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Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Jenny, Jenny, you're the blog for me. You don't watch me, but you make me so happy... Sed Contra: Flannery O'Connor and Abu Ghraib. I haven't read yet, but it looks both important and fascinating. Blood at the root... The Koch Fellows of 2004 have a blog! Koch is a summer fellowship program run by the Institute on Humane Studies. It's a highly intellectual, libertarian-leaning program that tends to draw out the best in its participants. I spoke before them last night on "the future of marriage" with Carrie Lukas of the Independent Women's Forum and Jonathan Rauch of Jonathan Rauch fame, and it was a terrific experience. Great questions, great kids. The blog is likely to be well worth your time. (And it's run by Yalien life form Diana Feygin, of Yale's Finest Publication fame.) Why haven't I added Daniel Drezner to the blogroll? I don't know. The National Catholic Register on Ronald Reagan and embryo-destructive research: "For the sake of society, which faces the prospect of spending billions of dollars in health care, certain boys and girls--embryos--will have to be sacrificed. "It seems to us that there's not much difference between that and the ideology Reagan spent his life and presidency fighting." And The Onion has a hilarious article, "American People Ruled Unfit to Govern." Excerpt: "...The controversial decision, the first of its kind in the 210-year history of U.S. representative government, was, according to Justice David Souter, 'a response to the clear, demonstrable incompetence and indifference of the current U.S. citizenry in matters concerning the operation of this nation's government.' "As a result of the ruling, the American people will no longer retain the power to choose their own federal, state, and local officials or vote on matters of concern to the public." But Randy Barnett asks the obvious question: "My question is why The Onion has Justice Scalia writing the majority opinion.... Now I have my disagreements with Justice Scalia, but a refusal to defer to the American electorate or to doubt their competence in nearly all matters is not among them." For a less Onionalicious take on the subject, there's always this. 867-5309... "'It's the Golden Country--almost,' he murmured. "'The Golden Country?' "'It's nothing, really. A landscape I've seen sometimes in a dream.' "'Look!' whispered Julia. "A thrush had lighted on a bough not five meters away, almost at the level of their faces." --1984 Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Siempre que te pregunto que cuando, como y donde, tu siempre me respondes, "Blogwatch, blogwatch, blogwatch..." Am adding Hugo Schwyzer to the blogroll, when I get around to it. Lots of stuff about guys and gender and suchlike. I found him via Noli Irritare Leones. James Lileks taunts weeds, defends Mamet (rightly--everyone yells at him for not sounding exactly like everyday speech, when that's really not what he's trying to sound like), and gives a great anti-tax Parable of the Staircase. Books for Iraq--Poliblog writes: I have volunteered to help Dr. Safaa al-Hamdani, a biology professor at Jacksonville State University (another school here in Alabama) in a book drive to collect texts to help populate the Baghdad University library, which, between post-war looting and multi-decade neglect by the Saddam regime is in serious need of help. While I am focusing my efforts on my university, and other schools in Alabama with which I have contact, I thought a note to the Blogosphere wouldn't hurt. While books from any discipline are welcome, Dr. al-Hamdani notes that there is a special need for science, math and medical texts. Also, he asks that books no older than five years be collected, as given the cost of shipping we want to make sure we are sending usable books. Also, funds to help ship the books are also in need. If you can help, please contact me directly at University/school e-mail (all that info can be found by clicking on the "Academic Site" link under the PoliBlog logo)--or just click here. If you are able to help, books or donations could be sent directly to me. There is a brief news story about the book drive here. UPDATES: If you wish to send cash to help defray the costs of the shipping, here's the information for that: Books or checks made payable to Books for Baghdad may be sent to Dr. Al-Hamdani in care of the Department of Biology, Jacksonville State University, 700 Pelham Road North, Jacksonville, AL 36265. And here's a more extensive story about the project. link And speaking of: Iraqi talk radio: Iraqi voices filled the airwaves of the nation's first independent talk radio station Monday, applauding a surprise move by the U.S.-led coalition to return sovereignty to Iraq two days early. The callers clogged Radio Dijla's telephone lines to congratulate interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, urging him to be strong, while warning insurgents against continued violence. "I send my congratulations to all Iraqis and every Iraqi home," a woman who identified herself as Um Yassin gushed, her voice choked with emotion. "I want to tell Dr. Allawi to be bold, to be strong. We need him to build up the army because we need them at a time like this." Her message was echoed by dozens on the day Prime Minister Allawi was given a letter transferring sovereignty back to the citizens of Iraq after about 14 months of coalition administration. But in the midst of adulation for the new government, callers urged that all must be vigilant for insurgents seeking to sow more chaos in a country plagued by violence since Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled. "I send all the Iraqi people my blessings," said Ali, a caller from Baghdad. "But I warn these terrorists, all the Iraqis will rise up and strike them with steel." With that threat, the station switched to an upbeat song by a Lebanese singer. more FEEL YOUR INNOCENCE SLIPPING AWAY; DON'T BELIEVE IT'S COMING BACK SOON. Beyond hilarious recap of "Prisoner of Azkaban." Spoilers abound. "I threaten you... with ORIGAMI!" This recap is... aimed at a demographic well above the movie's target audience. So you know. Excerpts: MR WEASLEY: There's this guy who wants to kill you. Don't go looking for him! HARRY: Why would I? MR WEASLEY: Um... I thought you were into extreme sports yes, Harry, that's it, take up bungee jumping instead. That's all the screen time I'm allowed, okay, bye! HARRY: But I'm desperately in need of a father figure! MR WEASLEY: Three words for you about this movie, Mr Potter--Spoiled For Choice. ... DRACO: You fainted because of Dementors? You pansy! HARRY: