Down the Road a Peace

The Battle for Peace--General Anthony Zinni

2006-10-26T02:49:00.000-04:00

General Anthony Zinni gave a thoughtful and powerful talk about the post-Cold War world at the Miller Center for Public Affairs at UVA on October 13th. If you missed the talk or the broadcast on WVPT, video and audio downloads are available at The Miller Center's web site. His comments on the war in Iraq and the disfunctional decision-making practices in the Bush administration were especially hard-hitting. Highly recommended.

URGENT INFORMATION RE: NET NEUTRALITY

2006-10-20T16:51:00.000-04:00

If you use the internet and if you care about free speech, then please read on about how Net Neutrality impacts all of us—and how close we are to losing it.

In the 1990s there was talk of the information superhighway—a new fiber optic network which would be able to handle the flow of information on the internet FAST. I use dial-up, which is based on 19th-century technology (copper wires); broadband is 10-30X faster than dial-up, but it is also based on copper wires.

Fiber optic cables are used around the world. Even in Slovenia consumers have access to much faster internet, and much cheaper, than we do here. In Europe, $40 a month will get you hooked up at 100 megabytes, which is 100X faster than U.S. broadband.

Download the Library of Congress with dial-up --> 82 years
Download the LOC with the fastest fiber optic technology available --> 45 seconds

So, why is the U.S. 10th place in the world when it comes to the speed of our internet service? And by the way, why did our telephone bills increase when the Bell Telephone Company was broken up? Remember how that was going to increase competition and reduce cost?

Back to the 1990s: The phone companies made a little deal with the states in which they promised to build this new information superhighway if the states allowed them huge tax cuts and a rate increase. The profits would roll into creating the infrastructure, and the majority of U.S. households would be hooked up by 2006.

Phone companies took $25 billion in tax write offs
Phone companies raised rates and their revenues increased 128%
Phone companies BUILT NOTHING
State regulators (Utility Commissioners) DID NOTHING to hold phone companies accountable

We paid for a fiber optic network and the phone companies took the money and ran

Fast forward to 2006: Some lawsuits have been filed against the phone companies; many cities have given up entirely on private corporations and are building municipal networks, treating internet access the same as any other infrastructure. The phone (& cable) companies now see the writing on the wall—they won’t let this virtual monopoly slip through their fingers.

But the problem is, they not only want to control the infrastructure, they want to control the internet itself. They want to legally be able to charge different customers different rates. And using rate discrimination and placing some internet sites on slower parts of the network, they’re essentially promoting some sites over others. Sites with a greater advantage (on faster bands) wouldn’t be competing on an equal footing with smaller sites. By making some sites take much longer to load, the phone companies are actually deciding which sites the consumer will be led to. Ultimately, this unfair advantage will put smaller sites out of business—and it’s all done behind the scenes, out of sight of the consumer. They will have a monopoly biased in favor of whomever they choose.

Could Amazon or Google or YouTube have grown from little ventures to the size they are now with such unfair competition? Could bloggers like DailyKos have reached so many? This is grass-roots democracy at its best.

Rate discrimination came up in the 19th century with the telegraph companies (and the railroads). It went to court, and the law of common carriage was established, which says that ports, roads, trains, innkeepers, etc, can’t charge different people different rates for the same service.

Internet neutrality has been in effect since the internet was established. It is, in effect, common carriage; the internet is neutral just as the electric grid is neutral. Placing “speed bumps” in the form of higher costs, etc, would actually inhibit free speech. Right now the internet is a vital grass-roots democratic forum. That’s because it has grown in an open environment at low cost accessible to all equally. Free speech is flourishing.

The movement of ideas is as vital to democracy as the movement of goods is to capitalism.

Phone companies are filing suit against cities, claiming unfair competition. More importantly, they are lobbying state legislatures and Congress. Together, cable and phone companies spend $1.5 million/week to lobby Congress. They successfully passed a bill in the House; in August 2005 the FCC replaced the rules of net neutrality with principles of net neutrality. That’s a green light for the phone companies.

The Senate is poised to act on net neutrality. After the election during the lame duck session of Congress, the Senate will likely try to do away with net neutrality by adding some little amendment to one of the spending bills they have to pass. Don’t let this sneak through Congress without your voice being heard. Write or call your Senators and ask them to RESTORE INTERNET NEUTRALITY and keep competition and innovation, free speech and grass-roots democracy thriving.

