October 2007 Archives

I know there are a number of people that couldn't watch last night's debate. And then there are others that couldn't stomach watching last night's debate. I sympathize. How nice of Josh Marshall and the TPM crew to put together a video highlight's reel.

Here's the linky.

Watch. Discuss. Best part, worst part..tell us what you think.

Most of all, what do you think the debate format should be in the future, because this format sucks. Look, I may not know a hell of alot about how a presidential candidates debate should be conducted, but i'm pretty certain it shouldn't include any gameshow juvenality like "The Lightning Round" of questions.

Our political discourse is ruled by adolescent dimwits.

The shrill one correctly identifies part of the problem:

We’re doomed.

The news media seem determined to destroy the republic:

In all, 63% of the campaign stories focused on political and tactical aspects of the campaign. That is nearly four times the number of stories about the personal backgrounds of the candidates (17%) or the candidates’ ideas and policy proposals (15%). And just 1% of stories examined the candidates’ records or past public performance, the study found.

And:

The press’ focus on fundraising, tactics and polling is even more evident if one looks at how stories were framed rather than the topic of the story. Just 12% of stories examined were presented in a way that explained how citizens might be affected by the election, while nearly nine-out-of-ten stories (86%) focused on matters that largely impacted only the parties and the candidates.

Krugman leaves out the most annoying of all bull**** media coverage, so called character issues.

You know what they used to call character issues? Gossip. Some enterprising piece of crap huckster producer decided that the oh-so-serious news fluffers couldn't be seen passing out gossip, so they renamed it character issues. And it's not just gossip cum character issues. values voters became the neat new label for the American Taliban rightwing lunatic fringe seeking to highjack the Consitution by abusing religion and the tenets of Christianity.

This is the technique employed by the right to give the most scurrilous accusations a patina of petty legitimacy. The braindead media aids and abets this disgusting and deceptive process by adopting the language, the frame and the narratives put forth, thereby completely legitimizing them, instead of questioning the veracity of what the frames imply.

Worse yet, they make the irrelevant, relevant, and the real information people need to make an informed decision as a voter, is completely lost and/or overlooked.

The news media: Dangerous to the Republic--now more than ever.

Aidan Delgado is the son of a diplomat. He grew up in various countries, and learned about Buddhism in Thailand and learned Arabic in Egypt. After a year of college as a religion major, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve on the morning of 9/11/01. At the time, he had not heard anything about the World Trade Center Attacks. He was deployed in 2003 as a specialist in Nasiriyah and at Abu Graib. As he stayed there, his skepticism and then opposition to the war grew. He sought conscientious objector status and finished his tour of duty, with an honorable discharge.

Now he has written a book called The Sutras of Abu Graib. It is his story and he recounts his struggles and the dehumanizing effects of war. He examines his Buddhist beliefs against a context of prisoner abuse and brutality. He describes his effort to hold on to his identity while life is falling apart around him. Even before he left the United States, he heard an officer joke about heading off to Iraq to kill ragheads and burn turbans, to much laughter. Knowing quite a lot about the cultures of the Middle East, he was skeptical and what he witnessed in Iraq only fueled this, as when soldiers carried bottles that they would then smash over the heads of detainees.

Aidan believes lack of understanding of Arab or Muslim culture, combined with war zone tension and fear, contribute to rage and violence. For his part, he handed his weapon to his commander and told him that he was not going to fight or kill, that the way was wrong and he'd finish his job as a mechanic but would not hurt anyone. He was called a traitor or coward and ostracized for the duration.

Here is an excerpt from his book, which I am in the process of reading, and which was of special interest as I am Buddhist:

Within a week of arriving at Abu Ghraib, I see the veneer peel away from something ugly. Here and now, in this dismal place, I understand that what was set in motion in Nasiriyah is about to gain a terrible momentum. All the violence and hate that's been building will be unleashed, now that the guards have the Iraqis under their thumbs. The November "riot" is not the start of violence but the fulfillment of it, a culmination of the dark promise of Nasiriyah. In a way, it's the blossoming of the seeds of 9/11, of all the partisan speeches and sideways glances at Muslims in the airport. I begin to see the dark and shameful flipside of the occupation: brutality, racism, killing… I feel a vast and terrible karma set itself in motion: a hateful and destructive wheel at last coming full circle. The four killing in November aren't the end… they're only a portent of what is to come.

Aidan was also part of the film "Soldiers of Conscience," which chronicles conscientious objectors in the Iraq War, from West Point graduates to low ranking reservists.
Aidan's book is available through Beacon Press.
Aidan was interviewed in the New York Times.
Aidan's website

Mind blowing synchronistic coincidence! As I finished this post, I happened to go to Docudharma site (friends from ArtKos) and found this! wonderful book review with photos by "On the Bus."Aidan also was on-line at the same site last night! I hope that this worthy book finds the large audience out there that needs to find out about it!
transcript of on-line appearance
(photo above, D. Grieser; photo below, self-portrait by Aidan Delgado in front of one of Saddam Hussein's many palaces)

The Charlotte Observer published the results of their analysis of a couple internal VA reports on the timeliness of care being offered to Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans on 10-21-2007. Here are some of the highlights of the article about their analysis which is detailed in an interactive feature on their site:

The analysis of 283,000 recent outpatient appointments showed that the VA scheduled 93 percent within 30 days, a key measure of the agency's ability to meet demand. That left 20,500 waiting longer.

At issue: Patients needing critical care accounted for 10.5 percent of total appointments scheduled, but 20 percent of those with longer waits.

The Observer's findings could signal that the VA is struggling to care for the neediest of the new veterans.

...Most VA hospitals, including all six in the Carolinas, showed lags in delivering outpatient care for serious problems, according to the newspaper's analysis. For example:

• Twenty-four percent of appointments nationwide for traumatic brain injury care exceeded the 30-day mark this summer.

• At the Salisbury VA hospital, 61 percent of appointments for the seriously wounded were scheduled more than 30 days out this summer, one of the worst records nationwide.

