Apologies

If there is anyone who has been checking this blog out on a semi-regular basis (Hi, Tess!) I have to apologize for my unintentional self-imposed hiatus. I’d love to say that I was out there working for Democratic candidates to get elected or doing something else productive, but that would be a lie. Well, I did spend four days at the JRF convention in Philadelphia (look it up – jrf.org), but that’s a pretty small proportion of the time I haven’t been posting.

Anyway, I hope to be back posting on a regular basis soon –  maybe, as I said in my list of middot, even with some original writing.

Shalom!

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Meant to be posted on Nov. 8)
Start picking out those drapes, SPEAKER PELOSI (insert Stephanie Miller’s bloodcurdling scream soundbite here)! And (it appears) Senate Majority Leader Reid – if Joe Lieberman doesn’t flip, which I wouldn’t put past him. America has finally repudiated the failed policies, illegal war, and gutter politics of the pathetic (if they didn’t wield so much power) gang in the White House, the Mayberry Machiavellis, “if you will.“ And Dick (”if you will“) Vader, of course, spent yesterday killing things - I hope it helped him feel better.

And if Democrats don’t want to start investigations on everything right away, there are two that they should start immediately, the massive dirty tricks that took place all over the country yesterday and contractor malfeasance in Iraq. The second should be a no-brainer, even for responsible Republicans. It’s fiscally irresponsible and hurts our troops to have these profiteers mucking things up even more over there.

Middot

On Rosh Hashanah the rabbi listed 13 middot, or qualities that he thought were important to cultivate. On the whole it didn’t really speak to me, so here is my list of qualities that I would like to aim for. The asterisks are for the ones that I think need particular work.

1. Chesed (kindness, compassion, also not being judgmental, snarky –  or at least so quick to be)*
2. Patience (with people, things, and circumstances)*
3. Public involvement (more than just signing Internet petitions –  I feel like I’ve been particularly bad on this over the past year or two)*
4. Use of my talents (even if all I’m going to do is keep a blog, I have to do some actual original writing, not just post excerpts from other people’s thoughts).
5. Financial responsibility*
6. Generosity (more on the selfishness front – if I am going to spend money, spend more on worthy causes, less on myself).
7. Taking care of my body, which is, after all, supposed to be a temple of God, even if it’s St. Paul who says that (getting more exercise, eating better)
8. Respect for others
9. Hope – (Over the past year I feel like I’ve fallen into the kind of “quiet desperation” that Thoreau talks about – try to think less about my own mortality, and living in the moment more)
10. Humility
11. Honesty, both with myself and with others, although always with due regard for the feelings of others.
12. Orderliness (I’ve been saying for most of my life that I need to get organized)*
13. Humor

Stories that have received short shrift in the "all Foley, all the time" atmosphere

Yes, I know – the man is beneath contempt, it's about sex (with underage subordinates, yet) and unbelievable Republican hypocrisy on "family values," and Democrats should be shouting it from the rooftops, but these stories are at least as important and probably far more so.

The end of habeas corpus (see earlier posts). This detainee bill is a devastating blow to everything we stand for as a country, as well as a huge gift (with a big bow on it) to bin Laden.

From 10/3: 8 G.I.’s Die in Baghdad, Most in a Day Since ’05

700 Iraqi Policemen Under Investigation For "Possible Complicity" With Death Squads...

Shooting of 10 girls, 5 of whom have died, in Lancaster, PA Amish school This may be the least important one, in the larger scheme of things, but to me it is the saddest. I can also have nothing but awe and respect for the Amish community, which could give lessons to many Muslims, Christians and yes, even Jews - in forgiveness.

Mark (how appropriate) 9:42

"And if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck.

This applies even when they’re 16 or 17, especially if you’re a 50-something congressman who’s in a position of authority over them.

Doing bin Laden's job for him

I came up with the idea for the art before reading the column (click on title to read the whole thing), so I guess that Molly's mind and mine run in parallel courses.