Much thanks to Bill Moyers and Public Television [the source for this info] for their lucid and vital show on this issue.

Check out Moyers’ Citizens’ Class for more information and discussion.

Olympia Snowe has presented bill S.2917 in the Senate to restore internet neutrality. It is currently in the Commerce Committee.

See how your Senators feel about internet neutrality.

More great background information on Broadband as a public service.

The related issue of media conglomeration.

Alpha Primer on the AlphaPresidency

2006-10-13T17:57:00.000-04:00

Arrogance; Abduction

Blatant; Black sites; Bagram; Belligerence; Bellicose; Bumbling

Callous; Covert; Clandestine; Cronyism; Catastrophic

Disregard; Detainees; Disaster; Deception

Egregious; Enemy combatants

Felonious; Forced disappearances; Force

Greed; Guantànamo; Ghost detainees

Hubris

Iraq; Irresponsible; Inept; Incompetent

Jack Abramoff

Katrina; Kidnapping

Lies

Militarism

Nuclear; North Korea

Occupation

Prisons

Qaeda

Rendition

Secrecy; Scandal; Salt Pit; Spin

Torture; Threats; Travesty

Unilateral; Unfounded

Violation

War; Warrantless

Y
Z

Your slip is showing...

2006-10-09T03:13:00.000-04:00

Years ago when men were men and women wore dresses, there existed a silent pact between females to alert one another to a common and potentially embarrassing circumstance with a discreet, if cryptic, “It’s snowing down south.” The grateful recipient of this warning would then scurry off to the Ladies’ Room and adjust her slip, rotating in front of the mirror to make sure no white slip showed beneath her hemline.

Times have changed, and Bob Schieffer is certainly not one of the sisterhood (as far as I can tell), but I’d like to alert him to a little slip of his own. On Face the Nation this morning, Bob reported the dire and sobering news that according to the latest poll, President Bush’s job approval rating had dropped to 33%-- “…an all-time lie—low.” Ha! Caught in a truth!

I admit I have a great affection for my mother tongue, so I was delighted to hear, also on Bob’s show, a new appellation for the likes of Congressmen Ney, DeLay, Foley, et al. Rep. Ray LaHood (R—IL) referred several times to fellow Republicans who have been booted out of Congress as ethically-challenged members. LaHood seemed completely devoid of sarcasm, and repeated this term so sincerely that I thought for a minute I was actually seeing the storied Compassionate Conservative. I mean, I was ready to donate to these less-fortunate guys.

Lest I seem like a total pushover, I want to say here that I am not taken in by Bush’s conference on school violence. It is a crass attempt to score politically off of private tragedies, private grief—although it is a much less egregious travesty than the Terry Schaivo effort. The message: Republicans care about children. But not as much as they care about campaign contributions and lobbyists. Not as much as they care about power.

Bush let slip this week another disturbing example of his inordinate drive for power. Barely a month after the Katrina anniversary Bush announced his intent to ignore the job description which Congress wrote for the head of FEMA. Congress wanted the next Brownie to have at least 5 years experience in disaster management. Seems reasonable, especially when you remember the pictures of bloated bodies face down in the floodwaters, lethargic infants, traumatized children, desperate mothers. Bush said: Too bad--I can appoint whomever I want—it says so in the Constitution. So now he remembers we have a Constitution?

What’s with this guy? Is he simply a spoiled rich kid who always got whatever he wanted while others cleaned up the messes he left behind? Is his a stunted, childish ego—Gimme—it’s mine—you can’t have it—you can’t play—I don’t have to—you can’t make me—I can do whatever I want—I am the Decider—that reacts with tantrums and denial when confronted with opposition or, indeed, with reality? Is he determined to usurp his father’s authority, something he can only do by acquiring more and more power because he just doesn’t get the character thing? Or does he imagine himself a Napoleon, an Alexander, a Caesar—or maybe J.C. himself? I still consider impeachment an eminently reasonable remedy; but, hey, that’s just me.

By the way, back when men were men and women wore dresses, when I had matured to about the age of a boy page I developed my own response to the slip problem. Whenever someone told me my slip was showing, I replied, “It’s supposed to show: it’s a Freudian slip.”

