There's a full moon over Washington today, and the lifeline to George W. Bush's legacy can't get a signal after the Senate's historic defeat of a measure that would have prevented the inconceivable bankruptcies of the big three automakers.
The Senate has been busier than usual lately, and the bailout question has been allowed to steal the spotlight from release of findings by the Senate Armed Services Committee, after a two year study, that it is the Bush administration, not rank and file soldiers, who are responsible for the systematic, and vastly underreported, abuse of detainees in Iraq, at Gitmo, and in Afghanistan. The fact that this report isn't shocking is, in itself, shocking.
But, the Senate isn't the only governmental body tripping over the carcass of a corrupt executive branch just as Vice President Dick Cheney isn't the only whose ethics come with the label "assembly required." Unitary, or otherwise, no one can deny that this White House is certainly unique, and will be recalled, for generations to come, as one that has distinguished itself by its linguistic sleight-of-hand, and attempts to bypass international law.
According to The Associated Press, the President, and his henchmen, are working overtime to ensure that the full extent of damage inflicted upon detainees never sees the light of day in its last ditch effort to bar access to memos, and other legal documents, which would corroborate allegations of torture by human rights organization.
An administration which has also distinguished itself by its unparalleled prowess at covering its tracks will yet get to retire with impunity, at least with temporary impunity. But, one day, these documents will come to light, and when they will, there will be no question that this executive branch (which, by the way, includes Mr. Cheney), spearheaded a regime that left America morally, as well as financially, bankrupt.
The only question that remains, in the next few weeks, is whether the President will have the added bonus of adding insult to injury by allowing his partners in crime in the Senate to inject ideology into the catastrophic collapse of the auto industry. Those who voted down the auto bailout bill, in the Senate, show contempt for working men and women in this country, and a Scrooge-like callousness for the heartbreak of what will be massive layoffs.
And, speaking of contempt, there is no restoring the reputation of an administration that has scrupulously sought to sabotage the Bill of Rights, and Geneva, as well as destroy evidence of what can only be called war crimes by U.S. military personnel, acts of torture that were not merely approved, but orchestrated, by the executive branch, as this latest report from the bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee establishes.
The "bad apple" argument advanced by some, like former Department of Defense spokesman, Larry di Rita, can only go so far as, indeed, "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree." It wasn't just a few "bad guards or interrogators" that crossed the line in interrogating detainees, but administration policy to train them to do so.
Likewise, the collapse of the freewheeling, unregulated, survival of the fittest ethos that brought us the demise of Enron, Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, and that is now bringing Wall Street, and the auto industry, to its knees is not coincidental to leadership, but with the collaboration of leadership. Those who attempted to show who has been profiting most at the expense of the home mortgage debacle, like Eliot Spitzer, experienced falls of their own.
While he's about the business of granting last minute pardons, Mr. Bush may be prevailed upon to pardon those automakers whose ruin will have global ramifications. Whether he likes it or not, we're still on his watch, and it is time for this President to act to protect not just car manufacturers, but the millions of jobs that will be lost with their demise.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Requiem for An Educator: In Memoriam James O'Keefe
Last night, the planet lost an extraordinary man. Last night, the world lost a teacher.
In a country that values superstars, and power, those prize fighters for justice, equal rights, and basic human decency often slip between the cracks. Those who devote their lives to informing, and encouraging, embracing, and inspiring our youth seldom find themselves in the big print of major newspaper obituaries.
But, when the planet loses a real teacher, the beauty of that life must be acknowledged, and celebrated.
Few understand that if there is salvation, it is in the simple things, like laughter, that it resides. James O'Keefe knew this instinctively, and he passed on this knowledge to all who were fortunate enough to call themselves his students. He passed on his acceptance of diversity, his appetite for discovery, his love for literature and, in the end, his love for life.
James succumbed to his battle with brain cancer. He was fifty, and only recently married. He was never bitter, never angry, not once, but always concerned with matters above and beyond himself.
Everything seems small compared to mortality, but some have been known to take death down a notch or two. James O'Keefe was one of them.
He was heroic in defense of equal pay, and parity, for part-time faculty. He was a man who wanted to do something good for those he leaves behind. For this, he was a hero to me.
I was honored to keep the seat in his office warm, this semester, his map of Ireland hanging across from my desk, and all things James everywhere.
In the short time I knew James, he wouldn't mind if I called him friend. He touched my life in ways that few ever have or ever will. He taught me that courage isn't the stuff of Hallmark cards, and that humor, even in the face of invincible, crazy death, is what keeps us human.
Oscar Wilde once said "I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability;" not so when it came to James O'Keefe.
In a country that values superstars, and power, those prize fighters for justice, equal rights, and basic human decency often slip between the cracks. Those who devote their lives to informing, and encouraging, embracing, and inspiring our youth seldom find themselves in the big print of major newspaper obituaries.
But, when the planet loses a real teacher, the beauty of that life must be acknowledged, and celebrated.
Few understand that if there is salvation, it is in the simple things, like laughter, that it resides. James O'Keefe knew this instinctively, and he passed on this knowledge to all who were fortunate enough to call themselves his students. He passed on his acceptance of diversity, his appetite for discovery, his love for literature and, in the end, his love for life.
James succumbed to his battle with brain cancer. He was fifty, and only recently married. He was never bitter, never angry, not once, but always concerned with matters above and beyond himself.
Everything seems small compared to mortality, but some have been known to take death down a notch or two. James O'Keefe was one of them.
He was heroic in defense of equal pay, and parity, for part-time faculty. He was a man who wanted to do something good for those he leaves behind. For this, he was a hero to me.
I was honored to keep the seat in his office warm, this semester, his map of Ireland hanging across from my desk, and all things James everywhere.
In the short time I knew James, he wouldn't mind if I called him friend. He touched my life in ways that few ever have or ever will. He taught me that courage isn't the stuff of Hallmark cards, and that humor, even in the face of invincible, crazy death, is what keeps us human.
Oscar Wilde once said "I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability;" not so when it came to James O'Keefe.
in the blush
he sits
in the blush of
boyhood
prompted by
light
the faint promise of
aftershave on
lips his
sneakers wide with
wonder if only
to ride
beside
him I would
take
him in
with
my eyes
while
he hungers for
sleep.
this is
my dream
not
of the
hollow man
he leaves
behind.
by Jayne Lyn Stahl
12/08/08 from "Riding with Destiny"
in the blush of
boyhood
prompted by
light
the faint promise of
aftershave on
lips his
sneakers wide with
wonder if only
to ride
beside
him I would
take
him in
with
my eyes
while
he hungers for
sleep.
this is
my dream
not
of the
hollow man
he leaves
behind.
by Jayne Lyn Stahl
12/08/08 from "Riding with Destiny"
From Greg Palast...
Obama's "Way-to-Go, Brownie!" Moment?
by Greg Palast
for the Huffington Post
Has Barack Obama forgotten, "Way-to-go, Brownie"? Michael Brown was that guy from the Arabian Horse Association appointed by George Bush to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Brownie, not knowing the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain from the south end of a horse, let New Orleans drown. Bush's response was to give his buddy Brownie a "way to go!" thumbs up.
We thought Obama would go a very different way. You'd think the studious Senator from Illinois would avoid repeating the Bush regime's horror show of unqualified appointments, of picking politicos over professionals.
But here we go again. Trial balloons lofted in the Washington Post suggest President-elect Obama is about to select Joel Klein as Secretary of Education. If not Klein, then draft-choice number two is Arne Duncan, Obama's backyard basketball buddy in Chicago.
Say it ain't so, President O.
Let's begin with Joel Klein. Klein is a top notch anti-trust lawyer. What he isn't is an educator. Klein is as qualified to run the Department of Education as Dick Cheney is to dance in Swan Lake. While I've never seen Cheney in a tutu, I have seen Klein fumble about the stage as Chancellor of the New York City school system.
Klein, who lacks even six minutes experience in the field, was handed management of New York's schools by that political Jack-in-the-Box, Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The billionaire mayor is one of those businessmen-turned-politicians who think lawyers and speculators can make school districts operate like businesses.
Klein has indeed run city schools like a business - if the business is General Motors. Klein has flopped. Half the city's kids don't graduate.
Klein is out of control. Not knowing a damn thing about education, rather than rely on those who actually work in the field (only two of his two dozen deputies have degrees in education), Klein pays high-priced consultants to tell him what to do. He's blown a third of a billion dollars on consultant "accountability" projects plus $80 million for an IBM computer data storage system that doesn't work.
What the heck was the $80 million junk computer software for? Testing. Klein is test crazy. He has swallowed hook, line and sinker George Bush's idea that testing students can replace teaching them. The madly expensive testing program and consultant-fee spree are paid for by yanking teachers from the classroom.
Ironically, though not surprisingly, test scores under Klein have flat-lined. Scores would have fallen lower, notes author Jane Hirschmann, but Klein "moved the cut line," that is, lowered the level required to pass. In other words, Klein cheats on the tests.
Nevertheless, media poobahs have fallen in love with Klein, especially Republican pundits. The New York Times' David Brooks is championing Klein, hoping that media hype for Klein will push Obama to keep Bush schools policies in place, trumping the electorate's choice for change.
Brooks and other Republicans (hey, didn't those guys lose?) are pushing Klein as a way for Obama to prove he can reach across the aisle to Republicans like Bloomberg. (Oh yes, Bloomberg's no longer in the GOP, having jumped from the party this year when the brand name went sour.)
Choosing Klein, says Brooks, would display Obama's independence from the teacher's union. But after years of Bush kicking teachers in the teeth, appointing a Bush acolyte like Klein would not indicate independence from teachers but their betrayal.
Hoops versus Hope
The anti-union establishment has a second stringer on the bench waiting in case Klein is nixed: Arne Duncan. Duncan, another lawyer playing at education, was appointed by Chicago's Boss Daley to head that city's train-wreck of a school system. Think of Duncan as "Klein Lite."
What's Duncan's connection to the President-elect? Duncan was once captain of Harvard's basketball team and still plays backyard round-ball with his Hyde Park neighbor Obama.
But Michelle has put a limit on their friendship: Obama was one of the only state senators from Chicago to refuse to send his children into Duncan's public schools. My information is that the Obamas sent their daughters to the elite Laboratory School where Klein-Duncan teach-to-the-test pedagogy is dismissed as damaging and nutty.
Mr. Obama, if you can't trust your kids to Arne Duncan, why hand him ours?
Lawyer Duncan is proud to have raised test scores by firing every teacher in low-scoring schools. Which schools? There's Collins High in the Lawndale ghetto with children from homeless shelters and drug-poisoned 'hoods. They don't do well on tests. So Chicago fired all the teachers. They brought in new ones - then fired all of them too: the teachers' reward for volunteering to work in a poor neighborhood.
It's no coincidence that the nation's worst school systems are run by non-experts like Klein and Duncan.
Obama certainly knows this. I know he knows because he's chosen, as head of his Education Department transition team, one of the most highly respected educators in the United States: Professor Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University.
So here we have the ludicrous scene of the President-elect asking this recognized authority, Dr. Darling-Hammond, to vet the qualifications of amateurs Klein and Duncan. It's as if Obama were to ask Michael Jordan, "Say, you wouldn't happen to know anyone who can play basketball, would you?"
Classroom Class War
It's not just Klein's and Duncan's empty credentials which scare me: it's the ill philosophy behind the Bush-brand education theories they promote. "Teach-to-the-test" (which goes under such pre-packaged teaching brands as "Success for All") forces teachers to limit classroom time to pounding in rote low-end skills, easily measured on standardized tests. The transparent purpose is to create the future class of worker-drones. Add in some computer training and - voila! - millions trained on the cheap to function, not think. Analytical thinking skills, creative skills, questioning skills will be left to the privileged at the Laboratory School and Phillips Andover Academy.
We hope for better from the daddy of Sasha and Malia.
Educationally, the world is swamping us. The economic and social levees are bursting. We cannot afford another Way-to-go Brownie in charge of rescuing our children.
(and, on a personal note, I love this guy!)
by Greg Palast
for the Huffington Post
Has Barack Obama forgotten, "Way-to-go, Brownie"? Michael Brown was that guy from the Arabian Horse Association appointed by George Bush to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Brownie, not knowing the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain from the south end of a horse, let New Orleans drown. Bush's response was to give his buddy Brownie a "way to go!" thumbs up.
We thought Obama would go a very different way. You'd think the studious Senator from Illinois would avoid repeating the Bush regime's horror show of unqualified appointments, of picking politicos over professionals.
But here we go again. Trial balloons lofted in the Washington Post suggest President-elect Obama is about to select Joel Klein as Secretary of Education. If not Klein, then draft-choice number two is Arne Duncan, Obama's backyard basketball buddy in Chicago.
Say it ain't so, President O.
Let's begin with Joel Klein. Klein is a top notch anti-trust lawyer. What he isn't is an educator. Klein is as qualified to run the Department of Education as Dick Cheney is to dance in Swan Lake. While I've never seen Cheney in a tutu, I have seen Klein fumble about the stage as Chancellor of the New York City school system.
Klein, who lacks even six minutes experience in the field, was handed management of New York's schools by that political Jack-in-the-Box, Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The billionaire mayor is one of those businessmen-turned-politicians who think lawyers and speculators can make school districts operate like businesses.
Klein has indeed run city schools like a business - if the business is General Motors. Klein has flopped. Half the city's kids don't graduate.
Klein is out of control. Not knowing a damn thing about education, rather than rely on those who actually work in the field (only two of his two dozen deputies have degrees in education), Klein pays high-priced consultants to tell him what to do. He's blown a third of a billion dollars on consultant "accountability" projects plus $80 million for an IBM computer data storage system that doesn't work.
What the heck was the $80 million junk computer software for? Testing. Klein is test crazy. He has swallowed hook, line and sinker George Bush's idea that testing students can replace teaching them. The madly expensive testing program and consultant-fee spree are paid for by yanking teachers from the classroom.
Ironically, though not surprisingly, test scores under Klein have flat-lined. Scores would have fallen lower, notes author Jane Hirschmann, but Klein "moved the cut line," that is, lowered the level required to pass. In other words, Klein cheats on the tests.
Nevertheless, media poobahs have fallen in love with Klein, especially Republican pundits. The New York Times' David Brooks is championing Klein, hoping that media hype for Klein will push Obama to keep Bush schools policies in place, trumping the electorate's choice for change.
Brooks and other Republicans (hey, didn't those guys lose?) are pushing Klein as a way for Obama to prove he can reach across the aisle to Republicans like Bloomberg. (Oh yes, Bloomberg's no longer in the GOP, having jumped from the party this year when the brand name went sour.)
Choosing Klein, says Brooks, would display Obama's independence from the teacher's union. But after years of Bush kicking teachers in the teeth, appointing a Bush acolyte like Klein would not indicate independence from teachers but their betrayal.
Hoops versus Hope
The anti-union establishment has a second stringer on the bench waiting in case Klein is nixed: Arne Duncan. Duncan, another lawyer playing at education, was appointed by Chicago's Boss Daley to head that city's train-wreck of a school system. Think of Duncan as "Klein Lite."
What's Duncan's connection to the President-elect? Duncan was once captain of Harvard's basketball team and still plays backyard round-ball with his Hyde Park neighbor Obama.
But Michelle has put a limit on their friendship: Obama was one of the only state senators from Chicago to refuse to send his children into Duncan's public schools. My information is that the Obamas sent their daughters to the elite Laboratory School where Klein-Duncan teach-to-the-test pedagogy is dismissed as damaging and nutty.
Mr. Obama, if you can't trust your kids to Arne Duncan, why hand him ours?
Lawyer Duncan is proud to have raised test scores by firing every teacher in low-scoring schools. Which schools? There's Collins High in the Lawndale ghetto with children from homeless shelters and drug-poisoned 'hoods. They don't do well on tests. So Chicago fired all the teachers. They brought in new ones - then fired all of them too: the teachers' reward for volunteering to work in a poor neighborhood.
It's no coincidence that the nation's worst school systems are run by non-experts like Klein and Duncan.
Obama certainly knows this. I know he knows because he's chosen, as head of his Education Department transition team, one of the most highly respected educators in the United States: Professor Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University.
So here we have the ludicrous scene of the President-elect asking this recognized authority, Dr. Darling-Hammond, to vet the qualifications of amateurs Klein and Duncan. It's as if Obama were to ask Michael Jordan, "Say, you wouldn't happen to know anyone who can play basketball, would you?"
Classroom Class War
It's not just Klein's and Duncan's empty credentials which scare me: it's the ill philosophy behind the Bush-brand education theories they promote. "Teach-to-the-test" (which goes under such pre-packaged teaching brands as "Success for All") forces teachers to limit classroom time to pounding in rote low-end skills, easily measured on standardized tests. The transparent purpose is to create the future class of worker-drones. Add in some computer training and - voila! - millions trained on the cheap to function, not think. Analytical thinking skills, creative skills, questioning skills will be left to the privileged at the Laboratory School and Phillips Andover Academy.