Malfoy! What's with the boyband hair? Also, as later events will unfold, coming from you that is, like, an entire packet of Rich Tea biscuits. DRACO: And you never answered any of my letters all summer. HARRY: Stalking is a criminal offence, you know. DRACO: We're in my legally erratic world now, bitch boy. ... RON: Would you quit it with the inappropriate touching, Hermione? You're making me seriously uncomfortable in my place of work. ... DRACO: Dad says I can have the hippogriff's head. Um. He shows his love in unusual ways. ... LUPIN: Shall we indulge in lots of sinister yet ambiguous discourse? SIRIUS: Sure. I have missed our little chats. CUARON: Okay, for some reason they told me to 'lay off the kids, Al,' but I have three adult males in a room together in an emotionally charged situation, and I want you to give me all the kinky vibes you can! SNAPE, SIRIUS AND LUPIN: Done and done. read the whole thing! "Winston picked his way up the lane through dappled light and shade, stepping out into pools of gold wherever the boughs parted. Under the trees to the left of them the ground was misty with bluebells. The air seemed to kiss one's skin. It was the second of May. From somewhere deeper in the heart of the wood came the droning of ring doves." --1984 Monday, June 28, 2004
SCANS UNCOVER SECRETS OF THE WOMB. I've counseled women considering abortion whose children were about here. In general, the pictures of fetal development we use (I think they're the Lennart Nilssen ones) are among the things women respond to most strongly and are most interested in during counseling. Women--including women considering abortion--in my experience really want to know what's happening inside the womb. My old post on informed consent may help explain why. BBC link via The Corner. PROTECT MARRIAGE PETITION: From Bronwen McShea. I can vouch that this is real and she will in fact be sending this along--it's not one of those fakey email petitions. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello all: As you may know, the U.S. Senate will debate and vote on a Federal Marriage Amendment on July 12. According to Senate aides, many senators (including many Democrats) are still on the fence and are gauging their constitutents' degree of support and concern. If you support an FMA that will preserve marriage as a union of husbands and wives -- and if you want to make your voices heard by your elected officials in Washington -- simply sign the petition below and forward it to friends and family. Sign by sending an e-mail to protect_marriage@yahoo.com with your NAME, TOWN, and STATE WHERE YOU VOTE. Near the time of the vote, an e-mail and hard copy of the petition will be sent to the office of each U.S. Senator for whom there are signatories, containing all the signatories from his or her state. Every name counts. Here is the petition: ---------------------------------------------------------------- To Senator [Your Senators' Names Will Appear Here]: Marriage is a crucial social institution and must be protected for the well-being of America's children and families. For this reason, we support SJ-30 and a Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) that would define and protect marriage as it has always existed: as a union only between a husband and a wife. No unelected judges in any state or federal court have the right to redefine marriage for the rest of the country. We urge you to support SJ-30 and the FMA. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Again, TO SIGN, please send an e-mail with your NAME, TOWN, STATE WHERE YOU VOTE to protect_marriage@yahoo.com ASAP and forward it to as many people you know who might sign. (If you could include your state in your subject line, that would be very helpful.) Bronwen Catherine McShea Washington, D.C. C'MON, RIP HER TO SHREDS: FEMINISM AND READERS' SYMPATHIES. I recently read a little article on women and girls in the Harry Potter books. A lot of it struck me as wrongheaded just on basic character-analysis grounds--why characters did what they did--but there was one really interesting wrong turn the piece made that I thought might be worth discussing in more depth. (I'm not linking to the piece because I forgot where I found it. Sorry....) The article's author figured that there were two ways of writing sexism into one's characters: stereotypical femininity and its mirror opposite, stereotypical tomboyishness. She cashed this out to mean that female characters should always be presented in the same way that a male character would be presented. But this misses the point of writing characters in the first place. You write a role for a woman because it's a woman's role; to change your character to a man ought to significantly change the character, not only how he acts but how he's perceived. If your character's sex could be replaced with dark, sparkling Folger's XY chromosomes, I can't imagine your characters will feel real, because for real people, sex matters. Whether you're a man or a woman shapes your life. It shapes the way people see you, and that in turn also shapes your life: your actions, your instincts and intuitions, your sense of self. And the HP article's insistence on gender-neutrality makes it all but impossible for the author to sympathize with any of the books' female characters. Everything they do is either stereotypically girly or stereotypically tomboyish or stereotypically something else--Fleur is a breathy sexpot, Hermione is a tomboy-nerd, McGonagall (yay!) is the old spinster schoolmarm stereotype, etc. Nothing they do is ever good (=gender-neutral) enough, because there really aren't that many gender-neutral behaviors! I mean, practically the only thing a female character can do that is impossible to slot into some reductive stereotype is brush her teeth. Bookish boys act and are treated differently from bookish girls, athletic boys from athletic girls, flighty men (Quirrell) from flighty women (Trelawney). And so, since none of the characters could be replaced by someone of the opposite sex without seriously shifting the feel of the story, none of them are feministically appropriate. This especially came out in the article's description of Cho Chang. Cho is this athletically talented girl who undergoes a serious personal loss and reacts by getting very, very, very weepy. To the point where it becomes self-indulgent. Cho wallows. And the article's author hated her for it--was upset with JK Rowling for writing this weepy chick character, but hated Cho for being that character. If you've read the books I hope the problem has already leapt out at you: None of the characters ever handle unhappiness well. Harry Potter gets angsty and ranty and pushes