© Cordon dēmos

The Badness of King George

2006-09-30T03:13:00.000-04:00

Whew, what a week. A National Intelligence Estimate leak caused an uproar because it spelled out what we already knew—that the war in Iraq has made us less safe. King George was MAD, really MAD—his upper lip even twitched! So he released a few more lines from the NIE, proving (he said) that the first leak was politically motivated. Or, proving that we’re less safe and we’re going to be even more less safe if things keep going the way they are in Iraq; i.e., if we “stay the course.”

Congress stepped up to the plate to prove they could be TOTT [Tough on Terror, Too]. After some show of protest which lulled a few of us into trusting that wisdom would prevail (after all, some things really are more important than being re-elected; some things are worth fighting—even dying—for), the Senate followed the example of the House and passed the infamous Torture Bill. The Yeas were given free washable tattoos to distribute to their campaign workers back home which read: TOTT [Tough on Torture, Too]. Congressman Mark Foley asked for extra tattoos for his many young friends. I don’t know about you, but I love free stuff.

Bill Clinton got a little free press this week (Remember him? White lie, blue dress, Ken Starr?) for wagging his finger at Chris Wallace during an interview on Fox News Sunday. Geesh—no wonder reporters don’t like to ask questions. Kudos, Clinton! Bring it on!

I watched the House Committee on Energy and Commerce question HP officials about why they didn’t see all the red flags, all the red flags, how could they not have seen all the red….Hello--? House Committee person--? Anybody home--? Doesn’t Mark say something about seeing the red flag in your neighbor’s eye while missing the flagpole in your own? [NTS: check with Mark.]

This week began with some unexpected insight into Condi Rice’s psyche. Under Couric’s relentless questioning on 60 Minutes, Condi admitted that she’d confused Al Qaeda with the KKK. If only they wouldn’t all wear white. Life was so much simpler in those old westerns—the bad guys wore black. Way to go, Katie!

By the end of the week there were leaks from Bob Woodward’s upcoming book [State of Denial] which provided new insights into Fearless Leader, a.k.a. King TOT George. It seems Nixon’s old Rasputin has the George’s royal ear—and has it regularly—and whispers therein: stay the course, stay the course. [Am I allowed a question here? Who the hell is running this ship?]

Just to recap: the Iron Maiden is fighting the KKK, Boy TOT Royal thinks he’s fighting Viet Nam [had me fooled; I was sure it was Armageddon], and Rumplefeldskin? Maybe he’s the one fighting the fascists.

Jeez—no wonder we’re in deep s**t.

For more on The Badness of King George, tune in Sunday at 7 p.m. to watch 60 Minutes on CBS.

© Cordon dēmos

THE TERRORISTS HAVE WON Impeach George W. Bush

2006-09-29T14:03:00.000-04:00

The score was 253 to 168 in the House, 65 to 34 in the Senate.
The Game? Selling out Democracy.

George W. Bush has preached repeatedly since 9/11 that the terrorists hate Democracy. They want to destroy our way of life. Simplistic, yes. But according to our President, this is the essence of the Terrorist Threat.

During the last five years, George W. has done everything in his power (a power which he has been hell-bent on increasing) to oblige the terrorists in their Attack against Democracy. By commission and omission, legally and illegally, in secrecy and—when that failed—defiantly, our President has ostensibly “fought terrorism” while perversely using the 9/11 attacks as an opportunity to centralize executive power, wage a war of revenge against Saddam Hussein, and impose the agenda of a right-wing minority on the majority of the American people.

George W. has shown the utmost contempt for our laws; one begins to suspect that he has, in fact, always considered himself above the law. He has disregarded and abridged our civil liberties; he has cynically withheld, distorted or manufactured truth to suit his purpose. He sought advice from counsel on how to circumvent the Geneva Conventions, and as truth inevitably leaked about his administration and its crimes, he sought legislation to protect himself and others from prosecution for War Crimes.

Now, with the collusion of the Republican Congress, George W. Bush has subverted the Constitution. He has done away with the right of habeas corpus for an ill-defined class of people. Habeas corpus, the right to question why you are being held, is a most basic and most precious right which has come down to us from the Magna Charta, signed into law almost 800 years ago.