We hope for better from the daddy of Sasha and Malia.
Educationally, the world is swamping us. The economic and social levees are bursting. We cannot afford another Way-to-go Brownie in charge of rescuing our children.
(and, on a personal note, I love this guy!)
Universal Declaration of Human Rights is...
60 years old today, and as relevant now as it was the day it was signed...
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948
On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the full text of which appears in the following pages.
Following this historic act the Assembly called upon all Member countries to publicize the text of the Declaration and "to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories."
PREAMBLE
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,
Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,
Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,
Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,
Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.
Article 1.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 2.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 4.
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Article 5.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 6.
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
Article 7.
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
Article 8.
Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
Article 9.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 10.
Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
For the complete Declaration, please visit:
http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948
On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the full text of which appears in the following pages.
Following this historic act the Assembly called upon all Member countries to publicize the text of the Declaration and "to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories."
PREAMBLE
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,
Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,
Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,
Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,
Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.
Article 1.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 2.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 4.
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Article 5.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 6.
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
Article 7.
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
Article 8.
Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
Article 9.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 10.
Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
For the complete Declaration, please visit:
http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Feeding Frenzy
Now that the shock has worn off, it is crystal clear that today's arrest of a Democratic Illinois governor is, to borrow a phrase from President Bush, so much "political theatre."
The feeding frenzy this has touched off among Republicans is enough to make even the most jaded Rovians drool.
One can only marvel at the impeccable, state of the art, timing of the federal sting into a corruption scandal which captivated the FBI for the past year--- just a month before an historic inauguration which gave the Democrats a virtual mandate.
President-elect Obama is, yet again, exercising good judgment by swiftly dismissing any knowledge of, or role in, the Illinois governor's affairs, and moving in.
The feeding frenzy this has touched off among Republicans is enough to make even the most jaded Rovians drool.
One can only marvel at the impeccable, state of the art, timing of the federal sting into a corruption scandal which captivated the FBI for the past year--- just a month before an historic inauguration which gave the Democrats a virtual mandate.
President-elect Obama is, yet again, exercising good judgment by swiftly dismissing any knowledge of, or role in, the Illinois governor's affairs, and moving in.
Blagojevich -- Where Is the Rezko Connection?
The NYT reported this morning that Rod blah, blah, Blagojevich, governor of Illinois, was arrested, this morning, on corruption charges that stem from his alleged attempts to sell Obama's Senate seat "to the highest bidder."
It turns out that Governor Blagojevich had been under surveillance by the feds. for a year now. Why? There appears to be a connection, however adroit, to the Tony Rezko corruption case.
If there is a link with Rezko, what is it, and why isn't this the focus? Who's taking the fall for whom?
Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who was behind this arrest, as well as that of I. Scooter Libby, said that "Abraham Lincoln would be rolling over in his grave" were he to see some of the escapades of the current Illinois governor.
We have breaking news for Mr. Fitzgerald. By now, Lincoln would be planning a pajama party for other presidents who would also be rolling over in their graves, like Jefferson, and Adams, not so much by merchandising of political appointments as by the extraordinary proliferation of wiretaps, and FBI surveillance, by the Bush administration. And, yes, Martha, we're still on GWB's watch.
If memory serves, another big state governor, Eliot Spitzer, was also defrocked thanks to a government sting, and later busted for consorting with call girls and allegedly participating in a prostitution ring. Assuredly, that wasn't really why Spitzer was ousted.
By no means am I defending Rod Blagojevich, or comparing his impeachment with that of Eliot Spitzer. We get closer, every day, to understanding who gained the most from Spitzer's fall.
Any governor who tries to sell political appointments, and oust newspaper editors who disagree with him, is not anyone worth defending, even if he is innocent until proven otherwise.
But, there is a larger issue at play here. There is no small danger in what have become commonplace government sting operations, and FBI surveillance measures, a statement with which Lincoln, Jefferson, and Adams would no doubt agree.
It turns out that Governor Blagojevich had been under surveillance by the feds. for a year now. Why? There appears to be a connection, however adroit, to the Tony Rezko corruption case.
If there is a link with Rezko, what is it, and why isn't this the focus? Who's taking the fall for whom?
Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who was behind this arrest, as well as that of I. Scooter Libby, said that "Abraham Lincoln would be rolling over in his grave" were he to see some of the escapades of the current Illinois governor.
We have breaking news for Mr. Fitzgerald. By now, Lincoln would be planning a pajama party for other presidents who would also be rolling over in their graves, like Jefferson, and Adams, not so much by merchandising of political appointments as by the extraordinary proliferation of wiretaps, and FBI surveillance, by the Bush administration. And, yes, Martha, we're still on GWB's watch.
If memory serves, another big state governor, Eliot Spitzer, was also defrocked thanks to a government sting, and later busted for consorting with call girls and allegedly participating in a prostitution ring. Assuredly, that wasn't really why Spitzer was ousted.
By no means am I defending Rod Blagojevich, or comparing his impeachment with that of Eliot Spitzer. We get closer, every day, to understanding who gained the most from Spitzer's fall.
Any governor who tries to sell political appointments, and oust newspaper editors who disagree with him, is not anyone worth defending, even if he is innocent until proven otherwise.
But, there is a larger issue at play here. There is no small danger in what have become commonplace government sting operations, and FBI surveillance measures, a statement with which Lincoln, Jefferson, and Adams would no doubt agree.
Monday, December 08, 2008
Shinseki and Volcker: Military Contracts and Banking
Make no mistake, this is not about questioning the integrity, judgment, or credentials of retired Army General Eric Shinseki. After all, it was Shinseki who told a congressional committee, back in 2003, that it would take "several hundred thousand soldiers" to attain victory in Iraq.
As the President-elect himself has indicated, the ability to envison, and anticipate, are crucial components of leadership. No one would deny that the general is in possession of the requisite skills both to lead troops in the Army, and to perceive, as well as implement, necessary programs in the V.A.
But, since his retirement, Shinseki appears to be more interested in sitting on the boards of military contracting firms than in closely following developments in veteran's affairs. According to an article in The Washington Post, he is now on the boards of Honeywell International and Ducommum. Ducommum, as you may know, primarily services the aerospace and defense industry by manufacturing parts for aircraft. And, here's where it gets interesting, General Shinseki is also on the board of First Hawaiian Bank.
Shinseki isn't the only Obama advisor with a background in banking. Paul Volcker, who is slated to be head of the President-elect's economic team, after leaving the Federal Reserve in 1987, became chair of the New York banking firm J. Rothschild, Wolfensohn, & Co. J. Rothschild et. al is a corporate investment firm spearheaded by Wolfensohn who later became president of the World Bank.
Just as General Shinseki is on the board of First Hawaiian Bank, Paul Volcker has had a relationship with Chase Bank, as well as a long association with the Rockefeller Family. If you're looking for a spokesman for the lumpin proletarian, Volcker's not your man.
As Alan Greenspan's predecessor, and a former Federal Reserve Board chair, Volcker, unlike Greenspan, is a registered Democrat, but market manipulation is, and always has been, a bipartisan affair.
Interestingly, too, Mr. Volcker is a member of the G30, (Group of 30), a global body of financiers and academics whose interest lies chiefly in international capital markets, financial institutions, and central banks, so when we speak of markets, we're playing in a larger ballpark.
Who better to advise the 44th President of the United States on economic recovery than someone like than a former Federal Reserve Board chair with a state of the art record in helping to rescue two administrations from free market excesses? Absolutely. If we're willing to go down the slippery slope of free market fundamentalism all over again, Paul Volcker is our man.
Though it would be hard to argue given the current infatuation with all things Obama, there is a valid question as to whether or not Mr. Shinseki's position as board member of major defense contracting firms, poses a conflict of interest insofar as it may reflect more concern with the profit margin from manufacturing military aircraft than for the post traumatic stress with which our troops return from war.
More importantly, we must ask if Barack Obama's appointments of those with ties to corporate behemoths like Rockefeller, Chase Bank, and Honeywell reflects the kind of financial hawkishness that has brought us to the edge of the abyss from which we're trying to extricate ourselves.
As the President-elect himself has indicated, the ability to envison, and anticipate, are crucial components of leadership. No one would deny that the general is in possession of the requisite skills both to lead troops in the Army, and to perceive, as well as implement, necessary programs in the V.A.
But, since his retirement, Shinseki appears to be more interested in sitting on the boards of military contracting firms than in closely following developments in veteran's affairs. According to an article in The Washington Post, he is now on the boards of Honeywell International and Ducommum. Ducommum, as you may know, primarily services the aerospace and defense industry by manufacturing parts for aircraft. And, here's where it gets interesting, General Shinseki is also on the board of First Hawaiian Bank.
Shinseki isn't the only Obama advisor with a background in banking. Paul Volcker, who is slated to be head of the President-elect's economic team, after leaving the Federal Reserve in 1987, became chair of the New York banking firm J. Rothschild, Wolfensohn, & Co. J. Rothschild et. al is a corporate investment firm spearheaded by Wolfensohn who later became president of the World Bank.
Just as General Shinseki is on the board of First Hawaiian Bank, Paul Volcker has had a relationship with Chase Bank, as well as a long association with the Rockefeller Family. If you're looking for a spokesman for the lumpin proletarian, Volcker's not your man.
As Alan Greenspan's predecessor, and a former Federal Reserve Board chair, Volcker, unlike Greenspan, is a registered Democrat, but market manipulation is, and always has been, a bipartisan affair.
Interestingly, too, Mr. Volcker is a member of the G30, (Group of 30), a global body of financiers and academics whose interest lies chiefly in international capital markets, financial institutions, and central banks, so when we speak of markets, we're playing in a larger ballpark.
Who better to advise the 44th President of the United States on economic recovery than someone like than a former Federal Reserve Board chair with a state of the art record in helping to rescue two administrations from free market excesses? Absolutely. If we're willing to go down the slippery slope of free market fundamentalism all over again, Paul Volcker is our man.
Though it would be hard to argue given the current infatuation with all things Obama, there is a valid question as to whether or not Mr. Shinseki's position as board member of major defense contracting firms, poses a conflict of interest insofar as it may reflect more concern with the profit margin from manufacturing military aircraft than for the post traumatic stress with which our troops return from war.
More importantly, we must ask if Barack Obama's appointments of those with ties to corporate behemoths like Rockefeller, Chase Bank, and Honeywell reflects the kind of financial hawkishness that has brought us to the edge of the abyss from which we're trying to extricate ourselves.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Some thoughts on Pearl Harbor Day...
On this, the 67th anniversary of the day the Japanese launched a surprise military strike on a U.S. naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii , I'm reminded of the words of Austrian psychiatrist, Victor Frankl: "no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them."
Dr. Frankl, who survived four concentration camps including Auschwitz, and witnessed firsthand the horror that man can foist upon man, cogently reminds us that there can be no excuse for the devastation that was Hiroshima nor for the internment of thousands of Japanese in U.S. detention camps, and the brutality to which they were subjected.
Similarly, the high crimes and misdemeanors that were committed by an administration that alleged to be avenging the deaths of 3,000 who perished in the bombing of the World Trade Center is no justification for more killing, and state-sanctioned torture.
Whenever an inmate is sentenced to die for any crime he commits, the state that orders his murder has blood on its hands for, as Victor Frankl rightly says, "no one has the right to do wrong.".
Dr. Frankl, who survived four concentration camps including Auschwitz, and witnessed firsthand the horror that man can foist upon man, cogently reminds us that there can be no excuse for the devastation that was Hiroshima nor for the internment of thousands of Japanese in U.S. detention camps, and the brutality to which they were subjected.
Similarly, the high crimes and misdemeanors that were committed by an administration that alleged to be avenging the deaths of 3,000 who perished in the bombing of the World Trade Center is no justification for more killing, and state-sanctioned torture.
Whenever an inmate is sentenced to die for any crime he commits, the state that orders his murder has blood on its hands for, as Victor Frankl rightly says, "no one has the right to do wrong.".
Saturday, December 06, 2008
Way to Go, Obama!
After this morning's radio address, and e-mail announcement from the Obama/Biden transition team, I'm thrilled that Obama is stepping up to the plate, and clarifying his relationship to his advisors, as well as letting the American people know that, from now on, we will have "a seat at the table."
In a signature move that will set him light years apart from the Bush gang, memos, as well as minutes, of meetings will be posted on change.gov., and the Web site will be open to all who want to post comments, or simply keep apprised of what their government is up to.
What a delightful change after a regime of secrecy, classified documents, and withholding information not just from citizens, but the press. What a breath of fresh air!
Happily, too, today, the President-elect clarified that his advisors will follow his blueprint. He is the architect; they are the construction crew that will do the heavy lifting. He will be the idea person; they will be the ones who fine tune how those ideas will be implemented. Excellent!
As you know, in this morning's address, Obama has instructed his economic team to come up with the draft of a recovery plan that will create 2 million new jobs, and invest in infrastructure from installing energy-saving lightbulbs in federal office buildings to rebuilding public schools, as well as ensuring that every student has access to the Internet.
Bravo! This is exactly the kind of leadership many of us have been waiting for.
And, we hope, too, along with Senator Russ Feingold, that President Obama will also see fit to "restore the rule of law," as Feingold recently explained to Bill Moyers, and that he will revisit the USA Patriot Act, revisions to FISA court that allow for warrantless surveillance on American citizens, as well as all other challenges to the First and Fourth Amendments brought on by George W. Bush and company.
National security doesn't come from locking people away indefinitely, without charging them with any crime, without having evidence that they've even committed a crime, and without giving them access to counsel unless they confess guilt. National security doesn't come from intercepting international phone calls under the pretext of trying to find terrorists when the terrorist-in-chief, Osama bin Laden, has been allowed to roam from cave to cave, with impunity, and with no attempts made to intercept his phone calls, or e-mails.
National security doesn't come from outsourcing the torture of a Muslim American citizen to United Arab Emirates who, in the space of only a few months, have allegedly beaten him at the request of the U.S. government. Naji Hamdan, according to his brother Hossam, was only just released from UAE custody "after he gave up and signed whatever they gave him. He was willing to sign anything. Now they have put him into the criminal court system" where "he is with criminals, like killers and drug dealers." (McClatchy) Hamdan is a naturalized U.S. citizen. We don't ship American citizens to Abu Dhabi to be tortured in the name of a "war on terror."
We are confident that Thomas Jefferson, and the founding fathers, are looking to President Obama as a breath of fresh air, and as one who will set the ship of state right after eight years of being on a disaster course.
In a signature move that will set him light years apart from the Bush gang, memos, as well as minutes, of meetings will be posted on change.gov., and the Web site will be open to all who want to post comments, or simply keep apprised of what their government is up to.
What a delightful change after a regime of secrecy, classified documents, and withholding information not just from citizens, but the press. What a breath of fresh air!
Happily, too, today, the President-elect clarified that his advisors will follow his blueprint. He is the architect; they are the construction crew that will do the heavy lifting. He will be the idea person; they will be the ones who fine tune how those ideas will be implemented. Excellent!
As you know, in this morning's address, Obama has instructed his economic team to come up with the draft of a recovery plan that will create 2 million new jobs, and invest in infrastructure from installing energy-saving lightbulbs in federal office buildings to rebuilding public schools, as well as ensuring that every student has access to the Internet.
Bravo! This is exactly the kind of leadership many of us have been waiting for.
And, we hope, too, along with Senator Russ Feingold, that President Obama will also see fit to "restore the rule of law," as Feingold recently explained to Bill Moyers, and that he will revisit the USA Patriot Act, revisions to FISA court that allow for warrantless surveillance on American citizens, as well as all other challenges to the First and Fourth Amendments brought on by George W. Bush and company.
National security doesn't come from locking people away indefinitely, without charging them with any crime, without having evidence that they've even committed a crime, and without giving them access to counsel unless they confess guilt. National security doesn't come from intercepting international phone calls under the pretext of trying to find terrorists when the terrorist-in-chief, Osama bin Laden, has been allowed to roam from cave to cave, with impunity, and with no attempts made to intercept his phone calls, or e-mails.
National security doesn't come from outsourcing the torture of a Muslim American citizen to United Arab Emirates who, in the space of only a few months, have allegedly beaten him at the request of the U.S. government. Naji Hamdan, according to his brother Hossam, was only just released from UAE custody "after he gave up and signed whatever they gave him. He was willing to sign anything. Now they have put him into the criminal court system" where "he is with criminals, like killers and drug dealers." (McClatchy) Hamdan is a naturalized U.S. citizen. We don't ship American citizens to Abu Dhabi to be tortured in the name of a "war on terror."
We are confident that Thomas Jefferson, and the founding fathers, are looking to President Obama as a breath of fresh air, and as one who will set the ship of state right after eight years of being on a disaster course.