his friends away; Snape (wonderful Snape) wallows like a hog in slop and develops a thoroughly vicious personality; Cho cries too much. But Cho gets blamed, because her reaction is more common for girls than for boys. Seems to me that if one's understanding of feminism is hostile not only to accurate characterization but to, you know, women, then one might want to spin again, Pat. MANGA AND SUPERMANGA: (Sorry.) Two quick reviews. Junji Ito, Gyo, vol. 2: The conclusion of a horror story about these... well... they're fish and sharks and suchlike, mounted on metal frameworks that allow them to walk about terrorizing people. The frameworks seem to have minds of their own: They capture helpless humans and infect them with a virus that makes them produce the flatulence that powers the frameworks. Right. This was very much Not My Thing. I would have been able to ignore the gross-out element, though, if the story had been strong. But as with other Ito comics I've read, a strong initial concept just fizzles out into nothing-in-particular by the end. There's a lot of random semi-creepiness, but no real point, and virtually no character development. The freakshow circus was a really standard horror cliche. The mad scientist's assistant was quite pretty, but otherwise, there wasn't much to stick around for. Vol. 2 also includes two short pieces. One is just more hemi-demi-creepy randomness. The second, though, is an effective, "Twilight Zone"-ish tale of a cliffside pocked with holes shaped like human bodies. People are drawn to the mysterious cliffs, where each person finds a hole that perfectly fits his or her silhouette. One man tries to resist the holes' allure, fearing that if he enters his hole he'll be lost forever.... A very spooky image, some quiet suspense, and, I thought (though I could be overreaching), a nice visual way of representing the way solipsism and isolation warp the sense of self. So that story is worth reading in the comic shop; but then, if I were you, I would put the book back on the shelf. Makato Yukimura, Planetes, vol. 1: This is a set of linked science fiction short stories about a crew who travels through space cleaning up debris left by human space exploration. I loved it. The pictures--though sometimes hard to follow in more action-heavy sequences--gave a real sense of the wonder of space. The main characters were sharply delineated and went through real, and realistic, changes in the course of the stories. The stories often had a theme of isolation (the isolation of grief, of illness, of fear of failure) but also shared a sweetness and an atmosphere of compassion that kept the stories from becoming depressing. Oh, this was just a really nice, small, very human-scale treat. It captured all the sentimental dreaminess of old-school space stories. Highly recommended--and, too, this would be a great addition to school libraries. I'm definitely picking up further books--I think at least vol. 2 is out now. THAT STORY: Roundup. "How Far Can a Government Lawyer Go?": Adam Liptak A CLIENT asks his lawyer a question: During an interrogation of a suspected terrorist, how much pain can I legally inflict? The lawyer should: a) Explore every legal avenue available for his client, including all possible defenses should criminal charges be filed. b) Give legal guidance but add advice on the wisdom and morality of what the client is considering. c) Tell the client to take a walk. The lawyers at the Justice Department who prepared the memos concerning torture seemed to have decided on Option A. These memos, released last week, raise profound questions about the ethical and moral limits of what lawyers can and should do in advising their clients. It is hardly unusual, of course, for lawyers in private practice to give narrow and comprehensive advice on how to comply with, say, the tax laws to maximum advantage. But lawyers serving private clients rarely confront questions as morally perilous as torture. For instance, an August 2002 memo, by Jay S. Bybee, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel who has since become a federal appeals court judge, concluded that only physical pain as intense as that accompanying organ failure or death qualified as torture. After harsh criticism, the Bush administration distanced itself from the memorandum law week. ... Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr., who teaches legal ethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said "It was very appropriate for lawyers" in the government "to think in concrete terms about what is meant by torture." Other lawyers stressed that a lawyer's proper task is a narrow one. "When a government is faced with a situation and is faced with options," said Charles Fried, a law professor at Harvard and a former solicitor general in the Reagan administration, "surely one of the questions it asks - but only one of them--is, what does the law require? Another question is, is it effective? Another is, is it moral? Those are not the same questions." The lawyer's role, he said, is to answer the first question. Still, government lawyers have more complicated obligations than those in private practice do. The government lawyer's ultimate client, after all, is the public, and government lawyers have not infrequently told their bosses things they did not want to hear. Attorney General Francis Biddle, for instance, opposed the internment of American citizens of Japanese ancestry during World War II. His boss, President Franklin Roosevelt, overruled him. Douglas W. Kmiec, who led the Office of Legal Counsel in the Reagan administration, recalled delivering bad news himself. "One of the least happy days in my life," he said, "was telling President Reagan that he could not exercise an inherent line-item veto," because it wasn't implicit in the Constitution, "even though he dearly wanted it." ... The development is particularly unfortunate because it indicates that the no-holds-barred advocacy common in the private sphere has started to infect the work of government lawyers, argued Philip Lacovara, who served in the Nixon administration and as a Watergate prosecutor. "If you set loose very smart and very energetic lawyers and tell them their task is to justify the unjustifiable, they will do it," he said. more Excerpts from the memo that detailed exactly what, according to the Office of Legal Counsel, did and did not constitute torture. "CIA Puts Harsh Tactics On Hold": The CIA has suspended the use of extraordinary interrogation techniques approved by the White House pending a review by Justice Department and other administration lawyers, intelligence officials said. The "enhanced interrogation techniques," as the CIA