Habeas Corpus, R.I.P. (1215 - 2006)
Posted on Sep 27, 2006

By Molly Ivins

AUSTIN, Texas—Oh dear. I’m sure he didn’t mean it. In Illinois’ Sixth Congressional District, long represented by Henry Hyde, Republican candidate Peter Roskam accused his Democratic opponent, Tammy Duckworth [who lost both legs while serving in Iraq], of planning to “cut and run” on Iraq.

...

The legislative equivalent of that remark is the detainee bill now being passed by Congress. Beloveds, this is so much worse than even that pathetic deal reached last Thursday between the White House and Republican Sens. John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham. The White House has since reinserted a number of “technical fixes” that were the point of the putative “compromise.” It leaves the president with the power to decide who is an enemy combatant.

This bill is not a national security issue—this is about torturing helpless human beings without any proof they are our enemies. Perhaps this could be considered if we knew the administration would use the power with enormous care and thoughtfulness. But of the over 700 prisoners sent to Gitmo, only 10 have ever been formally charged with anything. Among other things, this bill is a CYA for torture of the innocent that has already taken place

....

The version of the detainee bill now in the Senate not only undoes much of the McCain-Warner-Graham work, but it is actually much worse than the administration’s first proposal.
...

The bill also expands the definition of an unlawful enemy combatant to cover anyone who has “has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.” Quick, define “purposefully and materially.” One person has already been charged with aiding terrorists because he sold a satellite TV package that includes the Hezbollah network.

The bill simply removes a suspect’s right to challenge his detention in court. This is a rule of law that goes back to the Magna Carta in 1215. That pretty much leaves the barn door open.

As Vladimir Bukovsky, the Soviet dissident, wrote, an intelligence service free to torture soon “degenerates into a playground for sadists.” But not unbridled sadism—you will be relieved that the compromise took out the words permitting interrogation involving “severe pain” and substituted “serious pain,” which is defined as “bodily injury that involves extreme physical pain.”

In July 2003, George Bush said in a speech: “The United States is committed to worldwide elimination of torture, and we are leading this fight by example. Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes, whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit.”

Fellow citizens, this bill throws out legal and moral restraints as the president deems it necessary—these are fundamental principles of basic decency, as well as law.

...

To find out more about Molly Ivins and see works by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Give me liberty or...oh, never mind.

Hang your head in shame. Obviously Bill taught his fellow Democrats nothing on Sunday. From an editorial in the New York Times - not always one of my favorite news sources (I just can't seem to write anything myself these days - luckily others have been more than eloquent):

Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.
...
We don’t blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.

They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Speaking of our early history, here are a couple of quotes from Benjamin Franklin:

"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."

At the close of the Constitutional Convention, a woman asked Franklin what type of government the was being formed. “A republic, if you can keep it,” replied Franklin.

A thing of beauty and a joy to behold

I haven’t liked the way he’s been buddying up with George H.W. and Rupert Murdoch over the last few years, but Bill Clinton’s smackdown of Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday shows that the Big Dog still has what it takes. Just imagine Dubya giving such a reasoned, point-by-point rebuttal to a challenge like this one if he’d had a week’s warning! About Chris Wallace’s smirk, though – after watching that and also the appearance he made to discuss how shocked! shocked! he was at Bill’s “going crazy” on him, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s actually a face that he made once and, as all our mothers warned us would happen, it froze that way.

Go, Bill! Democrats, this is what someone with a backbone looks like. Please (except for Russ Feingold and one or two others) watch over and over again, and take notes.

One more thought: We also heard two words from Bill that we have only heard from one other person in the government regarding 9/11 (Richard Clarke, whose book is now #19 at Amazon in the hardcover edition), and I can guarantee that we will never hear them from Dubya or any of his cronies: "I failed." Yes, sir, you did, but it wasn't for lack of trying, and you are a big enough man to admit it and to feel remorse for it. For that I respect you.