Friday, December 05, 2008
Barney Frank...
is right when he talks about bailing out the big 3 automakers, and says that for Congress "to do nothing, to allow bankruptcies and failures in one, two or three of these companies in the midst of the worst credit crisis and the worst unemployment situation that we've had in 70 years would be a disaster."
Further, it would be criminal dereliction of duty, especially in light of today's jobs report showing 11 consecutive months of job losses, so I strongly agree with Rep. Frank, Chair of the Financial Services Committee, that action is required and fast.
Indeed, as goes Pompeii, so goes Rome.
Further, it would be criminal dereliction of duty, especially in light of today's jobs report showing 11 consecutive months of job losses, so I strongly agree with Rep. Frank, Chair of the Financial Services Committee, that action is required and fast.
Indeed, as goes Pompeii, so goes Rome.
On Second Thought
When I awoke this morning, I had some second thoughts about my piece, "Elixir or Delegator," in light of some statements Barack Obama has made, over the past few months, and in light, too, of news today that he intends to start making inroads on health care. Among the many joys of having a mind is that one can change it.
For what it's worth, I agree with the President-elect when he says there can only be one president at a time. Like it or not, he has to wait until he's sworn in to do the heavy lifting. For now, it's up to George W. Bush to make decisions about bailouts and snailouts as he's still on company time.
Given his propensity to bail out coke dealers, and former White House aides who perjured themselves, as well as his most recent legislation which attempts to finalize governmental molestation of the environment, I think President Bush ought to be left with the foul aftertaste of history's contempt for any wrong decisions that are made. He broke it; he bought it.
For what it's worth, I agree with the President-elect when he says there can only be one president at a time. Like it or not, he has to wait until he's sworn in to do the heavy lifting. For now, it's up to George W. Bush to make decisions about bailouts and snailouts as he's still on company time.
Given his propensity to bail out coke dealers, and former White House aides who perjured themselves, as well as his most recent legislation which attempts to finalize governmental molestation of the environment, I think President Bush ought to be left with the foul aftertaste of history's contempt for any wrong decisions that are made. He broke it; he bought it.
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Elixir or Delegator?
It's reassuring to see Barack Obama's team of advisors is almost the size of the National Guard, and to think that, instead of an alligator at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, we'll have a delegator. And, as an added bonus, it may even be a way to avoid bringing back the draft.
No one would question the value of intellectual diversity, especially when looking at some of those Obama has chosen to be his economic consultants, who have backgrounds as diverse as Paul Volcker and Robert Reich.
Obama's economic appointments are surpassed only by his national security advice crew which includes a retired marine general, Jim Jones, a current defense secretary, Robert Gates, and a former presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, whose campaign mantra was "end the war," but who may change her tune when she replaces Condi Rice to something like "end this war." Maybe we could use a little Chicago street smarts?
And, for those optimists among us, there is a consolation prize: at least Obama won't be outsourcing his foreign, or economic, policies to India, or China. Still, his repeated insistence that he is in charge can't help but fly in the face of logic given his swiftness in transforming a unitary executive into one willing to collaborate with friends, foes, partisans, nonpartisans, as well as political agnostics, but the buck stops where?
What a refreshing change, indeed a novelty, to have, as our next president, a team player instead of wannabe royalty but, again, one can't help but ask --- the buck stops where? Whose call will it be as to how much money is appropriated in the next budget for defense spending? Will an advisor make that decision, or the president, or the president in conjunction with his advisors? Will national security be a priority, or will there be an equal budgetary emphasis on health care, and programs for those hardest hit by this catastrophic economic freefall?
We already know, despite voting against the Iraq war initially, what Obama's stand is when it comes to the war on terror, Afghanistan, bin Laden, and setting a definitive date to withdraw from Iraq, is not fundamentally different from that of his predecessor. The main difference appears to be that the President-elect will listen to his generals on the ground rather than the Almighty.
But, may we infer from his national security appointments that the Department of Defense will be as top drawer under President Obama as it was under George W. Bush? Or, may we deduce that, one of the primary reasons Mr. Obama has taken on such a large fleet of advisors is so that, should either his foreign or domestic policies not get off the ground, there will be plenty of blame to spread around?
More importantly, what can Obama do to counter arguments such as this one? He can speak up maybe, and let his own ideas on defense spending, and bailing out Detroit, come through loud and clear.
There are others who observe that the chief achievements we may expect from a first term Obama administration are enhanced possibilities for good will among former adversaries, the certain prospect of progressive Supreme Court nominations, and an economic "correction" that may well incorporate a seismic shift, or redistribution, of income from the haves to the have nots. These would all be worthy accomplishments.
No one would suggest, at this point in world history, that any new president, whether American or European, could be an elixir, or magical formula, for instant global peace; however, one would like to know what this administration's agenda is, and how it intends to get there.
We look forward to a commander-in-chief who likes to talk, but we also need talk about priorities. In the end, a prerequisite for taking the wheel isn't the ability to redefine "round."
And, clearly, it makes no sense to go from a White House that consulted no one with Bush and Cheney doubling as the Lone Ranger and Tonto for the past eight years to one that is Who's Who of domestic, and foreign, experts, and that can stand in as a small army if we find ourselves hard pressed for forces in Afghanistan. It would help to know which playbook we're working from that redefines withdrawal as redeployment.
It takes intelligence to know how to listen, wisdom to seek counsel, and courage to take a stand. We know Mr. Obama has courage, and that he will act when he thinks the time has come. We can only hope that he sees the time is here.
While the honeymoon has barely begun, the ether will eventually wear off in the delicatessen of broken promises, and like that character in a Samuel Beckett play, we may yet be asking "Is it time for my pain killer yet?"
No one would question the value of intellectual diversity, especially when looking at some of those Obama has chosen to be his economic consultants, who have backgrounds as diverse as Paul Volcker and Robert Reich.
Obama's economic appointments are surpassed only by his national security advice crew which includes a retired marine general, Jim Jones, a current defense secretary, Robert Gates, and a former presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, whose campaign mantra was "end the war," but who may change her tune when she replaces Condi Rice to something like "end this war." Maybe we could use a little Chicago street smarts?
And, for those optimists among us, there is a consolation prize: at least Obama won't be outsourcing his foreign, or economic, policies to India, or China. Still, his repeated insistence that he is in charge can't help but fly in the face of logic given his swiftness in transforming a unitary executive into one willing to collaborate with friends, foes, partisans, nonpartisans, as well as political agnostics, but the buck stops where?
What a refreshing change, indeed a novelty, to have, as our next president, a team player instead of wannabe royalty but, again, one can't help but ask --- the buck stops where? Whose call will it be as to how much money is appropriated in the next budget for defense spending? Will an advisor make that decision, or the president, or the president in conjunction with his advisors? Will national security be a priority, or will there be an equal budgetary emphasis on health care, and programs for those hardest hit by this catastrophic economic freefall?
We already know, despite voting against the Iraq war initially, what Obama's stand is when it comes to the war on terror, Afghanistan, bin Laden, and setting a definitive date to withdraw from Iraq, is not fundamentally different from that of his predecessor. The main difference appears to be that the President-elect will listen to his generals on the ground rather than the Almighty.
But, may we infer from his national security appointments that the Department of Defense will be as top drawer under President Obama as it was under George W. Bush? Or, may we deduce that, one of the primary reasons Mr. Obama has taken on such a large fleet of advisors is so that, should either his foreign or domestic policies not get off the ground, there will be plenty of blame to spread around?
More importantly, what can Obama do to counter arguments such as this one? He can speak up maybe, and let his own ideas on defense spending, and bailing out Detroit, come through loud and clear.
There are others who observe that the chief achievements we may expect from a first term Obama administration are enhanced possibilities for good will among former adversaries, the certain prospect of progressive Supreme Court nominations, and an economic "correction" that may well incorporate a seismic shift, or redistribution, of income from the haves to the have nots. These would all be worthy accomplishments.
No one would suggest, at this point in world history, that any new president, whether American or European, could be an elixir, or magical formula, for instant global peace; however, one would like to know what this administration's agenda is, and how it intends to get there.
We look forward to a commander-in-chief who likes to talk, but we also need talk about priorities. In the end, a prerequisite for taking the wheel isn't the ability to redefine "round."
And, clearly, it makes no sense to go from a White House that consulted no one with Bush and Cheney doubling as the Lone Ranger and Tonto for the past eight years to one that is Who's Who of domestic, and foreign, experts, and that can stand in as a small army if we find ourselves hard pressed for forces in Afghanistan. It would help to know which playbook we're working from that redefines withdrawal as redeployment.
It takes intelligence to know how to listen, wisdom to seek counsel, and courage to take a stand. We know Mr. Obama has courage, and that he will act when he thinks the time has come. We can only hope that he sees the time is here.
While the honeymoon has barely begun, the ether will eventually wear off in the delicatessen of broken promises, and like that character in a Samuel Beckett play, we may yet be asking "Is it time for my pain killer yet?"
by Michael Winship
Obama’s Familiar Orbit
by Michael Winship
I keep thinking about that tool bag. You know – the one that the astronaut accidentally let loose while she was repairing the International Space Station last month. Now it’s in orbit, more than 200 miles above the Earth.
There’s even a Web site where you can track its exact location, if that’s your idea of a good time. NASA figures the 30-pound bag of equipment will burn up harmlessly as it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere sometime next June.
For now, it’s up there, floating silently and uselessly, which, if you think of government as a sort of national toolkit for protecting and improving the lives of its citizens, could be seen as a pretty good metaphor for the last eight years.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, nothing done – except with the kind of blunt hammers that see everything as a nail and cause more harm than good.
It’s probably not for nothing that both Newsweek and Time had the word “fix” on their covers this week. We’re in need of major repairs in this country, at every level. That celestial tool bag orbiting above our heads might have come in handy. Its contents include two grease guns, a scraper and a trash bag – all things that could be useful for an incoming president seeking big changes in Washington.
But, I hear you asking, where is the change? Despite all the campaign rhetoric, so far, President-Elect Obama’s announced appointments haven’t exactly rattled the cages of the Beltway establishment; no one has emerged from the left, for example, who would give DC politicos a good, healthy case of the vapors.
It’s consensus building, say his supporters; he’s putting together a team of people with experience and know-how who can insure continuity and stability in a time of crisis. This is a process of synthesis -- the new ideas will come from him. Obama’s a smart guy, they say. Not to worry -- he’s got this covered.
As he himself said at his December 1 press conference, “I will be setting policy as president. I will be responsible for the vision that this team carries out, and I expect them to implement that vision once decisions are made.”
Maybe that’s so, and it would be unfair to judge a presidency that doesn’t even officially begin for another seven weeks. We all wish Barack Obama godspeed and good luck. But you’ll forgive me for being a little nervous. You can call his appointments a “team of rivals,” if you like – that currently in vogue, nostalgic reference to Obama’s hero Abraham Lincoln manning his cabinet with those who ran against him for the Republican nomination in 1860 -- but in truth, it seems more like a team of the same old, same old.
To work toward solving our economic crisis Obama has brought in many of the same old Clinton hands who helped us into this mess via deregulation and the wink of a blind eye to the big financial institutions – the same ones that have either sunk beneath the waves or that we’re bailing out now.
The Bush administration made the economic disaster worse, but both Barack Obama’s designated Secretary of the Treasury – Tim Geithner – and his choice to direct the National Economic Council, Larry Summers (a former Treasury secretary), are pals of Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who left Treasury to join Citigroup, where he’s now a director and senior advisor. Yes, folks, Citigroup – the bank the government now has agreed to insure against projected losses of $306 billion – on top of bailouts totaling $45 billion.
Same old, same old in national security and foreign policy, too -- Bob Gates, Donald Rumsfeld’s replacement, stays on at the Defense Department for at least for a year; General James Jones, seasoned military man and friend of John McCain’s becomes national security advisor. And, of course, there’s Senator Hillary Clinton, the next Secretary of State.
At Monday’s press conference, President-Elect Obama was asked pointedly about their past differences:PETER BAKER, New York Times: … Going back to the campaign, you were asked and talked about the qualifications of the -- your now -- your nominee for secretary of State, and you belittled her travels around the world, equating it to having teas with foreign leaders; and your new White House counsel said that her resume was grossly exaggerated when it came to foreign policy.
I'm wondering whether you could talk about the evolution of your views of her credentials since the spring.PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: Look, I'm in -- I think this is fun for the press, to try to stir up whatever quotes were generated during the course of the campaign.BAKER Your quotes, sir.
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: No, I understand. And I'm -- and you're having fun. (Laughs.)BAKER I'm asking a question.PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: But the -- and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not -- I'm not faulting it. But look, I think if you look at the statements that Hillary Clinton and I have made outside of the -- the heat of a campaign, we share a view that America has to be safe and secure and in order to do that we have to combine military power with strengthened diplomacy.So let me get this straight – we weren’t supposed to take seriously anything that was said during “the heat of a campaign?” Doesn’t that invalidate the time and effort we spent evaluating the differences between the candidates before we cast our votes? I’m just asking.
Equally disconcerting are the paeans of praise for the appointments coming from those who so bitterly opposed Obama’s election just a month ago. “Reassuring,” said Karl Rove. Karl Rove! “The new administration is off to a good start” – so sayeth Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. “This will be a valedictocracy,” conservative David Brooks gushed in The New York Times. “Rule by those who graduate first in their high school classes.”
O brave new world, that hath such people in it. Maybe it’s true, as Republican campaign consultant Mark McKinnon wrote Monday, that, “The political classes have briefly sobered up and decided to act responsibly, selflessly and -- dare we say it -- in the best interest of the country.
The times are simply so serious, so dangerous, so calamitous that we can’t afford politics as usual.”
I truly hope so, but a healthy dose of skepticism dictates that I'll believe it when I see it. Look out for tool bags, falling from the sky. And possibly a flying pig or two.
Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs programBill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS.Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.
by Michael Winship
I keep thinking about that tool bag. You know – the one that the astronaut accidentally let loose while she was repairing the International Space Station last month. Now it’s in orbit, more than 200 miles above the Earth.
There’s even a Web site where you can track its exact location, if that’s your idea of a good time. NASA figures the 30-pound bag of equipment will burn up harmlessly as it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere sometime next June.
For now, it’s up there, floating silently and uselessly, which, if you think of government as a sort of national toolkit for protecting and improving the lives of its citizens, could be seen as a pretty good metaphor for the last eight years.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, nothing done – except with the kind of blunt hammers that see everything as a nail and cause more harm than good.
It’s probably not for nothing that both Newsweek and Time had the word “fix” on their covers this week. We’re in need of major repairs in this country, at every level. That celestial tool bag orbiting above our heads might have come in handy. Its contents include two grease guns, a scraper and a trash bag – all things that could be useful for an incoming president seeking big changes in Washington.
But, I hear you asking, where is the change? Despite all the campaign rhetoric, so far, President-Elect Obama’s announced appointments haven’t exactly rattled the cages of the Beltway establishment; no one has emerged from the left, for example, who would give DC politicos a good, healthy case of the vapors.
It’s consensus building, say his supporters; he’s putting together a team of people with experience and know-how who can insure continuity and stability in a time of crisis. This is a process of synthesis -- the new ideas will come from him. Obama’s a smart guy, they say. Not to worry -- he’s got this covered.
As he himself said at his December 1 press conference, “I will be setting policy as president. I will be responsible for the vision that this team carries out, and I expect them to implement that vision once decisions are made.”
Maybe that’s so, and it would be unfair to judge a presidency that doesn’t even officially begin for another seven weeks. We all wish Barack Obama godspeed and good luck. But you’ll forgive me for being a little nervous. You can call his appointments a “team of rivals,” if you like – that currently in vogue, nostalgic reference to Obama’s hero Abraham Lincoln manning his cabinet with those who ran against him for the Republican nomination in 1860 -- but in truth, it seems more like a team of the same old, same old.
To work toward solving our economic crisis Obama has brought in many of the same old Clinton hands who helped us into this mess via deregulation and the wink of a blind eye to the big financial institutions – the same ones that have either sunk beneath the waves or that we’re bailing out now.
The Bush administration made the economic disaster worse, but both Barack Obama’s designated Secretary of the Treasury – Tim Geithner – and his choice to direct the National Economic Council, Larry Summers (a former Treasury secretary), are pals of Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who left Treasury to join Citigroup, where he’s now a director and senior advisor. Yes, folks, Citigroup – the bank the government now has agreed to insure against projected losses of $306 billion – on top of bailouts totaling $45 billion.
Same old, same old in national security and foreign policy, too -- Bob Gates, Donald Rumsfeld’s replacement, stays on at the Defense Department for at least for a year; General James Jones, seasoned military man and friend of John McCain’s becomes national security advisor. And, of course, there’s Senator Hillary Clinton, the next Secretary of State.