calls them, include feigned drowning and refusal of pain medication for injuries. The tactics have been used to elicit intelligence from al Qaeda leaders such as Abu Zubaida and Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Current and former CIA officers aware of the recent decision said the suspension reflects the CIA's fears of being accused of unsanctioned and illegal activities, as it was in the 1970s. The decision applies to CIA detention facilities, such as those around the world where the agency is interrogating al Qaeda leaders and their supporters, but not military prisons at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere. ... CIA interrogations will continue but without the suspended techniques, which include feigning suffocation, "stress positions," light and noise bombardment, sleep deprivation, and making captives think they are being interrogated by another government. ... The legal debate over CIA interrogation techniques had its origins in the battlefields of Afghanistan, secret counterterrorism operations in Pakistan and in President Bush's decision to use unconventional tools in going after al Qaeda. The interrogation methods were approved by Justice Department and National Security Council lawyers in 2002, briefed to key congressional leaders and required the authorization of CIA Director George J. Tenet for use, according to intelligence officials and other government officials with knowledge of the secret decision-making process. When the CIA and the military "started capturing al Qaeda in Afghanistan, they had no interrogators, no special rules and no place to put them," said a senior Marine officer involved in detainee procedures. The FBI, which had the only full cadre of professional interrogators from its work with criminal networks in the United States, took the lead in questioning detainees. But on Nov. 11, 2001, a senior al Qaeda operative who ran the Khaldan paramilitary camp in Afghanistan was captured by Pakistani forces and turned over to U.S. military forces in January 2002. The capture of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a Libyan, sparked the first real debate over interrogations. The CIA wanted to use a range of methods, including threatening his life and family. But the FBI had never authorized such methods. The bureau wanted to preserve the purity of interrogations so they could be used as evidence in court cases. Al-Libi provided the CIA with intelligence about an alleged plot to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Yemen with a truck bomb and pointed officials in the direction of Abu Zubaida, a top al Qaeda leader known to have been involved with the Sept. 11 plot. In March 2002, Abu Zubaida was captured, and the interrogation debate between the CIA and FBI began anew. This time, when FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III decided to withhold FBI involvement, it was a signal that the tug of war was over. "Once the CIA was given the green light . . . they had the lead role," said a senior FBI counterterrorism official. Abu Zubaida was shot in the groin during his apprehension in Pakistan. U.S. national security officials have suggested that painkillers were used selectively in the beginning of his captivity until he agreed to cooperate more fully. His information led to the apprehension of other al Qaeda members, including Ramzi Binalshibh, also in Pakistan. The capture of Binalshibh and other al Qaeda leaders -- Omar al-Faruq in Indonesia, Rahim al-Nashiri in Kuwait and Muhammad al Darbi in Yemen -- were all partly the result of information gained during interrogations, according to U.S. intelligence and national security officials. All four remain under CIA control. more And a Human Rights Watch representative writes, in "The Logic of Torture": ...Perhaps one reason these stress and duress techniques were approved at all is that they sound innocuous. But as anyone who has worked with torture victims knows, they are the stock in trade of brutal regimes around the world. For example, the Washington Times recently reported that "[s]ome of the most feared forms of torture cited" by survivors of the North Korean gulag "were surprisingly mundane: Guards would force inmates to stand perfectly still for hours at a time, or make them perform exhausting repetitive exercises such as standing up and sitting down until they collapsed from fatigue." Binding prisoners in painful positions is a torture technique widely used in countries such as China and Burma, and repeatedly condemned by the United States. Stripping Muslim prisoners nude to humiliate them was a common practice of the Soviet military when it occupied Afghanistan. As for sleep deprivation, consider former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin's account of experiencing it in a Soviet prison in the 1940s: "In the head of the interrogated prisoner a haze begins to form. His spirit is wearied to death, his legs are unsteady, and he has one sole desire: to sleep, to sleep just a little, not to get up, to lie, to rest, to forget. . . . Anyone who has experienced this desire knows that not even hunger or thirst are comparable with it. . . . I came across prisoners who signed what they were ordered to sign, only to get what the interrogator promised them. He did not promise them their liberty. He promised them -- if they signed -- uninterrupted sleep!" Rumsfeld eventually rescinded his approval of these cruel methods for Guantanamo. But they still ended up being authorized by commanders and used on prisoners throughout Afghanistan and Iraq. Former detainees report being forced to stand, sit or crouch for many hours, often in contorted positions, deprived of sleep for nights on end, held nude, doused with cold water and exposed to extreme heat. more Stay in bed. Watch my blogs. Stay in bed. Watch my blogs. Warm Coke in the morning-- Lights pass on the ceiling-- Stay in bed. Yale Free Press: Scroll down for Prof. Cass Sunstein's reply to Gene Vilensky on property rights and natural rights. Diana Feygin chips in here on the "rubber band of rights-talk." Really interesting exchange. Last lines of poems. Neat! Via Unqualified Offerings. And the consistently-interesting Jonetta Rose Barras writes, "This statistic in a magazine article recently caught my eye: Eighty-nine percent of journalists belong to the middle or upper-middle class. And because the media are so isolated from poor and working-class Americans, the article argued, they find it difficult to report on or to articulate class issues. "This argument struck me as particularly relevant in light of the media's handling last month of Bill Cosby's frontal assault on 'lower income' African Americans