Our soldiers are risking - and giving - their lives - for THIS?

Excerpted (click on title for full story). And the former governor’s furious lobbying to insert the right to torture into U.S. law is an apt illustration of the caution to “choose your enemies carefully, because you will become like them.”

New terror that stalks Iraq's republic of fear
By Patrick Cockburn in Arbil
Published: 22 September 2006

The republic of fear is born again. The state of terror now gripping Iraq is as bad as it was under Saddam Hussein. Torture in the country may even be worse than it was during his rule, the United Nation's special investigator on torture said yesterday.
...
The brutal tortures committed in the prisons of the regime overthrown in 2003 are being emulated and surpassed in the detention centres of the present US- and British-backed Iraqi government. "Detainees' bodies show signs of beating using electric cables, wounds in different parts of their bodies including in the head and genitals, broken bones of legs and hands, electric and cigarette burns," the human rights office of the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq says in a new report.
...
Human rights groups say torture is practised in prisons run by the US as well as those run by the Interior and Defence ministries and the numerous Sunni and Shia militias.
The pervasive use of torture is only one aspect of the utter breakdown of government across Iraq outside the three Kurdish provinces in the north.
...
Iraq is in a state of primal anarchy. Paradoxically, the final collapse of security this summer is masked from the outside world because the country is too dangerous for journalists to report what is happening. Some 134 journalists, mostly Iraqi, have been killed since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
...
The bi-monthly UN report on Iraq is almost the only neutral and objective survey of conditions in the country. The real number of civilians killed in Iraq is probably much higher because, outside Baghdad, deaths are not recorded.
...
Nobody in Iraq is safe. Buses and cars are stopped at checkpoints and Sunni or Shia are killed after a glance at their identity cards. Many people now carry two sets of identity papers, one Shia and one Sunni.
...
The Iraqi state and much of society have been criminalised. Gangs of gunmen are often described on state television as "wearing police uniforms" . One senior Iraqi minister laughed as he told The Independent: " Of course they wear police uniforms. They are real policemen."
...
It has long been a matter of amusement and disgust in Iraq that government ministers travel abroad to give press conferences claiming that the insurgency is on its last legs. One former minister said: "I know of ministers who have never been to their ministries but get their officials to bring documents to the Green Zone where they sign them."

Beyond the Green Zone, Iraq has descended into murderous anarchy. For several days this month, the main road between Baghdad and Basra was closed because two families were fighting over ownership of an oilfield.

Government ministries are either Shia or Sunni. In Baghdad this month, a television crew filming the morgue had to cower behind a wall because the Shia guards were fighting a gun battle with the Sunni guards of the Electricity Ministry near by.

I'm hopeless, I admit

I was so intimidated by the powerful 9/11 tribute/indictment delivered by Olbermann (as detailed in the last post) that I was silenced for a week. I tried to write something that came anywhere near it but gave up in despair, although as it turned out what I wrote was more personal than political. (Maybe I will finish it and post it later.) Since then I’ve been unpleasantly riveted by the campaign being waged by the former governor of Texas (how horrible that he should share that title with the late lamented Ann Richards) to legalize torture. It’s a little like a bad accident on the freeway – it’s sick, but you have to look.

The thing that I found most offensive was the press conference, where (if the photo I saw on the front of the NY Times was from that) he stood in front of a bunch of American flags and demanded the right to torture, or else he was going to essentially stop any interrogation of prisoners. That may not be what he was saying, but it sounded that way to me. There are plenty of ways to interrogate people without breaking the law, and if he even stops those because (WAAAAAAHH!) he can’t have his way, then he is responsible for anything that happens and should be impeached for a willful refusal to protect this country even in undoubtedly lawful ways.

The great Paul Krugman says it best:

So why is the Bush administration so determined to torture people?

To show that it can.