At Monday’s press conference, President-Elect Obama was asked pointedly about their past differences:PETER BAKER, New York Times: … Going back to the campaign, you were asked and talked about the qualifications of the -- your now -- your nominee for secretary of State, and you belittled her travels around the world, equating it to having teas with foreign leaders; and your new White House counsel said that her resume was grossly exaggerated when it came to foreign policy.
I'm wondering whether you could talk about the evolution of your views of her credentials since the spring.PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: Look, I'm in -- I think this is fun for the press, to try to stir up whatever quotes were generated during the course of the campaign.BAKER Your quotes, sir.
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: No, I understand. And I'm -- and you're having fun. (Laughs.)BAKER I'm asking a question.PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: But the -- and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not -- I'm not faulting it. But look, I think if you look at the statements that Hillary Clinton and I have made outside of the -- the heat of a campaign, we share a view that America has to be safe and secure and in order to do that we have to combine military power with strengthened diplomacy.So let me get this straight – we weren’t supposed to take seriously anything that was said during “the heat of a campaign?” Doesn’t that invalidate the time and effort we spent evaluating the differences between the candidates before we cast our votes? I’m just asking.
Equally disconcerting are the paeans of praise for the appointments coming from those who so bitterly opposed Obama’s election just a month ago. “Reassuring,” said Karl Rove. Karl Rove! “The new administration is off to a good start” – so sayeth Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. “This will be a valedictocracy,” conservative David Brooks gushed in The New York Times. “Rule by those who graduate first in their high school classes.”
O brave new world, that hath such people in it. Maybe it’s true, as Republican campaign consultant Mark McKinnon wrote Monday, that, “The political classes have briefly sobered up and decided to act responsibly, selflessly and -- dare we say it -- in the best interest of the country.
The times are simply so serious, so dangerous, so calamitous that we can’t afford politics as usual.”
I truly hope so, but a healthy dose of skepticism dictates that I'll believe it when I see it. Look out for tool bags, falling from the sky. And possibly a flying pig or two.
Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs programBill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS.Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Odetta
Rest in peace Odetta, singer, actress, guitarist, and passed just weeks shy of her 78th birthday, a dedicated spirit, "the Voice of the Civil Rights Movement" may now rejoice in knowing she is no longer "long, long, long way from home," and that her songs have found a permanent place in the hearts of all who love freedom and justice.
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Attention: Deficit
"Right now there's intense debate about how aggressive the United States government should be in its attempts to turn the economy around. Many economists, myself included, are calling for a very large fiscal expansion to keep the economy from going into free fall. Others, however, worry about the burden that large budget deficits will place on future generations. But the deficit worriers have it all wrong. Under current conditions, there's no trade-off between what's good in the short run and what's good for the long run; strong fiscal expansion would actually enhance the economy's long-run prospects."
From article in The New York Times by Paul Krugman
Krugman is right. You stop the bleeding, then you worry about how much the bandaids cost.
From article in The New York Times by Paul Krugman
Krugman is right. You stop the bleeding, then you worry about how much the bandaids cost.
Monday, December 01, 2008
On Ralph Nader...
The only thing more foolish than running for president four times is voting for someone who runs for president four times.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
From Mr. K
{About Truth}
"Deep, the student, came to Mr. Keuner, the thinking
man, and said: "I want to know the truth."
"Which truth? The truth is well known. Do you want
to know the truth about the fish trade? Or about the
tax system? If, because they tell you the truth about
the fish trade, you no longer pay a high price for their
fish, you will never know the truth," said Mr. Keuner.
By Bertolt Brecht
("Stories of Mr. Keuner," Bertolt Brecht, 1965, translated from the German by Martin Chalmers,2001, is available from City Lights Books, San Francisco)
"Deep, the student, came to Mr. Keuner, the thinking
man, and said: "I want to know the truth."
"Which truth? The truth is well known. Do you want
to know the truth about the fish trade? Or about the
tax system? If, because they tell you the truth about
the fish trade, you no longer pay a high price for their
fish, you will never know the truth," said Mr. Keuner.
By Bertolt Brecht
("Stories of Mr. Keuner," Bertolt Brecht, 1965, translated from the German by Martin Chalmers,2001, is available from City Lights Books, San Francisco)
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Not Just A Passing Ghost
After spending 7 years of my life head to toe with the characters of James Joyce and Nora Barnacle, you can understand my amazement when, at 11 A.M. one autumn morning, the phone rang and the person on the other end introduced himself as "Stephen Joyce."
On the morning of September 18, 2008, Stephen James Joyce, grandson, and only surviving relative, of James Joyce, called from France in response to a letter I sent to him some weeks before.
The letter I sent Joyce, at the request of an Irish independent producer, asked for permission to use excerpts from "Ulysses," and a few letters his grandfather wrote to his patron, Harriet Shaw Weaver, in my feature-length screenplay, "Shakespeare & Company," which tells of the censorship struggle to publish "Ulysses;" the Sylvia Beach story.
I was no more prepared for the nearly two hours of conversation which followed than I am to repeat, from memory, what transpires during a dream, and I had to pinch myself to believe that I was, in fact, awake.
What follows is from a collection of notes that were hastily scribbled on pieces of scrap paper on the desk. In the interest of protecting Mr. Joyce's privacy, I will not include anything that might be considered personal, but only that which has universal, historical value:
Among the first things Stephen Joyce told me is that he likes to be called "Stephen James Joyce," and that I'd better be "very careful with the facts," not unlike his grandfather, I thought, who went over the details of a biography someone was in the process of writing about him with a fine tooth comb.
Of his grandfather, ("JJ"), Stephen would say only that he is "not just a passing ghost" to him. And, he said, if he ever wants to talk to his grandfather, all he has to do is close his eyes.
He asked me to keep our conversation "strictly confidential," a request I was fullly prepared to honor until, in the closing minutes of the call, he gave me permission to write about it.
Joyce said that since my screenplay is about the bookstore "Shakespeare & Company," and not about "Ulysses," or his grandfather, per se, it was none of his business what I did, or who I quoted from. He said explicitly that he didn't want to get involved with the project one way or the other.
That said, he told me that the only edition he would authorize me to take passages from is the original 2/2/22 "Shakespeare & Company" version, published by Sylvia Beach, of which there were 1,000 copies printed worldwide. It was a pronouncement he made dramatically, almost defiantly, and one with which I was fully prepared to comply. He mumbled something about the Harry Ransom Center having a copy.
During more than 90 minutes we spent on the phone, Joyce said three times he would "neither help nor hinder me" in my efforts. He asked if I was familiar with that quote which he took from an American play. (When I checked later, I saw that, according to the New York Times, "When the biographer Deirdre Blair first approached Samuel Beckett in the late '70s, 'the first sentence he ever said to me was, 'So you're the one who's going to reveal me for the charlatan that I am,' Blair recalled. But he also told her, 'I will neither help nor hinder you,' adding, 'I'll introduce you to my friends; my enemies will find you soon enough.") The line makes perfect sentence to me, esp. in light of the fact that Stephen Joyce, later in the conversation, confided that Samuel Beckett was among his closest friends.
Also toward the beginning of the conversation, he asked who told me that the copyright for "Ulysses" would expire in a couple of years. He said that copyright depends upon where in the European Union the movie is made. He also insisted, as part of his statement that I have to be "very careful with facts," that Sylvia Beach never spent time in an internment camp (something that contradicts Beach's memoir, Wikipedia, and Harriet Weaver), and that her bookstore never closed, but only relocated.
He noted, too, that the German soldier, to whom my script refers, only appears in a book by Paul Leon, and is thus suspect. When I told him all my research came from Beach's own autobiography, he suggested she could have misrepresented things. He said I have "a problem" in that I have to sort through all the different stories and versions of events leading up to the publication of "Ulysses" in order to get to the "facts" when there is only one person who knew the true story, and that was his grandfather, James Joyce.
I stressed emphatically that my screenplay is not intended to be a documentary, and that I "fictionalized" his grandfather, as well as took liberties with what he calls "facts." I insisted that it is a dramatization, and not intended to be a literal representation of the events that led to the publication of "Ulysses." Later on in the conversation, he repeated the word "fact" in such a way that suggests he appreciated my thinking.
I told him that Samuel Beckett isn't in the script, and why: "Beckett deserves his own screenplay." I also mentioned that his Aunt Lucia only has a few lines, and why. I said I wanted to keep JJ's family, and private life, out of it. I also told him that he isn't in the script. Stephen said that "family meant everything" to his grandfather with which I agreed heartily. He said it's my script, and my call as to who should be in it.
The relationship between father and son is a big one, Joyce noted, and I told him it played a large role in the screenplay. He added that even though he was named "Giorgio," his father liked to be called "George." I told him I knew that. He mentioned his half brother who died young --- 52, something I didn't know. "If you consider 52 young," he said and laughed.
Stephen Joyce gave me a bibliography of sources to read that would help me to come to know his grandfather better; "The Story of a Friendship," by Paul Leon, and others. He said that, of everyone, Harriet Shaw Weaver knew James Joyce better than anyone, and that Ellmann's biography is okay, actually better than widely considered, but Weaver was the most important person in his grandfather's life.
Frank Budgen, he added, was among his grandfather's closest friends along with Vitalo Svevo, an Italian writer JJ discovered. He also mentioned another close friend of JJ's, Valerie Larbaud, and asked me to not confuse Larbaud with another great French poet who has a similar name (Paul Valery?)
Joyce also said he considers the story of Beach's bookstore, "Shakespeare & Company," and Adrienne Monnier's bookstore, "La Maison des Amies de Livres," to be the most important story of our times, and one that needs to be told. That said, he suggested that there would be no Sylvia Beach, or Shakespeare & Co., without, he paused and I yelled out "James Joyce." He spoke of the magical day when Ms. Beach delivered the first copies of "Ulysses" to his grandfather--a book that was published on 2/2/22 -- JJ's 40th birthday --- we both repeated the date together, then laughed like two schoolchildren in a playground. It was a discovery that, yes, we were kindred spirits.
He spoke lovingly of all the great writers who passed through Beach's and Monnier's bookstores. He asked me if I knew about the closing of the Gotham Book Mart, in New York, and spoke of the loss as if he were talking about the death of an old friend.
And, when I mentioned Ernest Hemingway (a main character in the script), he told me how he pictured Hemingway carrying a drunk "Nonno" home from bars on his shoulders.
Joyce said he spent a good deal of time at The Ritz, a bar which was liberated in 1945, and which is also featured in my script.
As if reading from an envelope, he called out my address: "Walnut Creek, sounds like a nice place." I responded with a line from one of his grandfather's letters from Zurich -- "a delightful nullity." He said he knows America well, went to prep school in New York, and then to Harvard. When I asked what he studied there, he responded with: "What do you think I studied?" I told him English and Philosophy. No, no, he said, history and government. He has been married to the same woman for 50 years, Solange, and acknowledged that, while she has no degrees, she knows his grandfather's work well.
Among my favorite Stephen Joyce lines from the conversation: "America never liberated France. France liberated itself." He added, too, how his grandfather never went to America (which I knew), and mentioned a book written by "that woman in California" about his aunt.
He said he is well-aware of what is going on in America, and the differences between California and New York. I told him I heard all about the book, about Lucia, by that writer at Stanford, and find it offensive that she would take that angle on JJ. He objected to the word "angle" which I also used in a different context. Like his grandfather, he has great sensitivity to words.
I told him I think he inherited his grandfather's talent, and wit, and suggested he ought to write himself whereupon he went off on an extraordinary description of the sea which, frankly, so captivated me I was unable to take notes on it. He recalls my having written to him in the past, fondly.
He mentioned an interview which appeared in The New Yorker and said that he had a phone conversation with the fellow who wrote it, and wasn't even told the guy was taking notes; next thing he knew, the story was published in the form of an interview. I confessed that I, too, was taking notes, but he needn't worry about my writing about our talk because I wouldn't be able to read my own notes. He said not to worry, I could write about our talk, in contrast with his original request to keep the conversation confidential.
When he said, again, that he would neither "help nor hinder" my efforts to dramatize his grandfather's story, I asked him if he would write a letter stating that. There was silence on the other end. I told him that my producer might not believe that I got a call from him. After all, I was having a hard enough time believing it myself.I told him I need tangible proof of the conversation as would the producer in Ireland. He said that I shouldn't work with anyone who doesn't trust, or believe, me.
He asked me to send him a note with the Irish producer's phone number, and he would call him to tell him "exactly what he told me." I added, for clarification purposes, that without written permission, we couldn't use the extracts because it is copyrighted material and we could be sued. He replied by saying he could give permission, "and sue you anyway" at which he laughed, and so did I, thinking he's right. There's always reason to sue if one wants to.
Joyce was reluctant to give me his phone number. I completely understood, and asked if he has an e-mail address. He has no computer, or machines except for a FAX machine. I thought about asking for his FAX number, but didn't want to intrude. He doesn't even use a typewriter, he said, but writes by hand (which was his grandfather's custom, for many years). "The mail will do just fine," he said.
While he insists he's not a big fan of the Irish, he said he'd have no objection to an Irish production. He claimed that his grandfather was not Irish, but "a British subject of Irish origins," and told me not to tell that to any Irish producers cause it will rile them up. He asked if I knew the story of Joe Strick, and how the movie rendition of "Ulysses" was banned in Ireland for 40 years because of Irish censors.
He also mentioned how poorly the Irish treated his Nonno and Nanna. But, then, he added laughingly, and lovingly, that he and Solange were involved with the "Ulysses" centennial in Dublin, in 2004, and that he's been to Ireland. I recall saying it's time to let go of the Irish thing, and he agreed with me, adding he has a few Irish friends.
He asked me to send him a copy of my screenplay, and said Solange would read it first, then he would read it, and gave me his word that not one other living soul would see it. He also asked that I include the extracts from "Ulysses" that I wanted to use. He told me I was under "no obligation" to send it; "just don't say you're sending it, and make me run to check the mailbox every day looking for something that never comes." I told him I was scared to death to let him read the script, and he replied "You should be."
Among the last things Stephen Joyce told me was that he wants to be alive, and able to get around, so he could go to the movies himself and see "Shakespeare & Company" when it comes out.
He asked me to remember that he is still that 8 year old boy waiting for his Nonno to come home. More than anything, I don't want to disappoint him.
"Rest assured, you will be hearing from me again," he said. "I sure hope so," was all I could say, except to add what an honor, and pleasure, it was to hear from him. His response: "Don't say an honor; a pleasure, okay, but not an honor. Every time someone says they'll honor me, they stab me in the back."
There are things Joyce and I discussed that I won't include here. Indeed, there were times, during that conversation, that I felt as if I inadvertently entered a room, and caught someone standing naked. Only, this someone made no attempt to hide his nakedness, and invited me to witness his vulnerability with an openness one expects only to encounter in dreams.
At the risk of being audacious, I can honestly say there was an understanding, a bond, between us; one that exists between two people who have suffered deeply, and who share a great love for another human being---his grandfather, and my muse, James Joyce.
Stephen Joyce is misunderstood. He has been maligned by those who fail to recognize that his whole purpose, his raison d'etre, has been to prevent the perverse, crass, crude commercialization of his grandfather's work and life. He is a man with immense gifts of his own who has sacrificed his own future to preserve the dignity of the works, and life, of James Joyce. For this, his grandfather would be hugely grateful.
When it was time to hang up, I felt as if I were about to be roused from a trance. I waited to hear every syllable of the word "goodbye" as if it had come from the mouth of a ghost---not a passing ghost, mind you, but one with whom I had lived for 7 years.
On the morning of September 18, 2008, Stephen James Joyce, grandson, and only surviving relative, of James Joyce, called from France in response to a letter I sent to him some weeks before.
The letter I sent Joyce, at the request of an Irish independent producer, asked for permission to use excerpts from "Ulysses," and a few letters his grandfather wrote to his patron, Harriet Shaw Weaver, in my feature-length screenplay, "Shakespeare & Company," which tells of the censorship struggle to publish "Ulysses;" the Sylvia Beach story.
I was no more prepared for the nearly two hours of conversation which followed than I am to repeat, from memory, what transpires during a dream, and I had to pinch myself to believe that I was, in fact, awake.
What follows is from a collection of notes that were hastily scribbled on pieces of scrap paper on the desk. In the interest of protecting Mr. Joyce's privacy, I will not include anything that might be considered personal, but only that which has universal, historical value:
Among the first things Stephen Joyce told me is that he likes to be called "Stephen James Joyce," and that I'd better be "very careful with the facts," not unlike his grandfather, I thought, who went over the details of a biography someone was in the process of writing about him with a fine tooth comb.
Of his grandfather, ("JJ"), Stephen would say only that he is "not just a passing ghost" to him. And, he said, if he ever wants to talk to his grandfather, all he has to do is close his eyes.