for 'not holding up their end' in the push for black progress. Although the comedian specifically referred to class in his blistering commentary, the media translated his remarks into a manifesto on personal responsibility alone. "That was surely one point Cosby was making but, in fixating solely on that, journalists actually diverted attention from the most salient truth that Cosby had exposed: the festering wound of class division in black America." more And the sheets are heavy hands... MORE CAMPAIGN-FINANCE IDIOCY: From The Hill: Michael Moore may be prevented from advertising his controversial new movie, "Fahrenheit 9/11," on television or radio after July 30 if the Federal Election Commission (FEC) today accepts the legal advice of its general counsel. At the same time, a Republican-allied 527 soft-money group is preparing to file a complaint against Moore's film with the FEC for violating campaign-finance law. In a draft advisory opinion placed on the FEC's agenda for today’s meeting, the agency's general counsel states that political documentary filmmakers may not air television or radio ads referring to federal candidates within 30 days of a primary election or 60 days of a general election. The opinion is generated under the new McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law, which prohibits corporate-funded ads that identify a federal candidate before a primary or general election. ... The FEC ruling may also affect promotion of a slew of other upcoming political documentaries and films, such as "Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War," which opens in August, "The Corporation," about democratic institutions being subsumed by the corporate agenda, or "Silver City," a recently finished film by John Sayles that criticizes the Bush administration. ... At issue in the FEC's opinion is whether documentary films qualify for a "media exemption," which allows members of the press to discuss political candidates freely in the days before an election. more via Hit and Run Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me: There lie they, and here lie we Under the spreading chestnut tree. --1984 Wednesday, June 23, 2004
HI THERE! GO AWAY! So I realize this site has been kind of... quiet... of late. I'm working my tail feathers off, over here. But there's such an enormous amount of intriguing stuff on MarriageDebate! Go there instead! You will find: All kinds of funky articles from The Nation, Seattle Weekly, and the Village Voice--apparently it's Gay Left Week over here. Random posts from me about Jonathan Rauch's Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America. Coming soon: more! Susan Shell's "Liberal Case Against Gay Marriage." Is she on crack? Email me with your answer! Seriously, there's lots of fascinating stuff up right now... and not just the stuff I wrote. Hie thee hence. PROPERTY HAIKU: Very nice response to Cass Sunstein and Oliver Wendell Holmes, from the Yale Free Press blog. I disagree with the anti-natural-rights conclusion (though I do think it's the necessary conclusion for an atheist), but think Gene's analysis of the Sunstein claim is right on. Excerpt: "So the argument boils down to either believing in natural rights granted to us by God or not believing in natural rights. In the first case, we have the right to life. But we can then also claim a pre-legal right to property with pretty good justification from various moral and religious contexts (see for example the commandment against covetting another's wife). In the second case, any concept of right is given to us by law since pre-moral man had no compulsion to either not steal or not kill. So, singling out property rights as something that is prior to law is itself because one does not believe in laissez-faire, not the other way around as Sunstein claims." more VATICAN CONDEMNS CHINESE ARRESTS: The Vatican has strongly protested to China over the arrest of three Roman Catholic bishops--one of them 84 years old--in the past month. ... The Vatican and China have had no diplomatic ties since the 1950s, when Beijing expelled foreign clergy. BBC religious affairs correspondent Jane Little says the Vatican response indicates it has lost patience with China. It called the bishops' arrest "inconceivable in a country based on laws". ... [Vatican spokesman Joaquin Novarro-Valles] said the 84-year-old bishop of Xuanhua had been arrested on 27 May and there had been no news of him for nearly a month. The other two bishops--from Xiwanzi and Zhengding--were taken into custody for several days this month and released. None were further identified. The Vatican says about eight million Chinese belong to the so-called underground Catholic church, while the state-backed Chinese Patriotic Church has an estimated five million members. In December, Beijing dismissed an official American report which had criticised religious intolerance in China. more Via Mark Shea THAT STORY: Almost all links that follow are via How Appealing. MEMO ON INTERROGATION TACTICS IS DISAVOWED (Washington Post): President Bush's aides yesterday disavowed an internal Justice Department opinion that torturing terrorism suspects might be legally defensible, saying it had created the false impression that the government was claiming authority to use interrogation techniques barred by international law. Responding to pressure from Congress and outrage around the world, officials at the White House and the Justice Department derided the August 2002 legal memo on aggressive interrogation tactics, calling parts of it overbroad and irrelevant and saying it would be rewritten. In a highly unusual repudiation of its department's own work, a senior Justice official and two other high-ranking lawyers said that all legal advice rendered by the department's Office of Legal Counsel on the subject of interrogations will be reviewed. ... • A Feb. 7, 2002, memo signed by Bush saying that he believed he had "the authority under the Constitution" to deny protections of the Geneva Conventions to combatants picked up during the war in Afghanistan but that he would "decline to exercise that authority at this time." ... • New details on the range of severe interrogation techniques approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for use at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including stripping detainees to humiliate them, using dogs to scare them and forcing them to remain in stressful positions. Those measures were later curtailed after military lawyers in the field questioned their legality. • Documents showing that U.S. military interrogators were driven to seek more aggressive interrogation techniques because, in the words of Army