The central drive of the Bush administration — more fundamental than any particular policy — has been the effort to eliminate all limits on the president’s power. Torture, I believe, appeals to the president and the vice president precisely because it’s a violation of both law and tradition. By making an illegal and immoral practice a key element of U.S. policy, they’re asserting their right to do whatever they claim is necessary.

And many of our politicians are willing to go along. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives is poised to vote in favor of the administration’s plan to, in effect, declare torture legal. Most Republican senators are equally willing to go along, although a few, to their credit, have stood with the Democrats in opposing the administration.

Mr. Bush would have us believe that the difference between him and those opposing him on this issue is that he’s willing to do what’s necessary to protect America, and they aren’t. But the record says otherwise.

The fact is that for all his talk of being a “war president,” Mr. Bush has been conspicuously unwilling to ask Americans to make sacrifices on behalf of the cause — even when, in the days after 9/11, the nation longed to be called to a higher purpose. His admirers looked at him and thought they saw Winston Churchill. But instead of offering us blood, toil, tears and sweat, he told us to go shopping and promised tax cuts.

Only now, five years after 9/11, has Mr. Bush finally found some things he wants us to sacrifice. And those things turn out to be our principles and our self-respect.

Keith Olbermann hits another one out of the ballpark

I was trying to come up with something meaningful to write on this fifth anniversary of 9/11, but while I may be able to within the next couple of days, I doubt that I will come up with anything better than this.

Some excerpts below (full transcript available at link):

...
Of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast — of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds… none of us could have predicted… this.

Five years later this space… is still empty.

Five years later there is no Memorial to the dead.

Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.

Five years later this country’s wound is still open.

Five years… later this country’s mass grave is still unmarked.

Five years later… this is still… just a background for a photo-op.

It is beyond shameful.
...
Five years later, Mr. Bush… we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir — on these 16 empty acres, the terrorists… are clearly, still winning.

And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.
...
Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President — and those around him — did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, "bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused; as appeasers; as those who, in the Vice President’s words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists."
...
A mini-series, created, influenced — possibly financed by — the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes.
The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.

How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death… after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections… how dare you or those around you… ever "spin" 9/11.
...
When those who dissent are told time and time again — as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus — that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American…
When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"… look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:

Who has left this hole in the ground?

We have not forgotten, Mr. President.

You have.

May this country forgive you.

Thank you once again, Keith, for saying what needs to be said, and for saying it so eloquently. You are truly showing yourself to be the heir of the great Edward R. Murrow.

A trio of fiery patriots

Last week was kind of rough for me so I have to apologize for not posting much. I also would like to get back to my Torah commentary at least after Rosh Hashanah. We will then be studying the sixth aliyah.

In the meantime, I'd like to highlight a couple of great speeches (well, one commentary and a speech) that took place last week. The first was given by Ross C. ("Rocky") Anderson, mayor of Salt Lake City, at an anti-war rally on the same day (I believe) that Dear Leader was arriving for a visit. Talk about chutzpah! One particularly memorable quote (although the speech is worth reading in its entirety):

Blind faith in bad leaders is not patriotism.

A patriot does not tell people who are intensely concerned about their country to just sit down and be quiet; to refrain from speaking out in the name of politeness or for the sake of being a good host; to show slavish, blind obedience and deference to a dishonest, war-mongering, human-rights-violating president.

That is not a patriot. Rather, that person is a sycophant. That person is a member of a frightening culture of obedience – a culture where falling in line with authority is more important than choosing what is right, even if it is not easy, safe, or popular. And, I suspect, that person is afraid – afraid we are right, afraid of the truth (even to the point of denying it), afraid he or she has put in with an oppressive, inhumane, regime that does not respect the laws and traditions of our country, and that history will rank as the worst presidency our nation has ever had to endure.