• At the Charleston VA in South Carolina, 13 of 14 patients slated to be seen for brain injury waited more than a month. At 93 percent, that was the worst record nationwide.

Day One of the Kidnapping of the Car:

Four students from Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, hopped in a car at midnight Saturday. Environmentalists and activists, they decided to make the eleven-hour journey to Washington, DC to get some training in nonviolent actions. The workshops that were held at the Westminster Church in SW D.C. were in preparation for No War No Warming, a "day of intervention" on Monday 22 October. But the students did not plan to get arrested on Monday; they were hoping to hand out leaflets and head back in the early afternoon.

After they arrived, they parked the car in the church lot and went inside for the sessions. At about 5:30, two of them, Lenna and Kendra, decided to go for a walk. Since the neighborhood was unfamiliar, they placed their wallets (including Kendra's engagement ring) in the car, which also contained passports, clothing, food, and Lenna's laptop.

Five minutes later, the police pulled in and began to tow the car. When Lenna came upon the scene, the police told her to hand over the keys or they would strip her transmission. They did not explain why they were towing the car, not did they give her any paperwork to verify that they were taking possession of the vehicle and all of the contents therein.

Lenna offered to go to the police station, to be searched, questioned, or to merely remain with the vehicle until it could be proven to be an innocent victim of circumstance. No dice.

Richard came upon her a few minutes later, weeping. She told him the car was in her father's name and he did not know she was in D.C. He asked her what she was going to do; she and the others had planned to sleep at the church. But the church was cold and the floors were hard and the ambiance less than welcoming. So, being the good Dad he is, he invited Lenna, Kendra, Jamie, and Adam to our newly-emptied house, where showers, beds, and food could be found.

Day Two:

Lenna was on the phone early, tracing the car to the Impound lot and finding the detective in charge of the case. She discovered that another car with Ontario plates had been involved in an incident earlier Sunday, involving the liberation of some food products to the homeless. That event had taken place long before this car had arrived.

Day Three:

Laundry.

The house hits a peanut butter crisis. The students go to the Canadian Embassy and discover that if they had been charged with a crime and sent to GITMO, there would be nothing the Canadian government could or would do. This is not reassuring, but if they can get some items faxed to establish identity and citizenship, temporary passage could be arranged across the border. Lenna spends another 14 hours on the phone trying to discover info on the car, Richard calls the Mayor's office, the Corporate Counsel, the ACLU, Jonathan, and anyone else he can think of; the students' parents are now involved as well. The police behave badly: Lenna is informed she will not be getting the car back anytime soon.

The college newspaper interviews the Ontario Four:

The Laurier Newspaper

Day Four:

Trips to the Western Union office to pick up wired money and the Courthouse to try and get the warrant. The ACLU is on the case and faxes are finally flying. No one knows what will happen or when, but all agree the students are being screwed.

We ask them to write about their perspectives on the United States:

There is so much misinformation out there that leeches into the realm of conventional wisdom. Joe Miller writes about cognitive science and whether it is worth the time to fact-check, since cognitive research and centuries-old philosophy both indicate that it may not do as much good as it should.

I had to share this article, since I really DID think for all this time that George W. Bush had the lowest IQ of any president who ever lived! (& a nice excuse to use the "dunce" picture, even though my favorite myth has now been debunked.)

I have taken the liberty of boldfacing the major scientific claims and philosophical positions. Pay particular attention toward the end, when false information from the last election cycle is discussed.

{reprinted with permission from factcheck.org}

"Cognitive Science and FactCheck.org, or Why We (Still) Do What We Do"
October 17, 2007
by Joe Miller report from factcheck.org

Have you heard about how Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet? What about how Iraq was responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center? Or maybe the one about how George W. Bush has the lowest IQ of any U.S. president ever? Chances are pretty good that you might even believe one (or more) of these claims. And yet all three are false. At FactCheck.org our stock in trade is debunking these sorts of false or misleading political claims, so when the Washington Post told us that we might just be making things worse, it really made us stop and think.

A Sept. 4 article in the Post discussed several recent studies that all seemed to point to the same conclusion: Debunking myths can backfire because people tend to remember the myth but forget what the debunker said about it. As Hebrew University psychologist Ruth Mayo explained to the Post, “If you think 9/11 and Iraq, this is your association, this is what comes in your mind. Even if you say it is not true, you will eventually have this connection with Saddam Hussein and 9/11.” That leaves myth busters like us with a quandary: Could we, by exposing political malarkey, just be cementing it in voters’ minds? Are we contributing to the problem we hope to solve?

Possibly. Yet we think that what we do is still necessary. And we think the facts back us up.

The Post story wasn’t all that surprising to those who follow the findings of cognitive science research, which tells us much of our thinking happens just below the level of consciousness. The more times we hear two particular bits of information associated, for example, the more likely it is that we’ll recall those bits of information. This is how we learn multiplication tables – and why we still know the Big Mac jingle.

Our brains also take some surprising shortcuts. In a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Virginia Tech psychologist Kimberlee Weaver shows that the more easily we recall something the more likely we are to think of it as being true. It’s a useful shortcut since, typically, easily recalled information really is true. But combine this rule with the brain’s tendency to better remember bits of information that are repeated frequently, and we can run into trouble: We’re likely to believe anything we hear repeated frequently enough. At FactCheck.org we’ve noted how political spin-masters exploit this tendency ruthlessly, repeating dubious or false claims endlessly until, in the minds of many voters, they become true. Making matters worse, a study by Hebrew University's Mayo shows that people often forget “denial tags.” Thus many people who hear the phrase “Iraq does not possess WMDs” will remember “Iraq” and “possess WMDs” while forgetting the “does not” part.

The counter to this requires an understanding of how it is that the brain forms beliefs.