Gen. James T. Hill, chief of the U.S. Southern Command in October 2002, "some detainees have tenaciously resisted our current interrogation methods." • Military lawyers and policy officials alike were preoccupied during their deliberations by the possibility that officers, intelligence officials and law enforcement authorities could be prosecuted for violating the constraints of U.S. law or international conventions protecting detainees. ... "Let me make very clear the position of my government and our country: We do not condone torture," Bush said. "I have never ordered torture. I will never order torture. The values of this country are such that torture is not a part of our soul and our being." ... Gonzales said that memo and a related Pentagon memo had been meant to "explore the limits of the legal landscape," and to his knowledge had "never made it to the hands of soldiers in the field, nor to the president." He acknowledged that some of the conclusions were "controversial" and "subject to misinterpretation." The documents that were released and the White House briefing focused on military interrogations and left many questions unanswered. Gonzales refused to comment on techniques used by the CIA, beyond saying that they "are lawful and do not constitute torture." He also would not discuss the president's involvement in the deliberations. more SPIRITED DEBATE PRECEDED POLICIES (Washington Post): ...In December 2002, as Pentagon officials were trying to get detainees to offer more useful information about al Qaeda, Rumsfeld approved a variety of techniques, such as stripping prisoners to humiliate them, using dogs to scare them and employing stress positions to wear them down, the documents show. The tactics also included using light and sound assaults, shaving facial and head hair and taking away religious items. Pentagon officials say most of the techniques were never used, and a Pentagon working group recommended that Rumsfeld roll back these methods. In a memo to the defense secretary in March 2003, the group wrote: "When assessing exceptional interrogation techniques, consideration should be given to the possible adverse affects on U.S. Armed Forces culture and self-image, which at times in the past may have suffered due to perceived law of war violations." As has been previously reported, Rumsfeld did subsequently rescind approval for the most aggressive tactics, including the use of dogs and stripping prisoners. But the documents released yesterday reveal many new details of the behind-the-scenes deliberations over what would be permitted at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, the holding facility for about 600 detainees picked up in the U.S. campaign against terrorists over the past three years. For instance, during an initial Pentagon review of the tactics being used at Guantanamo, completed Nov. 27, 2002, Rumsfeld added a handwritten note to the bottom of a document in which he approved new interrogation techniques that included forcing prisoners to stand for four hours at a time. "However, I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?" ... On Oct. 11, 2002, for example, the commanding general at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, Maj. Gen. Michael Dunlavey, asked his commander to approve the use of death threats against detainees and their families, wrapping a detainee in wet towels to "induce the misperception of suffocation," stress positions, exposing them to cold weather and water, and using dogs. These techniques had been reviewed and deemed legal under the Geneva Conventions by Dunlavey's legal adviser, Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, who wrote that they would be permissible "so long as there is an important governmental objective" and the tactics are not used "for the purpose of causing harm or with the intent to cause prolonged" mental or physical suffering. But Dunlavey's commander, Gen. James T. Hill, chief of U.S. Southern Command, expressed unease with this interpretation and asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, for guidance. "I am uncertain whether all the techniques . . . are legal under US law, given the absence of judicial interpretation of the US torture statute," Hill wrote on Oct. 25, 2002. "I am particularly troubled by the use of implied or express threats of death of the detainee and his family." A month later, the Pentagon's general counsel, William J. Haynes II, approved the use of dogs and stripping, but threw out the other more controversial methods. He also approved "grabbing, poking in the chest with the finger, and light pushing" among a list of two dozen other tactics. more Lots and lots of relevant documents--almost all in PDF form, which often makes my computer freak out, so I won't be able to read them until the working day is done. But that shouldn't stop you all. Yet more docs (and news articles) here. NATIVE AMERICAN PRISON PROBE: From USA Today, via How Appealing: U.S. authorities have identified at least 16 prisoners who have died in Native American detention centers since 2001, according to a senior federal official involved in an investigation of conditions at the facilities. The Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) has been gathering the information for the past several weeks as part of a wide-ranging review of allegations of neglect and abuse within the network of 74 detention centers that are scattered across the United States. Details about the causes of death were not immediately available. But at least some of the fatalities were attributed to overdoses of alcohol or other toxic substances that were consumed prior to the prisoners' arrests, said the official, who asked not to be identified because the information is central to ongoing inquiries. The Interior Department's inspector general has been investigating a range of allegations involving conditions at the centers, including the death of a young girl while she was in custody at a facility attached to an Oregon boarding school. Also, the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs has scheduled a hearing Wednesday to review conditions at Native American detention centers. The causes of death were expected to be provided to the committee by the BIA, which oversees management of the facilities across the country. But the official involved in the investigation said the lack of automated records and poor management in many of the facilities have made it difficult to account for the prisoners and their welfare. link "Years ago--how long was it? Seven years it must be--he had dreamed that he was walking through a pitch-dark room. And someone sitting to one side of him had said as he passed: 'We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.' It was said very quietly, almost casually--a statement, not a command. He had walked on without pausing. What was curious was that at the time, in the dream, the words had not made much impression on him. It was only later and by degrees that they had seemed to take on significance. He could not now remember whether it was before or after having the dream that he had seen O'Brien for the first time; nor could he remember when he had first identified the voice as O'Brien's. But at any rate the identification existed. It was O'Brien who had spoken to him out of the dark." --1984 Tuesday, June 22, 2004