He asked me to keep our conversation "strictly confidential," a request I was fullly prepared to honor until, in the closing minutes of the call, he gave me permission to write about it.
Joyce said that since my screenplay is about the bookstore "Shakespeare & Company," and not about "Ulysses," or his grandfather, per se, it was none of his business what I did, or who I quoted from. He said explicitly that he didn't want to get involved with the project one way or the other.
That said, he told me that the only edition he would authorize me to take passages from is the original 2/2/22 "Shakespeare & Company" version, published by Sylvia Beach, of which there were 1,000 copies printed worldwide. It was a pronouncement he made dramatically, almost defiantly, and one with which I was fully prepared to comply. He mumbled something about the Harry Ransom Center having a copy.
During more than 90 minutes we spent on the phone, Joyce said three times he would "neither help nor hinder me" in my efforts. He asked if I was familiar with that quote which he took from an American play. (When I checked later, I saw that, according to the New York Times, "When the biographer Deirdre Blair first approached Samuel Beckett in the late '70s, 'the first sentence he ever said to me was, 'So you're the one who's going to reveal me for the charlatan that I am,' Blair recalled. But he also told her, 'I will neither help nor hinder you,' adding, 'I'll introduce you to my friends; my enemies will find you soon enough.") The line makes perfect sentence to me, esp. in light of the fact that Stephen Joyce, later in the conversation, confided that Samuel Beckett was among his closest friends.
Also toward the beginning of the conversation, he asked who told me that the copyright for "Ulysses" would expire in a couple of years. He said that copyright depends upon where in the European Union the movie is made. He also insisted, as part of his statement that I have to be "very careful with facts," that Sylvia Beach never spent time in an internment camp (something that contradicts Beach's memoir, Wikipedia, and Harriet Weaver), and that her bookstore never closed, but only relocated.
He noted, too, that the German soldier, to whom my script refers, only appears in a book by Paul Leon, and is thus suspect. When I told him all my research came from Beach's own autobiography, he suggested she could have misrepresented things. He said I have "a problem" in that I have to sort through all the different stories and versions of events leading up to the publication of "Ulysses" in order to get to the "facts" when there is only one person who knew the true story, and that was his grandfather, James Joyce.
I stressed emphatically that my screenplay is not intended to be a documentary, and that I "fictionalized" his grandfather, as well as took liberties with what he calls "facts." I insisted that it is a dramatization, and not intended to be a literal representation of the events that led to the publication of "Ulysses." Later on in the conversation, he repeated the word "fact" in such a way that suggests he appreciated my thinking.
I told him that Samuel Beckett isn't in the script, and why: "Beckett deserves his own screenplay." I also mentioned that his Aunt Lucia only has a few lines, and why. I said I wanted to keep JJ's family, and private life, out of it. I also told him that he isn't in the script. Stephen said that "family meant everything" to his grandfather with which I agreed heartily. He said it's my script, and my call as to who should be in it.
The relationship between father and son is a big one, Joyce noted, and I told him it played a large role in the screenplay. He added that even though he was named "Giorgio," his father liked to be called "George." I told him I knew that. He mentioned his half brother who died young --- 52, something I didn't know. "If you consider 52 young," he said and laughed.
Stephen Joyce gave me a bibliography of sources to read that would help me to come to know his grandfather better; "The Story of a Friendship," by Paul Leon, and others. He said that, of everyone, Harriet Shaw Weaver knew James Joyce better than anyone, and that Ellmann's biography is okay, actually better than widely considered, but Weaver was the most important person in his grandfather's life.
Frank Budgen, he added, was among his grandfather's closest friends along with Vitalo Svevo, an Italian writer JJ discovered. He also mentioned another close friend of JJ's, Valerie Larbaud, and asked me to not confuse Larbaud with another great French poet who has a similar name (Paul Valery?)
Joyce also said he considers the story of Beach's bookstore, "Shakespeare & Company," and Adrienne Monnier's bookstore, "La Maison des Amies de Livres," to be the most important story of our times, and one that needs to be told. That said, he suggested that there would be no Sylvia Beach, or Shakespeare & Co., without, he paused and I yelled out "James Joyce." He spoke of the magical day when Ms. Beach delivered the first copies of "Ulysses" to his grandfather--a book that was published on 2/2/22 -- JJ's 40th birthday --- we both repeated the date together, then laughed like two schoolchildren in a playground. It was a discovery that, yes, we were kindred spirits.
He spoke lovingly of all the great writers who passed through Beach's and Monnier's bookstores. He asked me if I knew about the closing of the Gotham Book Mart, in New York, and spoke of the loss as if he were talking about the death of an old friend.
And, when I mentioned Ernest Hemingway (a main character in the script), he told me how he pictured Hemingway carrying a drunk "Nonno" home from bars on his shoulders.
Joyce said he spent a good deal of time at The Ritz, a bar which was liberated in 1945, and which is also featured in my script.
As if reading from an envelope, he called out my address: "Walnut Creek, sounds like a nice place." I responded with a line from one of his grandfather's letters from Zurich -- "a delightful nullity." He said he knows America well, went to prep school in New York, and then to Harvard. When I asked what he studied there, he responded with: "What do you think I studied?" I told him English and Philosophy. No, no, he said, history and government. He has been married to the same woman for 50 years, Solange, and acknowledged that, while she has no degrees, she knows his grandfather's work well.
Among my favorite Stephen Joyce lines from the conversation: "America never liberated France. France liberated itself." He added, too, how his grandfather never went to America (which I knew), and mentioned a book written by "that woman in California" about his aunt.
He said he is well-aware of what is going on in America, and the differences between California and New York. I told him I heard all about the book, about Lucia, by that writer at Stanford, and find it offensive that she would take that angle on JJ. He objected to the word "angle" which I also used in a different context. Like his grandfather, he has great sensitivity to words.
I told him I think he inherited his grandfather's talent, and wit, and suggested he ought to write himself whereupon he went off on an extraordinary description of the sea which, frankly, so captivated me I was unable to take notes on it. He recalls my having written to him in the past, fondly.
He mentioned an interview which appeared in The New Yorker and said that he had a phone conversation with the fellow who wrote it, and wasn't even told the guy was taking notes; next thing he knew, the story was published in the form of an interview. I confessed that I, too, was taking notes, but he needn't worry about my writing about our talk because I wouldn't be able to read my own notes. He said not to worry, I could write about our talk, in contrast with his original request to keep the conversation confidential.
When he said, again, that he would neither "help nor hinder" my efforts to dramatize his grandfather's story, I asked him if he would write a letter stating that. There was silence on the other end. I told him that my producer might not believe that I got a call from him. After all, I was having a hard enough time believing it myself.I told him I need tangible proof of the conversation as would the producer in Ireland. He said that I shouldn't work with anyone who doesn't trust, or believe, me.
He asked me to send him a note with the Irish producer's phone number, and he would call him to tell him "exactly what he told me." I added, for clarification purposes, that without written permission, we couldn't use the extracts because it is copyrighted material and we could be sued. He replied by saying he could give permission, "and sue you anyway" at which he laughed, and so did I, thinking he's right. There's always reason to sue if one wants to.
Joyce was reluctant to give me his phone number. I completely understood, and asked if he has an e-mail address. He has no computer, or machines except for a FAX machine. I thought about asking for his FAX number, but didn't want to intrude. He doesn't even use a typewriter, he said, but writes by hand (which was his grandfather's custom, for many years). "The mail will do just fine," he said.
While he insists he's not a big fan of the Irish, he said he'd have no objection to an Irish production. He claimed that his grandfather was not Irish, but "a British subject of Irish origins," and told me not to tell that to any Irish producers cause it will rile them up. He asked if I knew the story of Joe Strick, and how the movie rendition of "Ulysses" was banned in Ireland for 40 years because of Irish censors.
He also mentioned how poorly the Irish treated his Nonno and Nanna. But, then, he added laughingly, and lovingly, that he and Solange were involved with the "Ulysses" centennial in Dublin, in 2004, and that he's been to Ireland. I recall saying it's time to let go of the Irish thing, and he agreed with me, adding he has a few Irish friends.
He asked me to send him a copy of my screenplay, and said Solange would read it first, then he would read it, and gave me his word that not one other living soul would see it. He also asked that I include the extracts from "Ulysses" that I wanted to use. He told me I was under "no obligation" to send it; "just don't say you're sending it, and make me run to check the mailbox every day looking for something that never comes." I told him I was scared to death to let him read the script, and he replied "You should be."
Among the last things Stephen Joyce told me was that he wants to be alive, and able to get around, so he could go to the movies himself and see "Shakespeare & Company" when it comes out.
He asked me to remember that he is still that 8 year old boy waiting for his Nonno to come home. More than anything, I don't want to disappoint him.
"Rest assured, you will be hearing from me again," he said. "I sure hope so," was all I could say, except to add what an honor, and pleasure, it was to hear from him. His response: "Don't say an honor; a pleasure, okay, but not an honor. Every time someone says they'll honor me, they stab me in the back."
There are things Joyce and I discussed that I won't include here. Indeed, there were times, during that conversation, that I felt as if I inadvertently entered a room, and caught someone standing naked. Only, this someone made no attempt to hide his nakedness, and invited me to witness his vulnerability with an openness one expects only to encounter in dreams.
At the risk of being audacious, I can honestly say there was an understanding, a bond, between us; one that exists between two people who have suffered deeply, and who share a great love for another human being---his grandfather, and my muse, James Joyce.
Stephen Joyce is misunderstood. He has been maligned by those who fail to recognize that his whole purpose, his raison d'etre, has been to prevent the perverse, crass, crude commercialization of his grandfather's work and life. He is a man with immense gifts of his own who has sacrificed his own future to preserve the dignity of the works, and life, of James Joyce. For this, his grandfather would be hugely grateful.
When it was time to hang up, I felt as if I were about to be roused from a trance. I waited to hear every syllable of the word "goodbye" as if it had come from the mouth of a ghost---not a passing ghost, mind you, but one with whom I had lived for 7 years.
Friday, November 28, 2008
From Victor E. Frankl
"For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.
So, let us be alert--alert in a twofold sense:
Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of.
And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake."
(From Victor E. Frankl, M.D., "Man's Search for Meaning," 1947. Dr. Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist, was a survivor of four concentration camps including Auschwitz, and Dachau.)
So, let us be alert--alert in a twofold sense:
Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of.
And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake."
(From Victor E. Frankl, M.D., "Man's Search for Meaning," 1947. Dr. Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist, was a survivor of four concentration camps including Auschwitz, and Dachau.)
Thursday, November 27, 2008
What to Give Thanks for
There are times when we think we'll sink from
the weight of our solitude
when the tumult of traffic
the cacophony of fire engines racing down
damp, dark streets poises like a stray
bullet over the drone of traffic
it is at that hour when, tucked neatly into
a goose down dream, I can finally hear myself think
that I give thanks for having a roof over my head,
and just enough heat to remind me how cold it is on the sidewalk
below, and how lucky I am not to have to sleep there.
I am thankful that when I open the refrigerator door, and peek inside, there is food.
How easy it is to forget what life is like without those simple basics.
Thanksgiving is a day we are reminded not only how fortunate we are,
but of those for whom a warm bed, and a hot meal are elusive wishes.
the weight of our solitude
when the tumult of traffic
the cacophony of fire engines racing down
damp, dark streets poises like a stray
bullet over the drone of traffic
it is at that hour when, tucked neatly into
a goose down dream, I can finally hear myself think
that I give thanks for having a roof over my head,
and just enough heat to remind me how cold it is on the sidewalk
below, and how lucky I am not to have to sleep there.
I am thankful that when I open the refrigerator door, and peek inside, there is food.
How easy it is to forget what life is like without those simple basics.
Thanksgiving is a day we are reminded not only how fortunate we are,
but of those for whom a warm bed, and a hot meal are elusive wishes.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Happy Birthday Jimi Hendrix
Remembering Jimi Hendrix who would have turned 66 years old on Thanksgiving day.
Jimi was born John Allen Hendrix on November 27, 1942 in Seattle, Washington. Widely believed to be one of the great musicians, and performers, of his time, Hendrix was a poet, a visionary, one of a kind; the Jack of Hearts.
As a teenager, in the late 1960's, I routinely ran away from home, and high school, to a little town in upstate New York which was soon to become legendary. It was in Woodstock that I ran into Jimi in The Elephant, a club I liked to frequent. He entered the room in the company of a couple of suits who, undoubtedly, represented him. It was magical to watch him detach from them, and detach so well even gravity couldn't hold him here.
Jimi Hendrix spent 27 years on a planet that wasn't quite ready for him yet. We're ready for you now, Jimi. Keep the fire burning on this rainy day, dream away.
Jimi was born John Allen Hendrix on November 27, 1942 in Seattle, Washington. Widely believed to be one of the great musicians, and performers, of his time, Hendrix was a poet, a visionary, one of a kind; the Jack of Hearts.
As a teenager, in the late 1960's, I routinely ran away from home, and high school, to a little town in upstate New York which was soon to become legendary. It was in Woodstock that I ran into Jimi in The Elephant, a club I liked to frequent. He entered the room in the company of a couple of suits who, undoubtedly, represented him. It was magical to watch him detach from them, and detach so well even gravity couldn't hold him here.
Jimi Hendrix spent 27 years on a planet that wasn't quite ready for him yet. We're ready for you now, Jimi. Keep the fire burning on this rainy day, dream away.
Food for Thought from Michael Winship
Michael Pollan's Food for Thought
By Michael Winship
The writer and activist Michael Pollan has no interest in becoming Barack Obama's Secretary of Agriculture, thank you very much, even though there are a lot of people who think he'd be perfect for the job.
Pollan disagrees. Laughing, he told my colleague Bill Moyers on the latest edition of public television's Bill Moyers Journal," I have an understanding of my strengths and limitations...I don't want this job," then turned serious as he added, "What Obama needs to do, if he indeed wants to make change in this area-- and that isn't clear yet that he does, at least in his first term -- I think we need a food policy czar in the White House because the challenge is not just what we do with agriculture, it's connecting the dots between agriculture and public health, between agriculture and energy and climate change, agriculture and education."
There's been an Internet-fueled citizen's movement to draft Pollan for the cabinet post. As the author of countless articles and such books as The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, his thorough reporting, literally getting his hands dirty working on American farms and writing about it, has made him one of our country's greatest experts on how and what we eat.
In an open letter to whoever would become our next president -- or "Farmer in Chief," as he put it in the October 12th New York Times Magazine -- Pollan wrote, "It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food. Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration - the last time high food prices http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/f/food_prices/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> presented a serious political peril...
"But with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact - so easy to overlook these past few years - that the health of a nation's food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention."
In 2007, before the financial meltdown had even struck, some 32 million Americans -- at least one in nine households -- had trouble putting enough food on the table. Now, according to the Wall Street Journal, food banks across the country are struggling to meet a surge of people uncertain about their next meal. They've seen a 20% increase in demand -- middle class families, they say, account for most of the growth.
And the day before our annual Thanksgiving binge, the Washington Post reported, "The number of Americans on food stamps is poised to exceed 30 million for the first time this month, surpassing the historic high set in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Hurricane+Katrina?tid=informline>
"Contrast this with the big bucks being shelled out in the recent $307 billion farm bill, much of it going to massive agribusinesses -- "A welfare program," as Time Magazine described it, "for the megafarms that use the most fuel, water, and pesticides; emit the most greenhouse gases; grow the most fattening crops; hire the most illegals and depopulate rural America."
In a press conference on Tuesday, President-elect Obama cited a report released this week by the Government Accountability Office: "From 2003 to 2006, millionaire farmers received $49 million in crop subsidies even though they were earning more than the $2.5 million cutoff to qualify for such subsidies, " he said. "If this is true, it is a prime example of the kind of waste I intend to end as president."
All well and good, but as a senator, Barack Obama supported that monster farm bill (although he was absent for the actual roll call). He also supported the production of ethanol (a politically expedient move when the Iowa Democratic caucuses were at stake), even though using corn for fuel rather than food raises the price of grain and results in huge emissions of greenhouse gases.
Thus, where food and agriculture are concerned, connecting the dots, as Michael Pollan told Bill Moyers, is a tortuous journey involving internecine politics, international diplomacy, big business, every branch of government and every issue from morbid obesity to homeland security.
Pollan is hopeful that Obama will take advantage of his oratorical skills and bully pulpit to set an example for the American people, perhaps even suggesting "meatless Mondays" for the country - which according to Pollan would have the ecological effect of taking 30-40 million cars off the road for a year - and encouraging home gardening and eating locally; supporting the small farmers who grow fresh food nearby - without chemicals or subsidies.
"I think we have to figure out different solutions in different places, and it's not all or nothing," he said. "We need to let a thousand flowers bloom. We need to try many things in many places, and figure out what works..."Vote with your fork, for a different kind of food. Go to the farmer's market. Get out of the supermarket... Plant a garden.... Declare your independence from the culture of fast food."