In 1641, French philosopher René Descartes suggested that the act of understanding an idea comes first; we accept the idea only after evaluating whether or not it rings true. Thirty-six years later, the Dutch philosopher Baruch de Spinoza offered a very different account of belief formation. Spinoza proposed that understanding and believing happen simultaneously. We might come to reject something we held to be true after considering it more carefully, but belief happens prior to the examination. On Spinoza’s model, the brain forms beliefs automatically. Rejecting a belief requires a conscious act.

Unfortunately, not everyone bothers to examine the ideas they encounter. On the Cartesian model, that failure results in neither belief nor disbelief. But on the Spinozan model we end up with a lot of unexamined (and often false) convictions.

One might rightly wonder how a 17th-century philosophical dispute could possibly be relevant to modern myth-busting. Interestingly, though, Harvard psychologist Daniel T. Gilbert designed a series of experiments aimed specifically at determining whether Descartes or Spinoza got it right. Gilbert’s verdict: Spinoza is the winner. People who fail to carry through the evaluation process are likely to believe whatever statements they read. Gilbert concludes that “[p]eople do have the power to assent, to reject, and to suspend their judgment, but only after they have believed the information to which they have been exposed.”

Gilbert’s studies show that, initially at least, we do believe everything we hear. But it’s equally obvious that we reject many of those beliefs, sometimes very quickly and other times only after considerable work. We may not be skeptical by nature, but we can nonetheless learn to be skeptical. Iowa State’s Gary Wells has shown that social interaction with those who have correct information is often sufficient to counter false views. Indeed, a study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology by the University of Southern California’s Peter Kim shows that meeting a charge (regardless of its truth or falsity) with silence increases the chances that others will believe the claim. Giving false claims a free pass, in other words, is more likely to result in false beliefs (a notion with which 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry, who didn’t immediately respond to accusations by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth about his Vietnam record, is all too familiar).

So, yes, a big ad budget often trumps the truth, but that doesn’t mean we should go slumping off in existential despair. You see, the Spinozan model shows that we will believe whatever we hear only if the process of evaluating those beliefs is somehow short-circuited. Humans are not helpless automatons in the face of massive propaganda. We may initially believe whatever we hear, but we are fully capable of evaluating and rejecting beliefs that turn out not to be accurate. Our brains don’t do this naturally; maintaining a healthy skeptical attitude requires some conscious effort on our part. It also requires a basic understanding of logic – and it requires accurate information. That’s where this Web site comes in.

If busting myths has some bad consequences, allowing false information to flow unchecked is far worse. Facts are essential if we are to overcome our brain’s tendency to believe everything it hears. As a species, we’re still pretty new to that whole process. Aristotle invented logic just 2,500 years ago – a mere blink of the eye when compared with the 200,000 years we Homo sapiens relied on our brain’s reflex responses to avoid being eaten by lions. We still have a long way to go. Throw in a tsunami of ads and Internet bluster and the path gets even harder, which is why we’re delighted to find new allies at PolitiFact.com and the Washington Post’s FactChecker. We’ll continue to bring you the facts. And you can continue to use them wisely.

Sources:
Descartes, Rene. Principles of Philosophy. Tr. John Cottingham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985 [1644].

Gilbert, Daniel T., Romin W. Tafarodi and and Patrick S. Malone. "You Can't Not Believe Everything Your Read." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65.2 (1993): 221-233.

Kim, Peter H., et al. "Silence Speaks Volumes: The Effectiveness of Reticence in Comparison to Apology and Denial for Responding to Integrity- and Competence-Based Trust Violations. Journal of Applied Psychology 92.4 (2007): 893-908.

Mayo, Ruth, Yaacov Schul and Eugene Burnstein. "'I Am Not Guilty' vs. 'I Am Innocent': Successful Negation May Depend on the Schema Used for its Encoding." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 40.4 (2004): 433-449.

Spinoza, Baruch de. Ethics. Tr. Edwin Curley. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994 [1677].

Weaver, Kimberlee, et al. "Inferring the Popularity of an Opinion from its Familiarity: A Repetitive Voice Can Sound Like a Chorus." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92.5 (2007): 821-833.

Wright, E.F. and Gary L. Wells. "Does Group Discussion Attenuate the Dispositional Bias?" Journal of Applied Psychology 15 (1985): 531-546.

(Note: These aren't internet links, but will require going to the library)

As I sit here on a bench, a group of polar bears is running past me, with signs that say "No War, No Warming". A group of policemen on bikes is chasing them.

The kids who shut down Independence Ave. this morning are arrested and on the bus, but other groups are behind them, each doing a different, and often, creative action.

It is not going to be a typical Monday in the Capitol City.

The Women in Pink are holding court, several dressed as Condi and Cheney, dancing in their prison garb.

The polar bears have a rap song, I'll try to get the lyrics.

I haven't seen effective action like this, since... wellllll.... 1977? Clamshell?

Will keep adding photos.

UPDATE: As police walked by escorting a polar bear contingent, I overhead one of the radios crackle: "Twenty on bikes heading east on Constitution."

Last weekend, my seester surprised me with a trip to Vegas for my 45th birthday. It was fabulous, in that special, Vegas only, glitzie-no-holds-barred way.

But one cannot really go to Vegas without being struck by the sheer volume of money moving through that desert city. Virtually all of the major casino-hotels are expanding. Adding 1,000 rooms or 3,000 rooms, or their own personal themed retail space. Ceasars is roughly twice the size it was the last time I was there.

Yesterday, I spent another precious-few hours of my life inside the Halls of Congress, which allowed me yet another in a series of anthropological investigations into the power structures and decision-making styles of Our Leaders.

Unfortunately, the person I observed most closely was Mr. Dana Rohrabacher (CA) and, instructive as it was, I was reminded of my anthropologist-friend who cautioned her students to make sure that when they chose a culture to study, that they genuinely liked the food, because they would be eating a lot of it.