The second was a response by Keith Olbermann to Rumsfeld's speech to the American Legion (also in Salt Lake City), comparing those of us who oppose the war in Iraq to Chamberlain and the "appeasers" of Hitler and calling us "morally and intellectually confused." (As Frank Rich points out in his column from this weekend, "Since Hitler was photographed warmly shaking Neville Chamberlain’s hand at Munich in 1938, the only image that comes close to matching it in epochal obsequiousness is the December 1983 photograph of Mr. Rumsfeld himself in Baghdad, warmly shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein in full fascist regalia.") A quote from Olbermann:

[Rumsfeld's speech] demands the deep analysis - and the sober contemplation - of every American. For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence - indeed, the loyalty - of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land; Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants - our employees - with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve. Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; And not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as "his" troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq. It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile… it is right - and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.
...
From Iraq to Katrina, to flu vaccine shortages, to the entire "Fog of Fear" which continues to envelope this nation - he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies, have - inadvertently or intentionally - profited and benefited, both personally, and politically. And yet he can stand up in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emperor’s New Clothes.

Mr. Anderson, Mr. Olbermann, and Mr. Rich, we salute you!

Books for kids hit by Katrina

Democrats.org has a post called "CDF Katrina Project Needs Books" that's worth checking out...

The Children's Defense Fund (CDF) Freedom Schools Katrina Project partners with community based organizations, service agencies and universities in the Cleveland, Columbia and Jackson, MS areas to provide after-school programming each day public schools are in session for children in families affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Dubya thinks that if we leave Iraq we will have "lost our soul as a nation" or some such thing. I think that, despite all the good work that has been done by private individuals and organizations, the mess on the Gulf Coast a year after Katrina shows that we already have.

Thank you, Judge Taylor

Judge Anna Diggs Taylor is the judge who struck down the NSA wiretapping program as unconstitutional. Dubya doesn't think she and those who applaud her ruling "understand the world we live in today." Judge Taylor is a 75-year-old black woman. I think she probably understands a lot about terror and intimidation, as well as having lived through the Depression, World War II and the Cold War. Find out more about her and thank her for her ruling here. This is what I wrote:

Thank you, Judge Taylor, for showing Congress the way. Too many people have allowed themselves to be intimidated because Karl Rove and his attack dogs in the right wing echo chamber might call them names or even make death threats against them, but that is not how this country got started and survived until today. Those things happened because people like you had the courage to stand up for their convictions. Even if, God forbid, your ruling is overturned or weakened on appeal, this administration's lawlessness is now on record, and history will vindicate you.

Book Review: Tower of Silence

Tower of Silence by Sarah Rayne *****

Mary Maskelyne, an infamous teenage murderess from the 1960s, now in her forties, is transferred to Moy, a remote Scottish institution for the criminally insane. Selina March, a colorless, proper spinster, short of money, converts her house to a B&B. Mystery writer Joanna Savile arrives in the village of Inchcape, near Moy, to do some research and specifically to interview Mary Maskelyne. The stage is now set for events that began with a shattering atrocity in the tumultuous India of the late 1940s to play out to their final conclusion.

Sarah Rayne is supposed to be a pseudonym for a writer who is already well-known in Britain for horror fiction. Remnants of this may be seen in some of the particularly gruesome events that take place in Tower of Silence, but they don't seem to be out of place or inserted just for shock value. I, for one, am glad that she decided to switch genres; her other novels may be well written but I probably would not have found them, and I would imagine that psychological suspense gives her much more scope for her talents. Her writing is superb and even poetic at times. Her characters, even the worst of them, are imagined from the inside, and are vividly drawn. The portrayal of Mary Maskelyne, manipulative, narcissistic and attention-seeking, is one of the most chilling fictional examinations of the sociopathic mind that I have ever encountered. Other, more sympathetic characters include Emily Frost, the colorful and many-faceted daughter of one of the doctors at Moy, who volunteers to work with some of the patients; the sad, traumatized and extremely dangerous patient known as Pippa; and the attractive, strangely charismatic Joanna.