Regardless of who Obama chooses as his Ag Secretary, it will be interesting to see if the new president sees fit to make Pollan an unofficial advisor on food issues, an influential voice in his - you should excuse the expression - kitchen cabinet.
Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program
Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS.Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.
By Michael Winship
The writer and activist Michael Pollan has no interest in becoming Barack Obama's Secretary of Agriculture, thank you very much, even though there are a lot of people who think he'd be perfect for the job.
Pollan disagrees. Laughing, he told my colleague Bill Moyers on the latest edition of public television's Bill Moyers Journal," I have an understanding of my strengths and limitations...I don't want this job," then turned serious as he added, "What Obama needs to do, if he indeed wants to make change in this area-- and that isn't clear yet that he does, at least in his first term -- I think we need a food policy czar in the White House because the challenge is not just what we do with agriculture, it's connecting the dots between agriculture and public health, between agriculture and energy and climate change, agriculture and education."
There's been an Internet-fueled citizen's movement to draft Pollan for the cabinet post. As the author of countless articles and such books as The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, his thorough reporting, literally getting his hands dirty working on American farms and writing about it, has made him one of our country's greatest experts on how and what we eat.
In an open letter to whoever would become our next president -- or "Farmer in Chief," as he put it in the October 12th New York Times Magazine -- Pollan wrote, "It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food. Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration - the last time high food prices http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/f/food_prices/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier> presented a serious political peril...
"But with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact - so easy to overlook these past few years - that the health of a nation's food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention."
In 2007, before the financial meltdown had even struck, some 32 million Americans -- at least one in nine households -- had trouble putting enough food on the table. Now, according to the Wall Street Journal, food banks across the country are struggling to meet a surge of people uncertain about their next meal. They've seen a 20% increase in demand -- middle class families, they say, account for most of the growth.
And the day before our annual Thanksgiving binge, the Washington Post reported, "The number of Americans on food stamps is poised to exceed 30 million for the first time this month, surpassing the historic high set in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Hurricane+Katrina?tid=informline>
"Contrast this with the big bucks being shelled out in the recent $307 billion farm bill, much of it going to massive agribusinesses -- "A welfare program," as Time Magazine described it, "for the megafarms that use the most fuel, water, and pesticides; emit the most greenhouse gases; grow the most fattening crops; hire the most illegals and depopulate rural America."
In a press conference on Tuesday, President-elect Obama cited a report released this week by the Government Accountability Office: "From 2003 to 2006, millionaire farmers received $49 million in crop subsidies even though they were earning more than the $2.5 million cutoff to qualify for such subsidies, " he said. "If this is true, it is a prime example of the kind of waste I intend to end as president."
All well and good, but as a senator, Barack Obama supported that monster farm bill (although he was absent for the actual roll call). He also supported the production of ethanol (a politically expedient move when the Iowa Democratic caucuses were at stake), even though using corn for fuel rather than food raises the price of grain and results in huge emissions of greenhouse gases.
Thus, where food and agriculture are concerned, connecting the dots, as Michael Pollan told Bill Moyers, is a tortuous journey involving internecine politics, international diplomacy, big business, every branch of government and every issue from morbid obesity to homeland security.
Pollan is hopeful that Obama will take advantage of his oratorical skills and bully pulpit to set an example for the American people, perhaps even suggesting "meatless Mondays" for the country - which according to Pollan would have the ecological effect of taking 30-40 million cars off the road for a year - and encouraging home gardening and eating locally; supporting the small farmers who grow fresh food nearby - without chemicals or subsidies.
"I think we have to figure out different solutions in different places, and it's not all or nothing," he said. "We need to let a thousand flowers bloom. We need to try many things in many places, and figure out what works..."Vote with your fork, for a different kind of food. Go to the farmer's market. Get out of the supermarket... Plant a garden.... Declare your independence from the culture of fast food."
Regardless of who Obama chooses as his Ag Secretary, it will be interesting to see if the new president sees fit to make Pollan an unofficial advisor on food issues, an influential voice in his - you should excuse the expression - kitchen cabinet.
Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program
Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS.Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Fearful of Hillary Clinton?
Some in the Arab world are reportedly fearful of having Hillary Clinton as our next secretary of state. There is concern that the New York senator is hawkish, and that her pro-Israeli posturing underlies a deeper bias which will, in the end, prevail.
As has been suggested, Senator Clinton, at one time, fully supported the notion of an independent Palestinian state and at a time when that position was controversial. (WaPo) There is every reason to think that she will do so again. After all, many in Israel now support an independent Palestinian state.
Besides, since when does the secretary of state set the foreign policy agenda? Condoleezza Rice surely doesn't, and neither did Colin Powell. It's the president who charts the course we take, and my sense is that Obama may well be the first president, in more than a generation, who is open to critical thinking, and reviewing past policy, where the Middle East is concerned.
There are some who point to the President-elect's appearance before AIPAC, and pledge of support for Israel, as a cause for concern. Candidates often have to say and do things, during their candidacy, which they know will be amended once they're elected. Remember George H.W. Bush's pledge: "Read my lips; no new taxes." Rest assured that Bush pere knew he was going to have to recant that one.
Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding secretary of state, and not for all the cynical reasons that many suggest like, for instance, that she might be a strong contender against Obama in 2012. Clinton will be great at the helm of the State Department because she's a great schmoozer, and because she has the right balance of firmness and finesse.
Anyone who expresses concern that she is more of a hawk than the incoming commander-in-chief hasn't read the fine print. Obama has been transparent, from the beginning, that just because he opposed the Iraq war doesn't mean he opposes war. He's been clear about redeploying troops, not withdrawing them, and has made Afghanistan and Pakistan his target. He even said, recently, that he plans to hunt down and kill bin Laden. If that isn't hawkish rhetoric, what is?
If there is any good news to be found in recent economic events, it is that the crisis in the financial markets will, by necessity, force a seismic shift in focus from foreign to domestic policy.
Having said that, importantly, any difference between Obama and Bush, or McCain, when it comes to foreign policy resides in that Obama is not an ideologue; he's a pragmatist. Moreover, for Obama, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, whereas for the last eight years, there's only been no light, and more tunnel.
That said, while there may be a light at the end of it, we're still in the tunnel. And, if nothing else, the past few months have shown us we have nothing to fear except greed itself.
Regardless of who his secretary of state is, it is essentially Obama who will steer us for at least the next four years. It is up to those of us who voted for him to keep him on task to end not just the war in Iraq, but to put an expiration date on the so-called "war on terror," so we can finally get our economy, and country, back on track again.
Hillary may be on the steering committee, but Obama will be at the wheel.
As has been suggested, Senator Clinton, at one time, fully supported the notion of an independent Palestinian state and at a time when that position was controversial. (WaPo) There is every reason to think that she will do so again. After all, many in Israel now support an independent Palestinian state.
Besides, since when does the secretary of state set the foreign policy agenda? Condoleezza Rice surely doesn't, and neither did Colin Powell. It's the president who charts the course we take, and my sense is that Obama may well be the first president, in more than a generation, who is open to critical thinking, and reviewing past policy, where the Middle East is concerned.
There are some who point to the President-elect's appearance before AIPAC, and pledge of support for Israel, as a cause for concern. Candidates often have to say and do things, during their candidacy, which they know will be amended once they're elected. Remember George H.W. Bush's pledge: "Read my lips; no new taxes." Rest assured that Bush pere knew he was going to have to recant that one.
Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding secretary of state, and not for all the cynical reasons that many suggest like, for instance, that she might be a strong contender against Obama in 2012. Clinton will be great at the helm of the State Department because she's a great schmoozer, and because she has the right balance of firmness and finesse.
Anyone who expresses concern that she is more of a hawk than the incoming commander-in-chief hasn't read the fine print. Obama has been transparent, from the beginning, that just because he opposed the Iraq war doesn't mean he opposes war. He's been clear about redeploying troops, not withdrawing them, and has made Afghanistan and Pakistan his target. He even said, recently, that he plans to hunt down and kill bin Laden. If that isn't hawkish rhetoric, what is?
If there is any good news to be found in recent economic events, it is that the crisis in the financial markets will, by necessity, force a seismic shift in focus from foreign to domestic policy.
Having said that, importantly, any difference between Obama and Bush, or McCain, when it comes to foreign policy resides in that Obama is not an ideologue; he's a pragmatist. Moreover, for Obama, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, whereas for the last eight years, there's only been no light, and more tunnel.
That said, while there may be a light at the end of it, we're still in the tunnel. And, if nothing else, the past few months have shown us we have nothing to fear except greed itself.
Regardless of who his secretary of state is, it is essentially Obama who will steer us for at least the next four years. It is up to those of us who voted for him to keep him on task to end not just the war in Iraq, but to put an expiration date on the so-called "war on terror," so we can finally get our economy, and country, back on track again.
Hillary may be on the steering committee, but Obama will be at the wheel.
Feds weighing plan...
to rescue Citigroup, according to today's headlines. When will they weigh a plan to rescue me?
Friday, November 21, 2008
A Bailout for Gonzales?
Everybody balks at the "rescue" of the stock market, savings and loans, and the prospect of bailing out the big three automakers.
But, where is the grumbling when it comes to the Justice Department's approval of using taxpayer funds to rescue some of our highest elected officials from charges of criminal misconduct?
Take, for example, former attorney-general Alberto Gonzales. The Justice Department recently approved his request for a private attorney to defend him against charges that he was up to his proverbial armpits in discriminatory department hiring practices, as well as in partisan firing of nine U.S. attorneys, at twice the cost to taxpayers.
The Department of Justice has staff attorneys in their civil division who are more than able to defend Mr. Gonzales and, while a department civil attorney typically bills at $100 an hour, taxpayers will dole out $200 an hour, with a maximum of $24,000 a month, in compensation so that the former attorney general can have access to private counsel.
The decision to provide this legal bailout for one of its own has been called "exceptional" by a former department higher-up, and is just one of the many perks awarded, at taxpayer expense, to what history may someday regard as among the perps of the most egregious government corruption this country has yet seen.
Gonzales, you'll recall, stepped down from his position as the head of Justice last year after his involvement in the hiring scandal which consisted of his attempt to ensure that only those with Republican party pedigrees could join their ranks, as well as his reputed participation in the notorious terminaton of nine US attorneys who refused to engage in spurious, and partisan, pre-election voter fraud prosecutions.
George W. Bush's pick for attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, will indeed need top tier legal advisors to bail him out of this affair, but there may be yet another reason he wants to retain private law firms, at a cost of 200% more to taxpayers, and that is because he's also facing indictment, along with his former boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, on charges of abuse, and neglect, of prisoners in a federal detention center in southern Texas.
On Wednesday, an arraignment was scheduled for later this week by a Texas judge which would require both Vice President Dick Cheney and the former attorney general to appear in court, but rather than being served with warrants, like you and I would be were we to be arraigned on criminal charges, the vice president and his former attorney-general are instead being issued only a summons in light of their so-called public service.
And, just what are the allegations, specifically, about Mr. Cheney's "public service" with respect to this case?
According to The Associated Press, a grand jury is looking into abuse of power, and conflict of interest, on the vice president's part, in using his influence over Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, under whose umbrella federal prisons fall, to increase the bottom line for the Vanguard Group, in which he has immense interest, and which has holdings in companies that work with federal prisons. In short, Mr. Cheney stands to gain as much from a rise in the rate of incarcerees as he, and Halliburton, do in extending the war in Iraq.
Prisons are hugely profitable these days which may explain why the U.S. now has the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the industrialized world with fully 1 in every 10 Americans behind bars.
It should come as no more of a surprise to anyone that Dick Cheney is among those making lots of money off the prison-industrial complex any more than it should come as a surprise that, on his watch, the War Crimes Act of 1994 was overturned, and replaced by the Military Commisssion Act of 2006 which grants immunity to any member of his administration for misdeeds in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib or, for that matter, federal detention centers anywhere in the U.S.
But, let's get back to Alberto Gonzales. What is his role in this affair? He is alleged to have obstructed justice by preventing an inquiry into prisoner abuse at federal prisons in which Mr. Cheney, and his Vanguard Group, have holdings.
So, in a nutshell, our tax dollars are going into paying for private attorneys to defend the former top law enforcement official in the country from criminal charges including breaking the law by discriminatory hiring practices, and attempting to cover-up neglect, and abuse, of federal prisoners in detention centers effectively owned by the vice president of the United States.
The indictment charges both Cheney and Gonzales with "organized criminal activity;" remember when they used to call it government?
We're all entitled to a defense, and due process, in our system of justice, even those who have denied a defense, and due process, to others.
The question here is whether taxpayers should foot the bill to the tune of $24,000 a month, or $288,000. Granted, that's not nearly as egregious a figure as $700 billion in bailout money to Fanny and Freddy Mac, other banks, and the wash n' wear wolves of Wall Street, nor is it even close to the $25 billion proposed for the big 3 automakers. But, if you or I broke the law, would we expect tax dollars to go toward bailing us out? That Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Gonzales, and all the rest of these K Street mobsters will get to retire at taxpayer expense is an outrage.
It is adding insult to injury for taxpayers to rescue Mr. Gonzales. At the very least, he should be denied representation by Justice Department civil attorneys, and should be made to pay his own legal bills.
But, where is the grumbling when it comes to the Justice Department's approval of using taxpayer funds to rescue some of our highest elected officials from charges of criminal misconduct?
Take, for example, former attorney-general Alberto Gonzales. The Justice Department recently approved his request for a private attorney to defend him against charges that he was up to his proverbial armpits in discriminatory department hiring practices, as well as in partisan firing of nine U.S. attorneys, at twice the cost to taxpayers.
The Department of Justice has staff attorneys in their civil division who are more than able to defend Mr. Gonzales and, while a department civil attorney typically bills at $100 an hour, taxpayers will dole out $200 an hour, with a maximum of $24,000 a month, in compensation so that the former attorney general can have access to private counsel.
The decision to provide this legal bailout for one of its own has been called "exceptional" by a former department higher-up, and is just one of the many perks awarded, at taxpayer expense, to what history may someday regard as among the perps of the most egregious government corruption this country has yet seen.
Gonzales, you'll recall, stepped down from his position as the head of Justice last year after his involvement in the hiring scandal which consisted of his attempt to ensure that only those with Republican party pedigrees could join their ranks, as well as his reputed participation in the notorious terminaton of nine US attorneys who refused to engage in spurious, and partisan, pre-election voter fraud prosecutions.
George W. Bush's pick for attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, will indeed need top tier legal advisors to bail him out of this affair, but there may be yet another reason he wants to retain private law firms, at a cost of 200% more to taxpayers, and that is because he's also facing indictment, along with his former boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, on charges of abuse, and neglect, of prisoners in a federal detention center in southern Texas.
On Wednesday, an arraignment was scheduled for later this week by a Texas judge which would require both Vice President Dick Cheney and the former attorney general to appear in court, but rather than being served with warrants, like you and I would be were we to be arraigned on criminal charges, the vice president and his former attorney-general are instead being issued only a summons in light of their so-called public service.
And, just what are the allegations, specifically, about Mr. Cheney's "public service" with respect to this case?
According to The Associated Press, a grand jury is looking into abuse of power, and conflict of interest, on the vice president's part, in using his influence over Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, under whose umbrella federal prisons fall, to increase the bottom line for the Vanguard Group, in which he has immense interest, and which has holdings in companies that work with federal prisons. In short, Mr. Cheney stands to gain as much from a rise in the rate of incarcerees as he, and Halliburton, do in extending the war in Iraq.
Prisons are hugely profitable these days which may explain why the U.S. now has the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the industrialized world with fully 1 in every 10 Americans behind bars.
It should come as no more of a surprise to anyone that Dick Cheney is among those making lots of money off the prison-industrial complex any more than it should come as a surprise that, on his watch, the War Crimes Act of 1994 was overturned, and replaced by the Military Commisssion Act of 2006 which grants immunity to any member of his administration for misdeeds in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib or, for that matter, federal detention centers anywhere in the U.S.
But, let's get back to Alberto Gonzales. What is his role in this affair? He is alleged to have obstructed justice by preventing an inquiry into prisoner abuse at federal prisons in which Mr. Cheney, and his Vanguard Group, have holdings.
So, in a nutshell, our tax dollars are going into paying for private attorneys to defend the former top law enforcement official in the country from criminal charges including breaking the law by discriminatory hiring practices, and attempting to cover-up neglect, and abuse, of federal prisoners in detention centers effectively owned by the vice president of the United States.
The indictment charges both Cheney and Gonzales with "organized criminal activity;" remember when they used to call it government?
We're all entitled to a defense, and due process, in our system of justice, even those who have denied a defense, and due process, to others.