The background first:

Many of you here have heard me say this, or write it, but it bears reiterating:

The House is like a high school. The Senate is like a country club. The House is a raucous, fast-paced place. The Halls are noisy at times, just like a high school between classes, but even when they are relatively quiet, there are folks running around, and bells can ring precipitously, causing much haste. In hearings, notes are passed, Members stand up often and move in and out, information is whispered, all in a culture of rapid shifting of gears. The Members understand they have two years to get re-elected or bail. The stakes are high, but the attention-span is short.

In the Senate, the same activities take place, but it is a much more sedate and formal place. The pace is often glacial and the tone polite and respectful. Whereas Members will make faces in House hearings as others are talking, such is rare in Senate hearings. The smoke-filled back rooms of the Senate are much like drawing rooms of old, whereas the back rooms of the House are smaller, noisier and a little more like the boy's bathrooms in my suburban high school, if not in decor, in ambiance.

This story raises some interesting issues that will no doubt become part of the Maine Senate race between Susan Collins (R-ME) and Democratic challenger Tom Allen.

PORTLAND, Maine — After an outbreak of pregnancies among middle school girls, education officials in this city have decided to allow a school health center to make birth control pills available to girls as young as 11.

King Middle School will become the first middle school in Maine to make a full range of contraception available, including birth control pills and patches. Condoms have been available at King's health center since 2000.

Students need parental permission to access the school's health center. But treatment is confidential under state law, which allows the students to decide whether to inform their parents about the services they receive.

There are no national figures on how many middle schools provide such services. Most middle schoolers range in age from 11 to 13.

This raises some troubling issues, not the least of which is, what might be the long term health consequences for young females taking the pill? And I also wonder, what is the basis for the apparent belief that the reason why middle school girls get pregnant is a lack of access to sufficient array birth control choices?

What do you think of this?

One last thing--Does anyone else find the phrase, "An outbreak of pregnancies", offensive? The writer here uses the term to imply that pregnancy, if it occurs among a certain age group, is to be perceived as some sort of disease. It seems to me that the writer could have just as easily used the phrase, "A sharp rise in pregnancies". It's both more accurate and less perjoratively offensive.

Let's hear from you folks.

When someone asks you to give them an example of the Executive Branch of our government abusing the privileges granted them to protect the public, be sure to point to this latest and stunning example by the Bush Administration:

From AP via TPM:

Three telecommunications companies have declined to tell Congress whether they gave U.S. intelligence agencies access to Americans' phone and computer records without court orders, citing White House objections and national security.

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell "formally invoked the state secrets privilege to prevent AT&T from either confirming or denying" any details about intelligence programs, AT&T general counsel Wayne Watts wrote in a letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Qwest and Verizon also declined to answer, saying the federal government has prohibited them from providing information, discussing or referring to any classified intelligence activities.

I'll explain more below about the derivation of this privilege and how it is usually invoked, but the point is this: Do we really think that the State Secrets Privilege was invented in order to keep members of Congress from knowing our secrets?

Of course it wasn't. But that is exactly how it is being used.

The State Secrets Privilege (invented by SCOTUS in 1953) is being used by the Executive Branch to thwart oversight by Congress, particularly the oversight being done by Congressman John Conyers' (D-MI) House Committee on the Judiciary. Just as bad, if not worse, is the real possibility that it's being invoked in an attempt to thwart the criminal justice system in the appeals case of US v. Nacchio.

Or put another way, let's please ask DNI McConnell who are the leakers/traitors in Congress he is worried about? Is it maybe these guys?

So far, the White House has refused comment, but here's the contact number listed on the DNI website,703-733-8600. Maybe you want to give them a call and ask.

-----------
On background of the State Secrets Privilege:

The State Secrets Privilege was the result of a 1948 plane crash of an Air Force B-29 bomber in Georgia. Three widows of airmen killed in that crash sued the federal government for information about the crash site. The Air Force asserted in the landmark case, US v. Reynolds (345, US1, 1953) , that there are "military matters which, in the interest of national security, should not be divulged," not even to a federal court. The Supreme Court agreed and provided the basis for what is now known as the State Secrets Privilege.

At the heart of the matter now, is the issue of scope. What is the privilege meant to keep secret and from whom?

Reynolds makes no mention whatsoever of using privilege to keep national security matters secret from members of Congress. Further, Jonathan Turley, Georgetown Law professor and plaintiff's counsel in a 1996 case which visited the issue of privilege raised in Reynolds (Frost v. Perry, 1996), makes clear in this interview with NPR (2004), that the high court clearly means to intepret the State Secrets Privilege in the narrowest terms possible:

What the court said was that trial judges needed to consider privilege arguments by the government, but the court also said that courts should struggle to remove only that evidence that clearly would violate national security. So the case itself really didn't give a hint of what it would become, because over the decades that followed, courts began to simply allow the privilege to be used almost unilaterally. A lot of district judges, frankly, don't want the headache of national security cases. And so when the government comes in with a silver bullet and says dismiss the whole case, a lot of judges are not complaining much.

Recently, US v. Reynolds has been challenged in court. Why? Because declassified documents obtained by the widows' heirs show that the Air Force lied in its affidavits. There were no issues of national security whatsoever in any Air Force documents relating to the crash. The reports, denied to the widows, did say however, that the aircraft was unsafe to fly. As a result, the widows' heirs petitioned the Supreme Court for a Writ of Error Coram Nobis to remedy fraud upon the court. In this case, Herring v. United States, the petitioners ask that the court vacate its original ruling.

Unsurprisingly, SCOTUS declined to grant certiorary. The petitioners then filed in federal district court. The Justice Department, under Ashcroft and then Gonzales, moved to dismiss. The case was argued on July 15, 2005, before the Circuit judges of the Third District of the United States. The appeal was denied on September 25, 2005, with the opinion being written by Circuit Judge Aldisert for the two person majority. The other judge in the majority was Samuel Anthony Alito. In 2006 Judge Samuel Anthony Alito became an Associate Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States.