Unfortunately, for the most part Rayne does not seem to portray male characters nearly as vividly or sympathetically, although I did like Joanna's husband, the half-Hungarian Krzystof Kent. Also, she may push coincidence a bit too far for some in bringing all of these people together in the same place, but if you're like me you will be too caught up in the plot and the characters' lives to care.

Book Review: Labyrinth

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse ***-1/2

Labyrinth focuses mainly on two women, Alice in the present, who finds a mysterious cave while volunteering on an archaeological dig, and her ancestress Alais in the era of the Albigensian Crusade. The link between the two is a set of three books called the Labyrinth Trilogy, which supposedly leads to the Holy Grail. I found this the weakest point in the book – it feels like the whole Holy Grail connection was thrown in to capitalize on the success of The Da Vinci Code, as was the pursuit of the heroine across southern France by (at least self-appointed) agents of the Catholic Church. I never did get quite clear on who exactly was behind the villains or if they were mainly working for themselves.

I found the medieval sections of the book to be the strongest, both in character and in plot; the modern characters seemed to be pale echoes of their prototypes. It’s too bad that the author (or her editors) seemed to be a bit too concerned with jumping on Dan Brown’s bandwagon, because I think that Mosse could have written a much better book if she had made it a straight historical novel about the persecution of the Cathars, an event which, at least as far as I know, has yet to be thoroughly explored in fiction. She would, however, need to delve a bit more into their beliefs; as it was, apart for a couple of throwaway lines about their dualistic theology, they were portrayed pretty one-dimensionally as proto-Protestants of a sort, all of whom seem to have been perfect, in more sense than one. (The Perfect was the name for the more advanced “grade” of Cathars.)

I am not generally a fan of books that switch back and forth between the past and present, but at least, thank God, Mosse did not use the "time travel" gimmick, which has been done to death, except in a very oblique way. I did find the use of untranslated French and Occitan words to be distracting. Surprisingly (since I am an English major), I didn't notice the sentence fragments that annoyed another Amazon reviewer, but one thing that did jump out at me was the figurative language, some of which seemed to be a bit forced, as if the author had written these “great” similes in creative writing class and felt like she just had to use them somewhere. However, all in all I did find this book to be a worthwhile and enjoyable read.

Missionaries, my dear!

Missionaries, my dear! Don't you realize that missionaries are the divinely provided food for destitute and underfed cannibals? Whenever they are on the brink of starvation, Heaven in its infinite mercy sends them a nice plump missionary.

—Oscar Wilde

A couple of them showed up at my door today, and not being desitute, underfed or a cannibal, I sent them away uneaten. They asked (or rather the one who was in charge did) if I read my Bible and I said "Yes." (Thought bubble: But not the same one you read.) So of course he started telling me about how the end was near and all these wonderful things were going to happen – nothing about the bloodbaths in the streets and all the Jews and other "infidels" who don't convert being killed and thrown into the lake of fire, of course. Then he whipped out a little book and asked if I would read it if he left it with me. I said, "Probably not," so he left me one of the cut-rate tracts – he did compliment me on at least being honest.

It's kind of ironic (and very apropos) that I was looking at an article on Darwin in an old issue of the Skeptical Inquirer earlier and found a quote that expresses my sentiments perfectly – if I'd been feeling feisty I might have tried it out on this guy. As the article points out, "Darwin was not, by anyone's standards, a believing Christian," although he "consistently denied the charge" of being an atheist – and why shouldn't he have been telling the truth, since his problem seems to have been more with Christian doctrine than with God? Anyway, here is the quote, and this has always been my sticking point as well:

"... I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so, the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine." (Barlow 1958)

I know that there are people who get around this whole idea somehow, but I can't, and a lot of others have no problem with it, but just accept that the vast majority of people who have ever lived, no matter how good a life they have led, are going to be thrown into eternal torment by a "loving, merciful" God for not believing the right thing.