The question here is whether taxpayers should foot the bill to the tune of $24,000 a month, or $288,000. Granted, that's not nearly as egregious a figure as $700 billion in bailout money to Fanny and Freddy Mac, other banks, and the wash n' wear wolves of Wall Street, nor is it even close to the $25 billion proposed for the big 3 automakers. But, if you or I broke the law, would we expect tax dollars to go toward bailing us out? That Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Gonzales, and all the rest of these K Street mobsters will get to retire at taxpayer expense is an outrage.
It is adding insult to injury for taxpayers to rescue Mr. Gonzales. At the very least, he should be denied representation by Justice Department civil attorneys, and should be made to pay his own legal bills.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Come now, you gentlemen...
"Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time,and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the bread-stuffs of the country.
When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank.
You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin!
Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin!
You are a den of vipers and thieves.
I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out.”
Andrew Jackson
the seventh President of the United States, addressing a delegate of bankers in 1832
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Mike Farrell: Letter to the Editor
The below comes courtesy of Mike Farrell, President of Death Penalty Focus, and will appear in the 11/23 issue of The Los Angeles Times:
October 18, 2008
Letter to the Editor, Los Angeles Times
The torture experienced by Joe Iberri (Dead Man Waiting, L.A. Times, 11/17/08) is the ultimate example of the utter uselessness of capital punishment. For this man to go through the past 27 years in excruciating pain, waiting for the law to deliver the “justice” it promised him, is inexcusable in a civilized society.
If the perpetrator of this vile crime had been sentenced 27 years ago to spend the rest of his life in prison without any possibility of parole, Mr. Iberri could have gone on with his own life. Instead, he has spent it obsessing over the inch-by-inch progress of Mr. Edwards’ journey through the labyrinthine system the U. S. Supreme Court has created in an attempt to make state killing meet Constitutional muster.
Millions of taxpayer dollars, part of which could have been used to help Mr. Iberri receive counseling to deal with his grief, have been wasted on a system the state insists will keep us safe and bring “closure” to the suffering and loss Mr. Iberri has experienced. As these 27 years have proven, society is safe with Mr. Edwards locked away, and, as Mr. Iberri himself says, there is no such thing as “closure” when one has lost a loved one to violence.
All our hearts go out to Mr. Iberri. The false promises made by apologists for a hideously expensive, dysfunctional, ineffective killing system shame us all while adding insult to his grievous injury.
Sincerely,
Mike Farrell
President, Death Penalty Focus
October 18, 2008
Letter to the Editor, Los Angeles Times
The torture experienced by Joe Iberri (Dead Man Waiting, L.A. Times, 11/17/08) is the ultimate example of the utter uselessness of capital punishment. For this man to go through the past 27 years in excruciating pain, waiting for the law to deliver the “justice” it promised him, is inexcusable in a civilized society.
If the perpetrator of this vile crime had been sentenced 27 years ago to spend the rest of his life in prison without any possibility of parole, Mr. Iberri could have gone on with his own life. Instead, he has spent it obsessing over the inch-by-inch progress of Mr. Edwards’ journey through the labyrinthine system the U. S. Supreme Court has created in an attempt to make state killing meet Constitutional muster.
Millions of taxpayer dollars, part of which could have been used to help Mr. Iberri receive counseling to deal with his grief, have been wasted on a system the state insists will keep us safe and bring “closure” to the suffering and loss Mr. Iberri has experienced. As these 27 years have proven, society is safe with Mr. Edwards locked away, and, as Mr. Iberri himself says, there is no such thing as “closure” when one has lost a loved one to violence.
All our hearts go out to Mr. Iberri. The false promises made by apologists for a hideously expensive, dysfunctional, ineffective killing system shame us all while adding insult to his grievous injury.
Sincerely,
Mike Farrell
President, Death Penalty Focus
"This Just In..." from Michael Winship
Courtesy of Bill Moyers Journal and Public Affairs Television:
This Just In from Middle Earth
By Michael Winship
QUEENSTOWN, New Zealand –
You might think it hard to think about politics when you’re in a place as extraordinary as this on New Zealand’s South Island.
The landscape fills the eye with glacial and volcanic lakes, valleys and mountains so breathtaking and eerie in their beauty they inspired director Peter Jackson’s vision of mythic Middle Earth when he adapted J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings into three epic motion pictures.
In the cab on the way from the airport the driver immediately announced he had worked four days as an extra on the second film of the trilogy – “The Two Towers.” He was proud to say he played a refugee from Rohan escaping the evil Orcs.
At least I think that’s what he said. The New Zealand accent plays tricks with vowels. On Saturday, it took me a while to figure out what a tour bus driver meant when she said the only mammal indigenous to the country was the “bit.” I finally realized she was talking about bats.
Then she kept insisting we’d soon be riding on a cruise missile. Visions of hurling to earth astride a bomb a la Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove danced through my head until I understood she was saying “cruise vessel” – the three-masted ship we were taking on a voyage around Milford Sound.
Actually, she and the taxi driver were just about the only people I met here who opened the conversation without talking about Barack Obama’s victory, as well as our congressional elections.
This trip began in Auckland, New Zealand, on the North Island, where I was attending an international conference of writers, all of whom were eager to discuss recent events in the States.
“This is your Mandela moment,” South African Kwazi Diamond declared to me the first day. “This was the world’s election.”And so it was, but once again it’s more than a little embarrassing to realize yet again how little we Americans know about the electoral politics of other nations compared to what they know about ours.
In fact, New Zealand had its own national election just four days after America’s – literally as we were flying here. Hands, please, if you knew that. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t until I arrived.
They had a turnout here of 78.69% of enrolled voters – and were disappointed. It’s the second lowest voting rate in more than 20 years.
We, on the other hand, were reasonably delighted with a 62% turnout – only about four million more than 2004, despite predictions of a massive bump this year in the number of those casting ballots.
Like President-Elect Obama, New Zealand’s new leader, John Key, is 47 years old and having to hit the ground running, facing a major economic crisis, his country already in recession. But unlike Obama, Key is taking office almost immediately and heading straightaway for Peru, to attend a meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Forum (APEC).
What’s also different – perhaps appropriate in a land that’s upside down from us and where water spirals down the drain in a different direction – is that the political shift here is the opposite of that back home in the States. John Key is a conservative replacing a liberal – the Labour Party’s left-leaning Prime Minister Helen Clark, who served in office for nine years.
Key has formed a coalition government that he characterizes as “center-right,” including representation from the free market party known as ACT and the Maori Party that represents the country’s indigenous people – about 15% of the nation’s 4.3 million population. Traditionally, the Maori – among New Zealand’s poorest and most disadvantaged – have aligned with Labour.
Coincidentally, despite the Obama win, the idea that the United States also is a “center-right” country and should so be ruled is being pushed in America by such conservative commentators as Pat Buchanan, Charles Krauthammer, and Joe Scarborough.
They’ve been seconded by former Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd who advised Obama to "govern from the center, where the vast majority of the country is," while Hillary Clinton's adviser Mark Penn wrote in the Financial Times: "Stick to Centrism."
Newsweek agreed, declaring in a headline a couple of weeks ago: "America remains a center-right nation -- a fact that a President Obama would forget at his peril.”
But on the other side, the argument is made that Barack Obama's election marks a revival of the progressive tradition stretching back to the New Deal and beyond – to Lincoln's vision of a strong national government and a wider, more generous embrace of just who constitutes, "We, the people."
The one thing that’s clear in both America and New Zealand is that Obama and his team were right – these were elections about change, about throwing the long-seated rascals out, period – whether they were conservative or liberal in their outlook.
Quite simply, the time had come.
In the elections’ wake, Tapu Misa, a newspaper columnist in the New Zealand Herald, wisely chose to quote Alfred, Lord Tennyson: “The old order changeth, yielding place to new, And God fulfills himself in many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world.”
Whether change will lead to improvement and advancement, or simply signal motion without action, is now the formidable challenge faced by both our nations.
Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs programBill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS.Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.
This Just In from Middle Earth
By Michael Winship
QUEENSTOWN, New Zealand –
You might think it hard to think about politics when you’re in a place as extraordinary as this on New Zealand’s South Island.
The landscape fills the eye with glacial and volcanic lakes, valleys and mountains so breathtaking and eerie in their beauty they inspired director Peter Jackson’s vision of mythic Middle Earth when he adapted J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings into three epic motion pictures.
In the cab on the way from the airport the driver immediately announced he had worked four days as an extra on the second film of the trilogy – “The Two Towers.” He was proud to say he played a refugee from Rohan escaping the evil Orcs.
At least I think that’s what he said. The New Zealand accent plays tricks with vowels. On Saturday, it took me a while to figure out what a tour bus driver meant when she said the only mammal indigenous to the country was the “bit.” I finally realized she was talking about bats.
Then she kept insisting we’d soon be riding on a cruise missile. Visions of hurling to earth astride a bomb a la Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove danced through my head until I understood she was saying “cruise vessel” – the three-masted ship we were taking on a voyage around Milford Sound.
Actually, she and the taxi driver were just about the only people I met here who opened the conversation without talking about Barack Obama’s victory, as well as our congressional elections.
This trip began in Auckland, New Zealand, on the North Island, where I was attending an international conference of writers, all of whom were eager to discuss recent events in the States.
“This is your Mandela moment,” South African Kwazi Diamond declared to me the first day. “This was the world’s election.”And so it was, but once again it’s more than a little embarrassing to realize yet again how little we Americans know about the electoral politics of other nations compared to what they know about ours.
In fact, New Zealand had its own national election just four days after America’s – literally as we were flying here. Hands, please, if you knew that. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t until I arrived.
They had a turnout here of 78.69% of enrolled voters – and were disappointed. It’s the second lowest voting rate in more than 20 years.
We, on the other hand, were reasonably delighted with a 62% turnout – only about four million more than 2004, despite predictions of a massive bump this year in the number of those casting ballots.
Like President-Elect Obama, New Zealand’s new leader, John Key, is 47 years old and having to hit the ground running, facing a major economic crisis, his country already in recession. But unlike Obama, Key is taking office almost immediately and heading straightaway for Peru, to attend a meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Forum (APEC).
What’s also different – perhaps appropriate in a land that’s upside down from us and where water spirals down the drain in a different direction – is that the political shift here is the opposite of that back home in the States. John Key is a conservative replacing a liberal – the Labour Party’s left-leaning Prime Minister Helen Clark, who served in office for nine years.
Key has formed a coalition government that he characterizes as “center-right,” including representation from the free market party known as ACT and the Maori Party that represents the country’s indigenous people – about 15% of the nation’s 4.3 million population. Traditionally, the Maori – among New Zealand’s poorest and most disadvantaged – have aligned with Labour.
Coincidentally, despite the Obama win, the idea that the United States also is a “center-right” country and should so be ruled is being pushed in America by such conservative commentators as Pat Buchanan, Charles Krauthammer, and Joe Scarborough.
They’ve been seconded by former Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd who advised Obama to "govern from the center, where the vast majority of the country is," while Hillary Clinton's adviser Mark Penn wrote in the Financial Times: "Stick to Centrism."
Newsweek agreed, declaring in a headline a couple of weeks ago: "America remains a center-right nation -- a fact that a President Obama would forget at his peril.”
But on the other side, the argument is made that Barack Obama's election marks a revival of the progressive tradition stretching back to the New Deal and beyond – to Lincoln's vision of a strong national government and a wider, more generous embrace of just who constitutes, "We, the people."
The one thing that’s clear in both America and New Zealand is that Obama and his team were right – these were elections about change, about throwing the long-seated rascals out, period – whether they were conservative or liberal in their outlook.
Quite simply, the time had come.
In the elections’ wake, Tapu Misa, a newspaper columnist in the New Zealand Herald, wisely chose to quote Alfred, Lord Tennyson: “The old order changeth, yielding place to new, And God fulfills himself in many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world.”
Whether change will lead to improvement and advancement, or simply signal motion without action, is now the formidable challenge faced by both our nations.
Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs programBill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS.Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.
Monday, November 17, 2008
More Than A Prison
Last night, in his first interview since being elected, Barack Obama told "60 Minutes" that among his top priorities is to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
But, Guantanamo Bay is not just a prison, it's a state of mind, and a legal limbo in which hundreds have been trapped since 2002.
And, as what the President-elect calls "part and parcel of an effort to restore America's moral stature in the world," it's not enough to simply relocate the 250 currently housed at Gitmo to high security prisons on U.S. soil, like the proposed facility at Fort Leavenworth.
This notion of bait and switch justice doesn't cut it, especially in a technological age when information often spreads faster than the speed of light.
Nor is it morally acceptable to merely re-route detainees to countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Somalia where heinous interrogation techniques are not subject to the Geneva Conventions.
In fact, judging by our behavior, over the past six plus years, it would seem that compliance with Geneva is optional with the vehicle.
Changing the dressing on a wound doesn't heal the wound, it only covers it.
The Obama administration must take a closer look at the systemic, indigenous, corruption in the concept of military tribunal itself which is tantamount to a kangaroo court, as well as how they intend to prosecute detainees once they're returned to domestic soil, and in full compliance with the Constitution, as well as international law.
It's fine and dandy to restore due process, and attempt to undo the damage caused not just to how we look to the rest of the world, but how it is that we could twist the law such that we could hold anyone indefinitely, without charging him, without access to evidence, or counsel, for six years with impunity.
We must also ask ourselves what kind of perverse logic could come up with a designation like "unlawful enemy combatant," a phrase coined by Donald Rumsfeld and for the sole purpose of divesting detainees of rights afforded any prisoner of war.
Merely closing down the physical edifice that is Guantanamo without addressing the underlying concept behind it, and transferring detainees from Cuba to Kansas, or anywhere else in the U.S. without examining this rape of due process is not a solution, but a placebo, and an insult to the American sense of justice. As Jameel Jaffer, of the American Civil Liberties Union, says it doesn't "solve anything to close down Guantanamo to reopen it inside the US under a different name."
And, what about all the other Gitmos, the ones we don't know about in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere?
We have to address the idea, not just the physical structure. We have to ask how it is that the U.S. got to a place where it could circumvent the Magna Carta, and the Geneva Conventions, indeed, 500 years of international law, strip people of their basic rights as prisoners of war, hold them indefinitely, and under egregious conditions, grant them a dubious, abstract designation---"enemy combatant"-- bypass human rights conventions, and immunize those whose acts are criminal from being tried by setting up the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
Moreover, it's essential for this new administration to look into secret holding cells around the world, as well as the process by which prisoners are flown from countries that don't sanction torture, on paper, to those that have no proscriptions against torture.
While President-Elect Obama is about the business of using his executive order powers to undo some of the mischief of the Bush years, might we suggest he would do the country good by overturning the Military Commissions Act of 2006, too. Restoring "moral stature" isn't about cosmetic surgery. It's not about rearranging the furniture on the Titanic.
Restoring America's moral solvency is about recognizing, and admitting, to ourselves, and to the rest of the world, that we made some very big mistakes, so we can be sure to never to repeat them.
Rest assured that memories of their years at Guantanamo will be engraved in the minds of every person we detained there for as long as they live. When we close Guantanamo we must do more than shut down a prison, but the sensibility that created it.
But, Guantanamo Bay is not just a prison, it's a state of mind, and a legal limbo in which hundreds have been trapped since 2002.
And, as what the President-elect calls "part and parcel of an effort to restore America's moral stature in the world," it's not enough to simply relocate the 250 currently housed at Gitmo to high security prisons on U.S. soil, like the proposed facility at Fort Leavenworth.
This notion of bait and switch justice doesn't cut it, especially in a technological age when information often spreads faster than the speed of light.
Nor is it morally acceptable to merely re-route detainees to countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Somalia where heinous interrogation techniques are not subject to the Geneva Conventions.
In fact, judging by our behavior, over the past six plus years, it would seem that compliance with Geneva is optional with the vehicle.
Changing the dressing on a wound doesn't heal the wound, it only covers it.
The Obama administration must take a closer look at the systemic, indigenous, corruption in the concept of military tribunal itself which is tantamount to a kangaroo court, as well as how they intend to prosecute detainees once they're returned to domestic soil, and in full compliance with the Constitution, as well as international law.
It's fine and dandy to restore due process, and attempt to undo the damage caused not just to how we look to the rest of the world, but how it is that we could twist the law such that we could hold anyone indefinitely, without charging him, without access to evidence, or counsel, for six years with impunity.
We must also ask ourselves what kind of perverse logic could come up with a designation like "unlawful enemy combatant," a phrase coined by Donald Rumsfeld and for the sole purpose of divesting detainees of rights afforded any prisoner of war.
Merely closing down the physical edifice that is Guantanamo without addressing the underlying concept behind it, and transferring detainees from Cuba to Kansas, or anywhere else in the U.S. without examining this rape of due process is not a solution, but a placebo, and an insult to the American sense of justice. As Jameel Jaffer, of the American Civil Liberties Union, says it doesn't "solve anything to close down Guantanamo to reopen it inside the US under a different name."