To be clear, the petitioners did not seek to change the laws or ruling for which Reynolds has been foundational. But in thinking it over, is there a better metaphor for the way the Bush Administration views the rule of law than this? They are abusing a privilege, which is fundamentally based on a lie perpetrated by the government to avoid responsibility, in order to keep things secret from Congress.

The Supreme Court's willful blindness to correct its mistake has led to an unprecidented expansion of the Bush Administrations's use of the State Secrets Privilege, and the predictable abuse of privilege by them which has followed. The privilege is now a rubber stamp for keeping anything secret the Bush Administration wants covered up, whether that which is being covered up is criminal, or merely embarassing.

It's past time for the courts to correct this wrong and spell out precisely what the State Secrets Privilege is and what co-equal branch of government reviews it. Since the Supreme Court invented it, surely it fall upon them to explain and interpret it more fully.

In short, the question before the court is this: What information is the State Secrets Privilege meant to keep secret, from whom, and what recourse does the public have to prevent is willful abuse by another branch of government?

cross posted at Daily Kos, under the title, "The Bush Administration Abusers.

The lawlessness of the rulers of our country is on full display as the Congress considers whether to grant immunity to the nation's telephone companies for their blatant violations of the law (with the exception of Qwest) by providing the government with warrant-less access to untold numbers of telephone records.

By rulers, I mean the multi-million-dollar salaried CEOs of some of the world's largest telecoms, the leadership of the Democratic House and Senate, and of course, President Bush and the executive branch, especially the so-called Justice Department.

Are we all Good Americans?

Let's say you're the CEO of a telecom, an industry where the federal government doles out multi-billion dollar contracts. And the nice man from the government walks in to your office and says, oh by the way, we need to do some wiretaps right now, we don't have time to get warrants, and thank you very much.

If you're the head of Verizon or AT&T, no problem.

First a little perspective. It's not as if the government has had any difficulty getting warrants. According to the Washington Post today, Verizon "turned over information a total of 94,000 times to federal authorities armed with a subpoena or court order" between January 2005 to September 2007.

But that wasn't good enough for George Bush. During this same time period, Verizon turned over records 720 times without a warrant.

How does a Good American justify this kind of behavior? Here's what AT&T senior executive vice president and general counsel Wayne Watts wrote in a letter to three Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is investigating this matter:

"Public officials, not private businessmen, must ultimately be responsible for whether the legal judgments underlying authorized surveillance activities turn out to be right or wrong legally or politically. Telecommunications carriers have a part to play in guarding against official abuses, but it is necessarily a modest one."

Modest, indeed. A representative of the government comes and asks you to do something that you know is illegal under existing law, a law with whose operation you are intimately familiar with. (Remember Verizon's 94,000 legal acts of compliance.)

The failure to refuse is the road to tyranny.

And yet, even in the gathering darkness, we find one CEO who says no, Joe Nacchio, former CEO of Quest. Now Joe is not, on the face of it, the most savory of CEOs. He was tried and convicted last spring for 19 counts of insider trading for $52 million in stock sales, and is facing a six-year prison sentence.

But when the federal agents asked for permission to use Quest's equipment to conduct illegal wiretapping, Joe said no. And Joe was saying NO before 9/11. The Rocky Mountain News reports that Nacchio wanted to introduce evidence about his dealings with the government about his experiences in rejecting the government's requests, which he thought were illegal.

Just say no. That's all it takes to defend the Constitution in such situations.

The other phone companies are now spending millions lobbying Congress to provide them with some kind of retroactive legal immunity against lawsuits from angry customers, a kind of Congressional pardon, if you would. And just for good measure, Bush has announced that he will veto any legislation dealing with this wiretap issue if it does not include retroactive legal immunity.

Bush has already signaled his willingness to play one final trump card, intervening to get lawsuits already underway against the telecoms thrown out of court because continuing the cases would result in the revelation of "state secrets." Right.

So now we need a bunch of judges who will say No to Bush's claim of unlimited tyrannical executive powers. (It wouldn't hurt if there were a bunch of Congress critters who would say NO and bring the work of the chambers to a halt until Bush had been impeached and removed from office.)

In the end, depending on a rare corporate executive like Joe Nacchio, or a handful of judges, or even a few hundreds Reps and Senators to hold the line for freedom is asking too much from too few. Tyrants win when they can pick off the opposition one by one, and that's the country we live in today, where too many Good Americans stand silent.

I am a huge NPR listener, especially on my commute and on Saturday, when "This American Life" is on. Today was part of a pledge drive, since they are "listener-supported" public radio, so this was a repeat. My internet connection wasn't working, but I wrote the name "Conrad Crane" down on an envelope, because he warned that it was folly to invade Iraq and not plan for the Reconstruction. From his study of history, he knew that what would befall our country, the Iraqi people and their neighbors would dwarf what had been experienced under the government of Saddam Hussein.

As soon as my internet connection was up, I discovered that Rod Dreher at BeliefNet, had written "Conrad Crane Told Us So" after hearing the original NPR podcast. Conrad Crane knew .. and so did the man I photographed in late 2002 (above).

From Rod's piece:

I get "This American Life" via podcast, and listened to the latest one this morning. It was a stunner. One of the segments was about the work of Conrad Crane, a historian at the US Army War College, who with colleague W. Andrew Terrill produced this February 2003 monograph. It was a document, based on study of historical experience, intended to guide the American occupation of Iraq, by warning the military what would happen if they did, or failed to do, certain things. Like the TAL correspondent said, it reads like a letter from the future predicting exactly what did happen in Iraq. (See PDF at end of article) Note especially the warning that to disband the Iraqi army would be to annihilate one of the only sources of unity in the country, and could send its soldiers straight into the arms of sectarian militias.

This is not a new story; James Fallows reported on it a couple of years ago in The Atlantic. The point is, nobody in the administration can say they weren't warned about what could happen in Iraq. They were. They chose to ignore it because it didn't suit their ideological vision. Nothing that happened in Iraq after the end of the first phase of the war surprised Conrad Crane. It shouldn't have surprised President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld, or any of them. They chose not to believe it.