And, as if this betrayal of our Democracy weren’t enough, Congress has cowardly caved in to Bush’s campaign for torture. Who said our Constitutional Rights weren’t subject to majority vote? The 109th Congress just proved them wrong. Be proud, America; cruel and unusual is now open to interpretation. And who gets to decide? The Great Decider.

More than once before today the impeachment of this president has been seriously discussed. I can’t remember a more critical, more dangerous threat to our Democracy than the policies of George W. Bush—and I lived through Watergate. This last and, I hope, final affront to our values and our laws, to the Constitution which George W. swore to uphold and protect, demands to be answered. The answer requires no new or tortuously-convoluted legislation, no spin doctors or smoke and mirrors. The answer to such egregious malfeasance, incompetence and abuse of power is already enshrined in our law. Procedures are in place.

I’m calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush.

© Cordon dēmos

What's being said in the lead-up to defeat...

2006-09-28T20:30:00.000-04:00

History will not absolve us

McCain Torture Compromise Bill Allows Sodomy, Rape of Prisoners

Senator Reid's Statement

Our obligation to treat others with dignity...

2006-09-27T01:27:00.000-04:00

[O]ur obligation to treat others with dignity is not conditional on what sort of person stands before us.
...
A free and civilized society is distinguished from a barbaric and oppressive society by the degree to which it treats a human being as a human being.
...
The Court determined that were the law to permit torture – the ultimate violation of human dignity – it would betray its own raison d'etre.

No, these comments are not from a late-night speech in the U.S. Senate in opposition to S.3930--the Military Commissions Act of 2006 [aka The Torture Bill]. Barring an act of conscience resulting in a filibuster, this bill will probably be passed today (Thursday, 28 September 2006).

These statements are from a remarkable document by Rabbi Melissa Weintraub, Kvod Ha-Briot: Human Dignity in Jewish Sources, Human Degradation in American Military Custody posted on the website of Rabbis for Human Rights--North America. You can download the pdf version (25 pp); it's definitely worth reading in full. In fact, email a copy to your Senators; perhaps one of them will have the courage to read it into the Record.

© Cordon dēmos

Read It Here

On Rice, Jefferson, Public Service, Farming, Justice, Integrity and Ethics

2006-09-26T00:52:00.000-04:00

Was the Condi Rice interview on 60 Minutes last night the beginning of a (secret) plan to rehabilitate the Secretary of State for a presidential run in ’08? I know that she has pretty much sort of almost basically in a way kind of denied she’ll run; but heck, she denies a lot of things.

Think of it: a Rice/Allen ticket. Or, god help us and the Dems, Rice/Gonzales. How about Rice/Graham? Seriously, this gets seriouser and seriouser. That last ticket would be hard to beat. I do respect Lindsey Graham, and when I heard him on Meet the Press say (re: his stand vs. the President’s torture bill) that some things are more important than whether Lindsay Graham gets re-elected…well, frankly I wished at least one Democrat had the guts to do that.

Speaking of Rice, here’s an interesting tidbit: Thomas Jefferson smuggled a sack of the stuff out of Lombardy in 1787 thinking to be of service to the rice farmers of South Carolina. He had a deep and abiding interest in agriculture and a genuine desire to improve his country and the lives of his compatriots by whatever means—through a plant, a book, a mechanical contraption or a far-reaching ideal. Okay, so the rice farmers weren’t thrilled; their own rice was superior to Italy’s Piedmont rice, and they feared cross-pollination between the two species would adversely affect commerce. But, no harm done; thankfully, because smuggling rice out of Lombardy in 1787 was punishable by death! Ah, the selflessness of some!

On the subject of farmers and death, Walter Pincus of the Washington Post reported Saturday that the Pentagon is farming out the training of 1200 new detainee interrogators next year to meet demand in the Middle East. A little proper training couldn’t hurt (ooooo—forgot about that torture thing). Well, I mean job training, a sense of professional cadre, a solid grounding in the rules of the Geneva Convention—this would go a long way toward preventing another Abu Ghraib. And it would free up the CIA interrogators to…uh…go back to…doing…uh...whatever the Decider decides is, in his judgment, appropriate to do…in secret, and with impunity.