And, what about all the other Gitmos, the ones we don't know about in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere?
We have to address the idea, not just the physical structure. We have to ask how it is that the U.S. got to a place where it could circumvent the Magna Carta, and the Geneva Conventions, indeed, 500 years of international law, strip people of their basic rights as prisoners of war, hold them indefinitely, and under egregious conditions, grant them a dubious, abstract designation---"enemy combatant"-- bypass human rights conventions, and immunize those whose acts are criminal from being tried by setting up the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
Moreover, it's essential for this new administration to look into secret holding cells around the world, as well as the process by which prisoners are flown from countries that don't sanction torture, on paper, to those that have no proscriptions against torture.
While President-Elect Obama is about the business of using his executive order powers to undo some of the mischief of the Bush years, might we suggest he would do the country good by overturning the Military Commissions Act of 2006, too. Restoring "moral stature" isn't about cosmetic surgery. It's not about rearranging the furniture on the Titanic.
Restoring America's moral solvency is about recognizing, and admitting, to ourselves, and to the rest of the world, that we made some very big mistakes, so we can be sure to never to repeat them.
Rest assured that memories of their years at Guantanamo will be engraved in the minds of every person we detained there for as long as they live. When we close Guantanamo we must do more than shut down a prison, but the sensibility that created it.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Freedom of Sexual Expression?
A Washington, D.C. based 501(c) non-profit, Woodhull Freedom Foundation, thinks freedom of expression also means the freedom to express one's sexuality, and to enjoy sex, as well as "works to affirm sexual freedom as a fundamental human right by protecting and advancing freedom of speech and sexual expression...through research, advocacy, and public education to affirm sexual freedom."
WFF addresses "laws, government policies, and corporate practices that restrict sexual freedom and discriminate against people on the basis of their consensual sexual expression."
Additionally, their mission is to "educate the public on the importance and value of sexual freedom and counter the arguments of groups seeking to restrict sexual rights," and to "advocate for decriminalization and social acceptance of consensual sexual expression."
To find out more about the Foundation, and the important work they're doing, please visit their Web site at the link below:
http://www.woodhullfoundation.org/about/default.aspx
WFF addresses "laws, government policies, and corporate practices that restrict sexual freedom and discriminate against people on the basis of their consensual sexual expression."
Additionally, their mission is to "educate the public on the importance and value of sexual freedom and counter the arguments of groups seeking to restrict sexual rights," and to "advocate for decriminalization and social acceptance of consensual sexual expression."
To find out more about the Foundation, and the important work they're doing, please visit their Web site at the link below:
http://www.woodhullfoundation.org/about/default.aspx
Saturday, November 15, 2008
By way of...
clarification:
It's heartening to see the many who took to the streets today to show their outrage against Proposition 8 , a proposition which is a travesty, and an insult to the constitution.
In light of my stubborn insistence on inference, the power of innuendo, and nuance, I never spelled out my position on Prop. 8. So, by way of amplification, and for the record, I voted "No" on Prop. 8, and feel as strongly about the attempt to rescind the June ruling as I would if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned. It's never okay to grant a right, then take it away.
A post that I wrote a few days ago that appears here, and on The Huffington Post, "On the Fight for Marriage Equality," seems to have drawn the ire of a community that I have always strongly defended, or maybe it drew contempt from the knee jerks among them; nevertheless, I state here, without equivocation, that my post was never intended to insinuate that gay marriage isn't an issue, or trivialize the notion of equal rights for any group who is disenfranchised. When I said that gay marriage is not the "signature issue" of our times, I did not mean to suggest that it is not an issue.
In the previous piece, my argument was only that there are other elements of the fight for gay equality that deserve as much dedicated attention, such as the need for funding that doesn't have an "abstinence-only" prerequisite attached to it, and access to affordable pharmaceuticals, as well as vocal opposition to the politicizing of science which, frankly, would have saved many more lives than legalized same sex unions.
I, for one, would have enjoyed seeing people show up nationwide to voice their outrage at the hate crime killings of Matthew Shepherd, and a 15 year old student, Larry King, in Oxnard, California who was brutally slain by a classmate last February.
Rep. Barney Frank, and others in Congress have worked sedulously to pass hate crime legislation which speaks to the heinousness of these human rights abuses which diminish each and every one of us, gay or straight.
It is, in a word, heartbreaking that today's national massive outcry didn't happen before Election Day as it would have kept Prop. 8 from passing in the first place. And, instead of pointing fingers at those who funded Prop. 8 campaign, it might be more productive now to look into why there wasn't a more concerted effort to mobilize a protest against the proposition before people went to the polls on November 4th.
The issues are many; the path of proaction, rather than reaction, is the most effective path. But, hindsight is often twenty-twenty. All we can do now is clean up the mess, not just the one made by those who want to turn back the clock on civil rights, but the one made by a decade of confusing religious orthodoxy with medical practicum.
Efforts to stifle dissent, and diversity of thought, with threats of blacklisting, are equally offensive whether they come from those on the left or those on the radical right.
The thought police of political correctness, in the end, only add to the carnage of ideas, and the demise of satire. When we create a social, political, and artistic environment in which one shudders to think of the level of exorciation Lenny Bruce would be forced to endure, we kind of have to stand back and take a long, hard look at whether the ends justify the means.
The victory of a black man in the White House holds the promise that nuance, and complexity has triumphed over reductive vision of good guys and bad guys. For nearly a decade, the intellectual environment has been under attack as much as the natural environment from those incapable of moral complexity. And, indeed, there is nothing more sinister than reducing the world to one dimension.
Ultimately, no one wins when ideology, whether progressive or reactionary, is allowed to prevail over diversity of ideas, and human will.
It's heartening to see the many who took to the streets today to show their outrage against Proposition 8 , a proposition which is a travesty, and an insult to the constitution.
In light of my stubborn insistence on inference, the power of innuendo, and nuance, I never spelled out my position on Prop. 8. So, by way of amplification, and for the record, I voted "No" on Prop. 8, and feel as strongly about the attempt to rescind the June ruling as I would if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned. It's never okay to grant a right, then take it away.
A post that I wrote a few days ago that appears here, and on The Huffington Post, "On the Fight for Marriage Equality," seems to have drawn the ire of a community that I have always strongly defended, or maybe it drew contempt from the knee jerks among them; nevertheless, I state here, without equivocation, that my post was never intended to insinuate that gay marriage isn't an issue, or trivialize the notion of equal rights for any group who is disenfranchised. When I said that gay marriage is not the "signature issue" of our times, I did not mean to suggest that it is not an issue.
In the previous piece, my argument was only that there are other elements of the fight for gay equality that deserve as much dedicated attention, such as the need for funding that doesn't have an "abstinence-only" prerequisite attached to it, and access to affordable pharmaceuticals, as well as vocal opposition to the politicizing of science which, frankly, would have saved many more lives than legalized same sex unions.
I, for one, would have enjoyed seeing people show up nationwide to voice their outrage at the hate crime killings of Matthew Shepherd, and a 15 year old student, Larry King, in Oxnard, California who was brutally slain by a classmate last February.
Rep. Barney Frank, and others in Congress have worked sedulously to pass hate crime legislation which speaks to the heinousness of these human rights abuses which diminish each and every one of us, gay or straight.
It is, in a word, heartbreaking that today's national massive outcry didn't happen before Election Day as it would have kept Prop. 8 from passing in the first place. And, instead of pointing fingers at those who funded Prop. 8 campaign, it might be more productive now to look into why there wasn't a more concerted effort to mobilize a protest against the proposition before people went to the polls on November 4th.
The issues are many; the path of proaction, rather than reaction, is the most effective path. But, hindsight is often twenty-twenty. All we can do now is clean up the mess, not just the one made by those who want to turn back the clock on civil rights, but the one made by a decade of confusing religious orthodoxy with medical practicum.
Efforts to stifle dissent, and diversity of thought, with threats of blacklisting, are equally offensive whether they come from those on the left or those on the radical right.
The thought police of political correctness, in the end, only add to the carnage of ideas, and the demise of satire. When we create a social, political, and artistic environment in which one shudders to think of the level of exorciation Lenny Bruce would be forced to endure, we kind of have to stand back and take a long, hard look at whether the ends justify the means.
The victory of a black man in the White House holds the promise that nuance, and complexity has triumphed over reductive vision of good guys and bad guys. For nearly a decade, the intellectual environment has been under attack as much as the natural environment from those incapable of moral complexity. And, indeed, there is nothing more sinister than reducing the world to one dimension.
Ultimately, no one wins when ideology, whether progressive or reactionary, is allowed to prevail over diversity of ideas, and human will.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
On the Fight for Marriage Equality in California
I'm as upset about the outcome of Proposition 8 as anyone else is, but I don't think that it is the signature issue of our times.
The President-elect's plans for what to do with detainees, once he closes Guantanamo Bay, how to handle military tribunals, whether to incarcerate indefinitely without charges, should be of more concern, as well as ongoing infractions to the First and Fourth Amendments.
Forgive me if this seems cynical, but I've never been a big fan of marriage---gay or straight anyway, and I'd rather see people take to the streets of Beverly Hills, Long Beach, and San Francisco over waterboarding, warrantless electronic surveillance by the National Security Agency, or the fact that the federal reserve is refusing to make public the names of those who received close to $2 trillion of taxplayer money in what Bloomberg describes as "emergency loans."
I'd like to see people take to the streets about the abstinence-only requirement that has accompanied the granting of federal funds to state, and international, clinics that provide much-needed contraception, and HIV/AIDS research.
I'd also like to see people take to the streets about the implied selective survival policy initiated by the neo-conservative wing of the Republican party in making drugs needed to treat HIV/AIDS unaffordable to the vast majority of those who suffer from the disease worldwide.
It's good to see people doing their civic duty by exercising their First Amendment right to freedom of assembly, but there are many who would like to see other elements of the First Amendment protected by the elimination of so-called "public indecency" FCC fines.
Yes, everyone should have the right to marry, and to get divorced, regardless of sexual orientation, but this is a time when there ought to be more concern with who's getting sacked than who they're in the sack with.
But, renegers need not apply; once a right is granted to someone, it must never be rescinded. This goes for Roe v. Wade, too, of course.
Marriage has never been a one size fits all institution, nor should it be. And, judging by the current divorce rate, far be it for anyone in those glass houses to throw stones, or to claim the familial high road.
But, we need to get our priorities in order. Please, please, please let's get about the business of working to restore our tattered Constitution, to end mercenary, irrelevant wars, to challenge the designation of "unlawful enemy combatant" as pretext to defy habeas corpus, stop the insidious practice of extraordinary rendition, and frame the debate such that human rights are the issue, not the rights of one sex, or another, to tie the knot.
The President-elect's plans for what to do with detainees, once he closes Guantanamo Bay, how to handle military tribunals, whether to incarcerate indefinitely without charges, should be of more concern, as well as ongoing infractions to the First and Fourth Amendments.
Forgive me if this seems cynical, but I've never been a big fan of marriage---gay or straight anyway, and I'd rather see people take to the streets of Beverly Hills, Long Beach, and San Francisco over waterboarding, warrantless electronic surveillance by the National Security Agency, or the fact that the federal reserve is refusing to make public the names of those who received close to $2 trillion of taxplayer money in what Bloomberg describes as "emergency loans."
I'd like to see people take to the streets about the abstinence-only requirement that has accompanied the granting of federal funds to state, and international, clinics that provide much-needed contraception, and HIV/AIDS research.
I'd also like to see people take to the streets about the implied selective survival policy initiated by the neo-conservative wing of the Republican party in making drugs needed to treat HIV/AIDS unaffordable to the vast majority of those who suffer from the disease worldwide.
It's good to see people doing their civic duty by exercising their First Amendment right to freedom of assembly, but there are many who would like to see other elements of the First Amendment protected by the elimination of so-called "public indecency" FCC fines.
Yes, everyone should have the right to marry, and to get divorced, regardless of sexual orientation, but this is a time when there ought to be more concern with who's getting sacked than who they're in the sack with.
But, renegers need not apply; once a right is granted to someone, it must never be rescinded. This goes for Roe v. Wade, too, of course.
Marriage has never been a one size fits all institution, nor should it be. And, judging by the current divorce rate, far be it for anyone in those glass houses to throw stones, or to claim the familial high road.
But, we need to get our priorities in order. Please, please, please let's get about the business of working to restore our tattered Constitution, to end mercenary, irrelevant wars, to challenge the designation of "unlawful enemy combatant" as pretext to defy habeas corpus, stop the insidious practice of extraordinary rendition, and frame the debate such that human rights are the issue, not the rights of one sex, or another, to tie the knot.
Monday, November 10, 2008
From Alice Walker
From "An Open Letter to Barack Obama, " by Alice Walker
"I would advise you to remember that you did not create the disaster that the world is experiencing, and you alone are not responsible for bringing the world back to balance. A primary responsibility that you do have, however, is to cultivate happiness in your own life. To make a schedule that permits sufficient time of rest and play with your gorgeous wife and lovely daughters. And so on. One gathers that your family is large. We are used to seeing men in the White House soon become juiceless and as white-haired as the building; we notice their wives and children looking strained and stressed. They soon have smiles so lacking in joy that they remind us of scissors. This is no way to lead. Nor does your family deserve this fate. One way of thinking about all this is: It is so bad now that there is no excuse not to relax. From your happy, relaxed state, you can model real success, which is all that so many people in the world really want. They may buy endless cars and houses and furs and gobble up all the attention and space they can manage, or barely manage, but this is because it is not yet clear to them that success is truly an inside job. That it is within the reach of almost everyone...
We are the ones we have been waiting for."
November 5, 2008
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/alice-walker-open-letter-barack-obama-1
"I would advise you to remember that you did not create the disaster that the world is experiencing, and you alone are not responsible for bringing the world back to balance. A primary responsibility that you do have, however, is to cultivate happiness in your own life. To make a schedule that permits sufficient time of rest and play with your gorgeous wife and lovely daughters. And so on. One gathers that your family is large. We are used to seeing men in the White House soon become juiceless and as white-haired as the building; we notice their wives and children looking strained and stressed. They soon have smiles so lacking in joy that they remind us of scissors. This is no way to lead. Nor does your family deserve this fate. One way of thinking about all this is: It is so bad now that there is no excuse not to relax. From your happy, relaxed state, you can model real success, which is all that so many people in the world really want. They may buy endless cars and houses and furs and gobble up all the attention and space they can manage, or barely manage, but this is because it is not yet clear to them that success is truly an inside job. That it is within the reach of almost everyone...
We are the ones we have been waiting for."
November 5, 2008
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/alice-walker-open-letter-barack-obama-1
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Off duty Chicago Police Accused of Election Night Hate Crimes
As Christina Ballard and Cornelius Voss were on their way home after celebrating Barack Obama's victory, on election day, three youngsters in the back of their car rolled down the window cheering, and calling out Obama's name.
Three unmarked police cars reportedly pulled up beside them, and are said to have pepper sprayed the youngsters. The officers are accused of having used racial epithets, and shouted out "white power," while spraying the children.
When the family tried to file a police report, immediately after the incident, they were given the runaround, so the next day, the only recourse they had was to report the incident to the Independent Police Review Authority for redress.
A spokesperson for the IPRA would say only that they're looking into these accusations, and that there were "multiple allegations" of law enforcement spraying civilians that historic night, one estimate suggests that there may have been dozens of incidents.
The mainstream media, for the most part, has dropped the ball on this story which appears in The Chicago Sun-Times, as well as on a few local radio stations. The family who took their hate crime claim to the IPRA is also filing a federal lawsuit. Their claim, and others like it, must be addressed expeditiously, and there must be swift consequences.
The actions of these officers who, ironically, hail from President-elect Obama's home district are tantamount to hate crimes, must be widely publicized, and universally condemned.
Three unmarked police cars reportedly pulled up beside them, and are said to have pepper sprayed the youngsters. The officers are accused of having used racial epithets, and shouted out "white power," while spraying the children.
When the family tried to file a police report, immediately after the incident, they were given the runaround, so the next day, the only recourse they had was to report the incident to the Independent Police Review Authority for redress.
A spokesperson for the IPRA would say only that they're looking into these accusations, and that there were "multiple allegations" of law enforcement spraying civilians that historic night, one estimate suggests that there may have been dozens of incidents.
The mainstream media, for the most part, has dropped the ball on this story which appears in The Chicago Sun-Times, as well as on a few local radio stations. The family who took their hate crime claim to the IPRA is also filing a federal lawsuit. Their claim, and others like it, must be addressed expeditiously, and there must be swift consequences.
The actions of these officers who, ironically, hail from President-elect Obama's home district are tantamount to hate crimes, must be widely publicized, and universally condemned.
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