It seems that Rumsfeld et al chose to disbelieve it because if historian Crane was right, then he, Rumsfeld, was wrong in his theories about how the US military needed to be transformed. So he -- and the commander in chief he served -- chose theory over experience. The arrogance simply begs belief. If you listen on in that This American Life podcast, you'll hear an interview with the WaPo's Tom Ricks, on the ground in Baghdad, warning that people who expect a clean and swift withdrawal from Iraq are deluding themselves. He says we will see months of long convoys crawling across the desert to Kuwait, trailing refugees, and possibly coming under enemy assault. It will be a long, drawn-out, ugly humiliation.

Why do elites do this to themselves and the organizations and people they serve? Is there a grand unified theory of elite behavior that explains this? Catholics were asking the same question about their bishops in the wake of the sex abuse disaster. No bishop could claim he didn't know what was happening, and what was going to happen if it wasn't dealt with. I don't believe that Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith wanted to do harm to the military and the country. Nor do I believe that the Catholic bishops wanted to harm the Church. In both cases, I take it as a given that they thought they were doing the right thing. But in both cases, they were so blinded by their own mistaken interests that they chose the wrong path, with catastrophic results.

How does political theory explain this kind of failure of leadership? I seem to recall from my college studies that in time, elites will unconsciously come to identify the institution's best interest with their own. This could explain the Catholic bishops' institutional behavior, but can it really explain Bush's and Rumsfeld's, given their status as short-timers? Are there other examples of a leadership class making the same terrible mistakes? I don't count people like the Enron executives, because I think they made their decisions out of deliberate, knowing corruption.

Here is the link to the PDF version:

RECONSTRUCTING IRAQ: INSIGHTS, CHALLENGES, AND MISSIONS FOR MILITARY FORCES IN A POST-CONFLICT SCENARIO

I suggest taking a look, or listening to the podcast, as there is no way to convey the staggering idiocy of Rumsfeld and the idots who followed his plan of a small, "high-tech" military with short, sanitized wars.

I also wrote about the Fallows article in Atlantic Monthly for DCP back in November of 2005, in a piece entitled "Why Iraq Has No Army.

Conrad Crane's website: click here

Link to the NPR podcast: click here

A few nights ago I got a call from Bill Moyer from the Backbone Campaign. “Hey,” Bill said. “What are you doing tomorrow night?” I said I was planning to go to Busboys and Poets to see Mayor Rocky Anderson, from Salt Lake City, and whoever else showed up. The event was sponsored by PDA. Bill asked me to please represent the Backbone Campaign and present Mayor Anderson with a Spine Award, which he was hastily putting together and shipping overnight.

I agreed and we also speculated that an opportunity might arise to give Rep. Barbara Lee the Backbone Award he had been trying to honor her with for almost three years.

The Award has been sitting in my bedroom, awaiting the right moment when Congresswoman Lee might slow down long enough to actually receive the deserved award. No one in Congress has been as willing as she to take a stand for voting reform, peace, and other just causes on behalf of democracy and justice, but to honor her, you first have to CATCH her.

The pictures tell the next part of the story. They were taken by Richard.

Amazing.

From Eric Kleefeld at TPM Election Central:

John McCain has become the first candidate for president to comment on Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize in a negative way, telling an Iowa crowd that there were more worthy people out there to whom the prize could have been awarded.

“I would have liked to see that prize go to the Buddhist monks who are suffering and dying in Burma,” McCain said.

Yes, Senator, that’s right. The entire Buddhist monk community has been overlooked by the Nobel Commitee. I mean, except of course for His Holiness The Dalai Lama, a Buddhist monk, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work to further the cause of world peace, specifically his leadership to free the people of Tibet.

Maybe the Senator meant to say specifically that one of the dissidents from Burma should have gotten the Nobel Peace prize instead.

Oh, well that’s totally different.

Uh, except for the* Leader of the dissidents in Burma *who already won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

Apparently while John McCain was busy becoming a Neocon, Aung was busy suffering for human rights and the furtherance of democracy in her home country, Burma.

First he throws the sour grapes and says the man who won the Nobel Peace Prize, a fellow countryman, shouldn’t have won. And then he demonstrates and astonishing level of ignorance. All for the cameras in crass political opportunism.

Classy.

Gore wins.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 on Friday to former US Vice President Al Gore and the United Nations’ climate panel, citing the importance of battling global warming.

Ole D Mjøs, leader of the committee that’s appointed by the Norwegian Parliament to award the Peace Prize, said the prize was to be awarded in two equal parts, to Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

It’s a nice start to the weekend.

…More here and Gore’s reaction here.

…Gore’s Statement:

I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. This award is even more meaningful because I have the honor of sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change–the world’s pre-eminent scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate crisis–a group whose members have worked tirelessly and selflessly for many years. We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level.

My wife, Tipper, and I will donate 100 percent of the proceeds of the award to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan non-profit organization that is devoted to changing public opinion in the U.S. and around the world about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.

…Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the UNIPCC:

“I was not expecting any awards for my efforts. I feel privileged to share it with Al Gore. I am only a symbolic recipient but it is the organization which has been awarded,” Pachauri said.

Think Progress conducted an interview with Dr. Pachauri in May 2007. You can read and listen to it here.

My head hurts. Probably from banging it against the wall.

And that was before I read the news today, oh boy.

I think it’s time for some wisdom from the elders, or youngers, or wherever you can find it.

Post your favorite political/philosophical type quote on this thread, and maybe what made you think of that quote today.

I’ll start: * “In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.” Albert Camus*

Inspiration for that quote: Nancy Pelosi repeating Republican Talking Points about leaving Iraq “responsibly”, while managing to imply that the ones who are and have acted irresponsibly in Iraq are the anti-war folks:

“We have to make responsible decisions in the Congress that are not driven by the dissatisfaction of anybody who wants the war to end tomorrow,” Pelosi told the gathering at the Sofitel, arranged by the Christian Science Monitor.