"THROUGH THE YEARS WE ALL WILL BE TOGETHER": O BID OUR SAD DIVISIONS CEASE. Part four of Christmas in Depress-O-Vision. More flashbackery and so to bed. Read from the beginning here; or get the most recent section here. Two more sections coming: Christmas Day, and leavetaking. Problems I have already identified (though you should feel free to email me with any elaborations on these problems, as well as any other things that aren't working): 1. I use two different ways of presenting flashbacks (itals vs working it into the narrative). That's just a stupid mistake and will be easy to fix in revision, though it's doubtless annoying for you, the reader. 2. This story has no structure. I mean, it really doesn't. It's like an old baggy raveling sweater. No clue what to do about that. 3. Who is Diep? I don't know and neither do you. Sigh. As always, your comments and criticism are more than welcome. I am unsure why I'm writing this story, to be honest, except that it kept sitting in my head depressing me, and writing it was the only way to make it stop. Still, there are some things about it that I like, and I do think it's salvageable in revision. Wow, I'm really going for the hard sell here. KILL TROLL WITH SWORD! Hilarious: "I had kind of a funny start roleplaying. When I was 8 or 9 I was playing Zork on my uncle's new Atari 800 with a couple friends, and we dug it. At some point we wanted to play it but we weren't at my uncle's house, so I volunteered to 'be the computer.' We even played it text-based! I'd write a description, pass the notebook, my friends would read it and write their actions, I'd write the results. We kept that up for a while, actually, several sessions, before we figured out that we could just talk instead." here Via Unqualified Offerings THE YALE FREE PRESS BLOG IS BACK! SpaceShipOne; Law, Legislation, and Liberty; Modigliani and Jews; and much much more. (I should note that I generally disapprove of undergraduates blogging during term. But it's summertime so hip hip hooray for Yale's Finest Publication! Now about fixing that website...) TIMES LIKE THESE: Your bad-news roundup. NEW ABUSE CHARGES (Time magazine): Could the abuse of prisoners in Iraq have gone beyond the beatings and sexual humiliation already alleged? Unreleased, classified parts of the report on prison abuse from Major General Anthony Taguba, which were read to TIME, contain indications of mistreatment of female prisoners. In a Feb. 21 statement to Taguba, Lieut. Colonel Steven L. Jordan, former head of the Abu Ghraib interrogation center, said he had received reports "that there were members of the MI [Military Intelligence] community that had come over and done a late-night interrogation of two female detainees" last October. According to a statement by Jordan's boss, Colonel Thomas Pappas, three interrogators were later cited for violations of military law in their handling of the two females, ages 17 and 18. Senate Armed Services Committee investigators are probing whether the two women were sexually abused. The Pentagon declined to comment. more related: TORTURING THE LAW: "The Justice Department memo assured the Bush administration of three things: First, that interrogators could cause a lot of pain without crossing the line to torture. Second, that even though the United States criminalizes torture and has signed a treaty outlawing it, interrogators could torture prisoners as long as the president authorized it. Third, that even if those interrogators were later prosecuted for engaging in torture, there were legal defenses they could use to avoid accountability. Bybee's conclusions rest upon three stunning legal contortions, requiring no less than an entirely new definition of torture, a distortion of fundamental constitutional law and a new approach to the application of international law." more (in the Washington Post, probably via How Appealing) FAREED ZAKARIA ON WHAT'S GOING ON INSIDE SAUDI ARABIA (in Newsweek, via The Corner)--lots of fascinating stuff there. SYRIAN JAILED FOR INTERNET USAGE (from the BBC, possibly via The Corner or maybe Hit & Run) NEWS FROM VIETNAM: "A priest sentenced to 15 years in prison for speaking out about anti-Christian persecution received a sentence reduction for 'good conduct,' but some observers fear he is being drugged." (from Zenit, via Mark Shea) AND A STAR TO STEER HER BY: Happy Father's Day (late, I know). Two excellent links, both courtesy of Family Scholars: "My Junior Moment": "So this Father's Day, I've signed my card with my full, formal name, to pay tribute to a man who embraced fatherhood from the get-go. For my father claimed me as his own -- loved me unconditionally -- long before I could ever do anything to make him proud." "Lost and Found": "There was a perfect degree of fatherlessness in my life. Until this past year." "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." --George Orwell, 1984 (Summer is re-reading season.) Sunday, June 20, 2004
"THROUGH THE YEARS WE ALL WILL BE TOGETHER": THE SILENT STARS GO BY. In which the last member of our party arrives. Memories and cider are mulled. And it's a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty. Read it from the beginning here, or get the most recent section here. Probably two sections left. Soundtrack: Marc Almond, "Melancholy Rose." I have listened to this album, which I just got off Amazon, four times in the past 24 hours. I'm in love with it; I mean what I say. ANOTHER QUERY: For many expressions that fall somewhere between slang and dialect, there's an accepted spelling--"gonna," not "gunna"; "y'all," not "yawl." But there's one expression I may need to use in fiction soon, which I don't think I've ever seen in print. It's basically a slurring of "I'm going to," and is pronounced--depending, as far as I can tell, on the relative "blackness" of the accent--"I'mawna," "I'monna," or "I'munna." Have any of you all seen this in print? How was it spelled? I really do not write dialect--it looks condescending and is often misleading since readers don't all share Received Standard Pronunciation--but there are moments when "I'm going to" would be even more misleading, when the characters really would say "I'monna." Thoughts? "There is a growing sense, even among some elites, that if they have to depend solely and forever on the kindness of outside capital, they will never be productive players in the global capitalist game. They are increasingly frustrated at not being masters of their own fate. Since they have embarked on globalization without providing their own people with the means to produce capital, they are beginning to look less like the United States than like mercantilist Latin America with its disarray of extralegal activity." --The Mystery of Capital Friday, June 18, 2004