Wasn’t there a flap a while back about the penchant of the Rumsfeld Pentagon to outsource responsibility and accountability? And how about this after-the-fact CYA bill to protect war criminals from prosecution? Just where does the buck stop? Really, one could become very cynical about the integrity of justice under the Bush regime.

Integrity? That reminds me: did you hear the one about how U.S. long grain rice lost its integrity? Seems that Bayer CropScience was experimenting with genetically modified rice—planted a little here, a little there, all at the prescribed distance from our Homeland’s commercial crops. Then those little Rice Krispies guys (or someone with a very large market), pondering the reluctance of the Europeans and others to buy genetically altered food, told Bayer to knock it off. So they did. But they forgot to tell Mother Nature.

Now the contaminated U.S. long grain rice is illegal in the EU; Japan has banned it. Mexico and the Central American countries are undecided. And Bayer? Well, last month Bayer filed what might be called an after-the-fact CYA petition for USDA approval of the errant rice species. Once approved, the bastardized rice will no longer be illegal in the U.S., and Bayer may thus be able to shirk any financial responsibility and accountability. Which would leave—let’s see—the rice farmers holding the sack. Don’t you love how ethics trickles down from the top?

© Cordon dēmos

References: Walter Pincus, As Army Adds Interrogators, It Outsources Training , Washington Post, Saturday, 23 September 2006; A14
Rick Weiss, Gene-Altered Profit-Killers, Washington Post, Thursday, 21 September 2006

Imagining America...Parsing torture

2006-09-23T14:30:00.000-04:00

Is this the week that disappear* officially becomes a verb in America? Imagine this: the President and the Congress have reached a compromise on torture! Shall we all gather with our children at Sunday services and give thanks that murder, eye gouging, electric drills and acid baths are frowned upon by our righteous government? And shall we give thanks also that our patriots--who were only doing what they thought was right when they questioned some suspects so energetically that they, the suspects, died--that these patriots will not ever have to face charges for war crimes?

The secret CIA prisons will continue. Rendition will, I suppose, continue. The most egregious, most blatant acts of violence against detainees will now be (but weren’t they always?) forbidden. Americans do not torture, as anyone who listens to Condoleezza Rice knows: U.S. personnel do not torture prisoners. What about prisoners sent to other countries? U.S. personnel anywhere in the world are covered by the ban on torture. So no more prisoners no matter where they’re held will be tortured? U.S. personnel are forbidden to torture prisoners.

Déjà vu.

I did not have sexual relations with that woman….well, that depends on how you define sexual relations.

U.S. personnel do not torture prisoners….well, that depends on how you define torture: how much pain is too much? At what point does the physical or psychological suffering imposed become inhumane? Not sure? No problem—we’ll leave that to the president’s judgment.

Or maybe it depends on how you define prisoners: are they prisoners or detainees or illegal enemy combatants or terrorists or evil-doers?

Or on how you define U.S. personnel: is a non-American serving in our armed forces constrained by the ban on torture? Is a contractor interrogating prisoners constrained by the ban? Is a foreign government or foreign prison officials who host these secret prisons constrained by the ban? Or an American on the payroll of some foreign entity as a consultant or advisor—is s/he, technically, U.S. personnel?

In seven years we have gone from parsing sex acts to parsing acts of torture, and no one is raising any serious objection.

In seven years we have gone from a passionate (and sanctimonious) legal attack against a man’s personal moral failings to a half-hearted discussion of just how to torture a person so that it can be argued that it wasn’t really torture, and no one—no mother or grandmother or doctor or clergyperson—is screaming in horror or marching in the streets.

Who are we? What have we become? What kind of bargain are we making, and with whom, when we barter our souls, our moral integrity, our identity as a nation for a vague promise of “security”?

Before our representatives get back to legislating English as our official language perhaps they should think about banning legalese—that terrible cleverness that cloaks intent and twists meaning until the true import of a bill is not understood by the people until it is safely passed into law.

Just what is contained in the 92 pages of this Military Commission/Detainee Treatment Bill that it needs to be so hastily passed into law? Or rather, what is hidden in these pages? Or is it what has been omitted, left unsaid, which will someday damn us--the carefully crafted ellipses?

Democracy was never meant to be so clever. Or so I like to imagine.

© Cordon dēmos

*Ask an Argentinian what happens when disappear becomes a verb. Or, ask Canadian Maher Arar.