Oy.

How about you?

Today is the seventy-seventh birthday of playright, director, actor, political activist, and Nobel Prize laureate, Harold Pinter. In Mr. Pinter’s honor, I’d like to reprint an excerpt of his 2005 Nobel Prize lecture. Agree with his opinion of American foreign policy post WWII or not, but I encourage you to click on the link and read the entire lecture. Regardless of whether you find common ground with Mr. Pinter or not, his genius for articulation of the internal suffering and external brutality mankind visits upon one another.

Harold Pinter, 2005 Nobel Lecture:

The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. ‘Democracy’ had prevailed.

But this ‘policy’ was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.

The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it.

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It’s a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, ‘the American people’, as in the sentence, ‘I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.’

It’s a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words ‘the American people’ provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don’t need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it’s very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.

The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn’t give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.

[…]

When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror - for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us - the dignity of man.

Mr. Pinter wrote and delivered this lecture two years ago, but it could have been yesterday. Nearly two thousand more are dead since he wrote this, and they are still being “transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm’s way.”

Two years ago he called us to action with his stirring words. That call has not quieted over time. If anything, it grows louder each day. And each day begs us to continue to speak up and speak out against the inhumanity and atrocities at hand. I know many of you are part of the peace movement. I post this not only to honor Mr. Pinter on his birthday, also in hopes that Mr Pinter’s eloquent and presaged words serve to drive your passion and give your spirit what it needs to continue to be a voice reminding others of what humanity is.

Coming to a college campus near you:

Islamofascism Awareness Week.

Time to get your fear and bigotry on.

Here’s the “Student’s Guide to Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week”. Jim Henley notes the key passage:

Distributing a petition is an excellent protest tactic for several reasons. First, it is a very easy and cost-effective way to draw attention to the issues at hand. Second, a petition can serve as an advertisement for other events, such as film screenings and panel discussions (when you ask students to sign the petition, hand them a flyer about the other activities you have planned throughout the week). Perhaps most importantly, a petition forces students and faculty to declare their allegiances: either to fighting our terrorist adversaries or failing to take action to stop our enemies. For this reason, we encourage you to make a special effort to bring this petition to those groups who might be least likely to sign it, for example to campus administrators, student government officers, and the Muslim Students’ Association.

In short, the main goal of the “David Horowitz Freedom Center” here is to write up a petition deliberately designed to be unlikely for Muslim groups to sign and then to use Muslim groups’ failure to sign the petition as evidence that they’re on the side of “our terrorist adversaries.” This is a great way to go about things if you want to (a) be a campus troublemaker, (b) over the long run turn hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world into hardened enemies of the United States, and (c) create a large group of disaffected Muslims inside the United States who’ve been made to feel that adherence to their faith is unwelcome in America and fundamentally incompatible with loyalty to this country.

Oy. Do they get a free hood and cross burning kit with each petition they fill?

I got a little out of the news loop when I was on vacation. Now it’s 3 AM and I have jet lag, so I’m catching up. The Blackwater stuff keeps piling up, and Media Matters did me the favor of a day-by-day review of what happened with the Rush Limbaugh fiasco. I see where some MN vets are being denied the GI bill, and that it is apparently okay to deny medical coverage to small, vulnerable children.

Now Bush says “We don’t torture.” I suppose that depends how one defines “torture.”

George Carlin talks alot about “euphemisms.” You know - where they simply replace words that make people uncomfortable, to shade the truth? So “toilet paper” becomes “bathroom tissue”? A “mattress” is a “sleep system?” “Torture” is now “interrogation methods”.

So anyway, the President says we don’t torture, but maybe the shock has just worn off. Otherwise, how do you explain this commercial?!

(Thanks toNyc Alberts, NYC, who originally saw this commercial on television late at night in a longer version, and finally tracked it down & also wrote about it)

By the way, The New York Times Sunday editorial was entitled |”On Torture and American Values” and contained this statement:

“Once upon a time, it was the United States that urged all nations to obey the letter and the spirit of international treaties and protect human rights and liberties. The people in much of the world, if not their governments, respected the United States for its values. The Bush administration has dishonored that history and squandered that respect.”

TRUTH

As I was sitting in the Dirksen Hearing Room a few weeks ago, listening to the testimony of the folks from the GAO, I had one of those moments: you know…when you feel your head explode, or search for a nearby wall upon which to bang it??

Sen. Norm Coleman was asking the GAO guy why the numbers in his report about the success of the SURGE were different from what he had been seeing.

Oh, said Mr. Walker from the GAO. You saw the OFFICIAL numbers, My report is based on the UNofficial numbers.

OOHHHH, I thought to myself. There are TWO sets of numbers! At least! Holy Orwell! I wonder which ones are the ACTUAL numbers, as opposed to the FANTASY numbers?

No one else in the room, which was crowded, even blinked.

This past week, we were informed, by the New York Times, no less, that there were dueling memos about torture. Larry Craig said he was no longer guilty, while Marion Jones said she was no longer innocent.

I have tried to believe in at least two impossible things before breakfast, but it seems that even the impossible things I believe are, somehow, possible by the time the toast is burned…

But the most impossible thing that has become possible came with the death and story about Ciara Durkin, at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

CBS/AP) Exactly how Ciara Durkin died remains a mystery. The Army National Guard soldier from Massachusetts was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head in Afghanistan last week, and now her family is demanding answers from the military. Initially the Pentagon reported that Durkin, part of a finance unit deployed to Afghanistan in November 2006, had been killed in action, but then revised its statement to read she had died of injuries “suffered from a non-combat related incident” at Bagram Airfield. The statement had no specifics and said the circumstances are under investigation. Durkin had a desk job doing payroll in an office about three miles inside the secure Bagram Air Base. About 90 minutes after she left work last Friday, her family says she was found dead near a chapel on the base with a single gunshot wound to the head.