RANDOM QUERY: I've seen a couple people say that "TarZHAY" is a DC-area thing. Can this possibly be true? (Um, I will blog about real things soonish. Really.) EDITED: OK, email consensus seems to be that this is a national phenomenon, which makes more sense. As Ratty points out, it's a pretty obvious joke. Thanks very much to everyone who wrote in with data points! "Owning formal property also tends to discourage unruly behavior. When people are forced to divide their property into smaller and smaller parcels, the heirs of their heirs, crowded off the family land, are more likely to squat elsewhere. Also, when a person cannot prove he owns anything, he is more likely to have to bribe his way through the bureaucracy, or with the help of his neighbors, take the law into his own hands. Worse still, without good law to enforce obligations, society in effect invites the gangsters and terrorists to do the job. My colleagues and I have carried out formal titling campaigns that have displaced terrorists by coopting their role as the area's security force against the real or imagined threat of land expropriation." --The Mystery of Capital Thursday, June 17, 2004
I've got my own ideas about the righteous kick; You can keep your blogwatch, I'd just as soon stay sick... Agenda Bender: "My first reaction to the bumpersticker on the car in front of me was an unthinking grimace. It read, Cast Off the Chains of Market-Hyped Consciousness. But then I realized I actually agree with the sentiment, if not the stolid expression of it. You just have to remember to cast off the chains of anti-market-hyped consciousness while you're at it." The Volokh Conspiracy: Is NRA Radio illegal? More campaign-finance suckosity. "Furthering fatherhood": Very good Matt Daniels column for Father's Day. Via Family Scholars. The post-abortion ministry Rachel's Vineyard has a new site with resources for men. Via After Abortion. And last--on a very different note--Hot pink Moscow disco opens doors to Catholic church. Via Mark Shea. "How can governments find out what the extralegal property arrangements are? That was precisely the question put to me by five members of the Indonesian cabinet. I was in Indonesia to launch the translation of my previous book into Bahasa Indonesian, and they took that opportunity to invite me to talk about how they could find out who owns what among the 90 percent of Indonesians who live in the extralegal sector. Fearing that I would lose my audience if I went into a drawn-out technical explanation on how to structure a bridge between the extralegal and legal sectors, I came up with another way, an Indonesian way, to answer their question. During my book tour, I had taken a few days off to visit Bali, one of the most beautiful places on earth. As I strolled through rice fields, I had no idea where the property boundaries were. But the dogs knew. Every time I crossed from one farm to another, a different dog barked. Those Indonesian dogs may have been ignorant of formal law, but they were positive about which assets their masters controlled. "I told the ministers that Indonesian dogs had the basic information they needed to set up a formal property system. By traveling their city streets and countryside and listening to the barking dogs, they could gradually work upward, through the vine of extralegal representations dispersed throughout their country, until they made contact with the ruling social contract. 'Ah,' responded one of the ministers, 'Jukum Adat (the people's law)!' "Discovering 'the people's law' is how Western nations built their formal property systems. Any government that is serious about reengineering the ruling informal agreements into one national formal property social contract needs to listen to its barking dogs. To integrate all forms of property into a unified system, governments must find out how and why the local conventions work and how strong they actually are." --The Mystery of Capital Tuesday, June 15, 2004
DISTURBING SEARCH REQUESTS: Yes, it's that time again. Here are some of the reasons people stopped by my little corner of the (oddly-shaped) blogosphere. is having a massage a sin find ecstasy in dc Why is the squid fascinating pirate-comic china serious baudrillard AND lauryn hill pictures of wicked hairstyles from black people why did people stereotype that witches have frogs as pets objectivist wedding ceremony vows Campaign Slogans for Liturgy ticked off in Orange Beach hellish aesthete all about harriet tubman and her favorite place to be furiously ranting about injustice eucharist your small eyeball young chicks in art flicks books on airbrushed skulls cat playing with its food poem explain why these dangers exist in the mountains obsessive friendships I love you all. (But I'd like a few words with the affianced Objectivist....) Someday I promise to explain why these dangers exist in the mountains. DISGRUNTLED CATHOLICS: WHAT BROUGHT YOU BACK? An addendum from Father Tucker. His first post is here. The postscript is here; full text follows. You can email him with your replies at DonJimUSA &at& yahoo.it. Everything that follows in this post is by him, not me: As the flip-side to the earlier question, "What keeps inactive Catholics inactive?" I'd like to pose this question: "If you returned to practicing the Faith after an extended absence, what brought you back?" A number of you have included this in your mails to me. This is a question I often ask when someone goes to confession after many years, so I have some thoughts on this already. Put another way: what are the things in the Catholic Church that most attract the fallen-away back and bring in those who have never belonged to her in the first place? THAT STORY: This piece is a must-read. The Torture Memos: Putting The President Above The Law By Stuart Taylor Jr., National Journal ...And was it just a bunch of immoral Bush administration lawyers who "narrowly redefined" torture "so that techniques th |
