around the edges, possibly because it was 15 pounds of story crammed into a ten pound box.
However, in all four films, a network of surveillance exists to filter certain key pieces of information that, once detected, place in motion a machine of incalculable swiftness, inhuman mercilessness, and single minded purpose, even when it doesn't know what it will do with the goal once it has attained it, be it a piece of information or an individual. Scary stuff, that exists this very moment, to be sure.
So, while Matty and his crew might have gotten FISA'd, they were doing a little FISAing themselves for anyone who was paying attention and likes to talk about what they just saw beyond the terms of how cool the NYC chase was or how there's no way he could have survived that 10 story swan dive in to East River. Apologies to anyone who hasn't seen it yet, but take heart: All you know is the there's a chase sequence in downtown Manhattan, and Damon goes for a dip in the River. You'll have to pony up for the rest of the goodies...
"Remember, no matter where you go, there you are."
-Pigkiller, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
Cenk Uygur:
Here we go again. I was going to write a nice, fun piece about Matt Damon on a lovely Sunday afternoon when the Democrats went and ruined everything, as usual.
Well, I'll go ahead and comment on the latest installation of the Bourne franchise. I saw it Saturday night. The theater was packed to the gills, and we had to grab the remaining two adjacent seats in the front row slightly off to the left. I'm going to have to go back and see it again from further back in the auditorium, but the experience was still a good one. The film is great fun visually from start to finish, with very few (brief) opportunities given the audience to catch their breath. Damon and the supporting cast do a great job with the script. It's pretty good, once one accepts the convention (continuing a trend which established in the first two films) that the only similarities between the films and the Ludlum novels. The detail featured in these films that strikes me as poignant is the highlighting of the typical use of technology and practice which are precisely at the heart of the surveillance and wiretapping programs that has been in place for years now under the NSA and which Congress signed into law on Saturday, ruining the weekend for anyone who is a fan of the Fourth Amendment, may it rest in peace.
These insidious ways of flagging and tracking people are employed during all three of the major sequences in Ultimatum, to varying degrees of success, since, of course, our intrepid amnesiatic hero can never be a step behind his pursuers... Data Mining and Satellite Tracking play a huge role in the action and forward movement of the plot of the film.
In actuality, the film Enemy of the State touched on these precise issues several years ago, albeit with less critical and popular acclaim and success. In the interest of full disclosure, the story left quite a bit to be desired. Smith and Hackman did as much as they could with their roles and the story, but it seemed kinda rough around the edges, possibly because it was 15 pounds of story crammed into a ten pound box.
However, in all four films, a network of surveillance exists to filter certain key pieces of information that, once detected, place in motion a machine of incalculable swiftness, inhuman mercilessness, and single minded purpose, even when it doesn't know what it will do with the goal once it has attained it, be it a piece of information or an individual. Scary stuff, that exists this very moment, to be sure.
So, while Matty and his crew might have gotten FISA'd, they were doing a little FISAing themselves for anyone who was paying attention and likes to talk about what they just saw beyond the terms of how cool the NYC chase was or how there's no way he could have survived that 10 story swan dive in to East River. Apologies to anyone who hasn't seen it yet, but take heart: All you know is the there's a chase sequence in downtown Manhattan, and Damon goes for a dip in the River. You'll have to pony up for the rest of the goodies...
"Remember, no matter where you go, there you are."
-Pigkiller, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
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