"The nexus of politics and terror"

An excellent clip from 2005 - Keith Olbermann examines the curious way in which, whenever the Republicans have a spate of bad news, or the Democrats get some positive press, lo and behold, someone from the government comes out and says, "Be afraid. Be very afraid. The terrorists are going to get you!"



Note (Tuesday, 12:30 p.m.): The YouTube site appears to be doing some maintenance at the moment, so if the link is blank, please check back later. Thanks.

The threat level is up - it must be election season

Maybe I’m crazy, but I thought I read somewhere that they were going to ditch the color-coding thing because it was basically useless – didn’t give anyone a clue as to what they were supposed to do or not do – although it does, as Greg Palast points out on Buzzflash today (8/15), let the terrorists know when our guard is down. Well, there is one thing that orange or red means we’re supposed to do – vote Republican.

The Nagasaki principle

I am excerpting this column liberally (and I hope not doing any violence to the context) but the whole article (please click on title) should really be read. Although to my abiding (but not everlasting, I hope) regret, I have yet to finish one of James Carroll’s book (among them Constantine's Sword and Crusade) but I think that he is one of the most powerful writers on the scene today, as well as the only one I know of who truly writes with a prophetic spirit. (I am referring here to the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, whose function was not so much to predict the future as to denounce the sins of the nation and call it back to the right path.)

The Nagasaki principle By James Carroll | August 7, 2006 Today is the anniversary of what did not happen. Sixty-one years ago yesterday, the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The scale of nuclear devastation was apparent at once. The next day, no decision was made to call off the bombing of Nagasaki. Why? Historians debate the justification of the Hiroshima attack, but there is consensus that Nagasaki, coming less than three days later, was tragically unnecessary. President Harry Truman's one order to use the atomic bomb, given on July 25, established a momentum that was not stopped. ....... It is commonly said that war operates by the law of unintended consequences, but another, less-noted law operates as well. War creates momentum that barrels through normally restraining barriers of moral and practical choice. Decision makers begin wars, whether aggressively or defensively, in contexts that are well understood, and with purposes that seem proportionate and able to be accomplished. When destruction and hurt follow the outbreak of violence, however, and then when that destruction and hurt become extreme, the context within which war is begun changes radically. First assumptions no longer apply, and original purposes can become impossible. When that happens, what began as destruction for a goal becomes destruction for its own sake. War generates its own force in which everyone loses. This might be called the Nagasaki principle. The Nagasaki principle comes in two parts. It can operate at the level of close combat, driving fighters to commit atrocities that, in normal conditions, they would abhor. It operates equally at the level of the commanders, leading them to order strikes out of desperation, frustration, or merely for the sake of ``doing something." Such strikes draw equivalent responses from the other side until the destruction is complete. After the fact, massive carnage can seem to have been an act for which no one is responsible, like the result of a natural disaster. That's when a second aspect of the Nagasaki principle comes into play -- the refusal to undertake a moral reckoning with what has been done. ........ This may seem like airy theorizing, but the psychologically unfinished business of the Nuclear Age, dating to the day after Hiroshima, defined the American response to the trauma of Sept. 11, 2001. The nation had lived for two generations with the subliminal but powerfully felt dread of a coming nuclear war. Unconsciously ashamed of our own action in using the bomb, we were waiting for pay-back, and on that beautiful morning it seemed to come. The smoke rising up from the twin towers hit us like a mushroom cloud, and we instantly dubbed the ruined site as Ground Zero, when, as historian John Dower observes, the only true Ground Zeros are the two in Japan. Our unconscious shame was superseded by an overt sense of victimhood. We launched a war whose momentum has carried the world into the unwilled and unforeseen catastrophe that unfolds today. Our denial of nuclear responsibility, meanwhile, embodied in our permanent nuclear arsenal, licenses other nations that aim to match us -- notably Iran. Momentum and denial combined to destroy Nagasaki, which was, alas, not the end, but the beginning. James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe. © Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company