The reason my head went a-spinnin’ at the news is that it sounded horribly familiar. Juan Torres’ son John was also shot in the head, at Bagram, and John was…part of a finance unit. Doing payroll.

Canavan told the Quincy, Mass. Patriot Ledger on Wednesday that when her sister was home three weeks ago, she told her about something she had come across that raised some concern with her: “She was in the finance unit and she said, ‘I discovered some things I don’t like and I made some enemies because of it.’” Canavan revealed that Durkin said if anything happened to her, to make sure it was investigated.

Rest of the story here.

John told his father the same thing, several hours before he was killed.

MichiganGirl at Kos has a story up speculating about the link.

OK, so we already know that we are dealing with a bunch of liars and that the core of our government is rotten, rotten. And we know about Pat Tillman, and Abu Ghraib, and torture at Guantanamo and secret prisons in faraway lands, and the cooking of the surge numbers, and the Downing Street minutes, and Colin Powell lying at the United Nations, and oh so many head-banging moments.

What is it going to take?? I am reminded of what our reporter says at the end of the play FEAR UP: Stories from Baghdad and Guantanamo:

Reporter: We all have the potential for the behavior we’ve seen in the war on terror and we’re all capable of more altruistic or cooperative behavior. And I believe that confronting these extreme situations is itself an act of hope because in doing that, we are saying that there’s an alternative. We can do better. I believe we’ve let them have their way without fierce enough protest. I only wish my pen was sharper and my words tougher.

People, we must get tougher. Our protests must be fiercer. Our future depends upon it.

Here’s a tasty little morsel to chew on from Dean Baker, whose Beat the Press blog commenting on economic reporting offers remarkably clear, jargon-free analyses of why the public so rarely has a clue about economic policy matters.

Baker asks why Bush gets away with demonizing spending on global warming because of the alleged loss of jobs, while the press never asks him about job losses from the hundreds of billions being spent on the war in Iraq.

Why Is It Okay to Lose Jobs Because of Iraq, but Not to Stop Global Warming?

As President Bush held his pseudo summit on global warming, it would have been reasonable for the media to note how he has never expressed any concern about the loss of jobs and economic damage caused by the resources diverted from productive purposes to fight the war in Iraq. This is striking since President Bush has repeatedly expressed his desire to take steps to curb global warming, but ruled out the most effective measures because of the harm they could inflict on the economy. The striking contrast between his attitudes towards these two issues deserves attention.

So how about that attention? What do you think? If you had $600+ billion to spend, what would you do with the money?

I had an interesting conversation with Casey the other week. Participating in the blogosphere the last three years opened my eyes to the idea that participatory democracy is an idea whose time has come.

Look at our hard work during the heartbreaking KE-04 campaign in 2003-2004. Witness the birth of DCP, and participating on the blogs from KOS to Firedoglake, Culture Kitchen and beyond. Witness the triumph of the 2006 elections as well as the frustration which we voice vehemently on a daily basis. Look at the media focus on Yearly KOS 2 with all the democratic contenders in one room—ready to employ us.

We worked hard to create something out of our rage and desire to change. And for me, it has produced an evolution in my way of thinking about what we want in our leaders. It led me to ask Casey—for so long we’ve been looking for a leader, a hero, a father, even, to be our President. Are we ready to relinquish the President’s role as father/mother/leader and go instead for partner?

Since this is my first time using the new MT software, I am going to keep this post blissfully brief, but hopefully, your answers will not be.

Here goes—I was flying to Chicago for the YKos Convention, and as often happens, I struck up a conversation with the nice gentleman sitting next to me. He had the brand, spankiin’ new I-phone, which had just come out a day or two before. Let’s face it, if you are using the new Iphone on an airplane, you are just begging for someone to ask you about it. So I did.

Naturally, as anyone who has ever sat next to me for any reason will tell you, the subject turned to politics. This man is what I would call a soon-to-be ex-republican. His first instinct is to be sort of selfish about money and taxes, but he shows real signs of maturing in his thinking, hence the “ex” part. He’s already self identifying as an Independent and changed his voter registration.

After we talked for about fifty minutes or so, he asked me, “How do you do it?”

I said, “Do what?”

“Maintain that level of passion for what you do?”, he said. He continued, “Up until just recently, you guys [meaning democrats] have lost alot, you know, before 2006, and who knows what’s coming next, and then they [the democrats] didn’t end the war, which must be frustrating. How do you keep that level of energy going?”

Nobody has ever asked me that question before. Stopped me dead in my tracks. The immediate answer I gave him is the truth. I said, “Well, I love what I do and I feel like it is the one thing I was put on this planet to do. It’s my passion.” We continued talking all the way to chicago, where I met his wife, and found out that we know people in common in PR in this area. Another connection made.

But the point of this is not that you can make political connections anywhere, even though you can.

The point is that I have never stopped to think about maintaining the level of passion for politics, or any fight that is long and full of righteous battles that you keep losing. I have thought about burnout, but that is different. Burnout is the overall exhaustion, a tiredness of the physical self and the mind, but not a tiredness of the very thing which inspired the passion in the first place.

No, my question is a different one. And it’s not one that I only mean to apply to politics. It could apply to anything you feel is your “calling” in life. So my question to all of you is this: How do you maintain your passion and energy towards your “calling”?

Please do me a huge favor and take a little time to think about this question before you answer. I’d like to think that we have all been working in politics long enough that each of us have faced down our demons in this area. And quite likely. at one time or another, have wanted to write a GBCW diary and didn’t. Or maybe you did and then came back. This isn’t just about feeling tired or frustrated. It about getting to a deeper crisis of passion over the choices you are making for how you live your passion. Politics just happens to be my passion, so I use it as the example for the premise of my question, but it can be anything that is your passion.

How do you maintain the passion you have for your “calling” in life, over the span of a lifetime?

P.S. I didn’t post a picture with this, because I am just figuring out bother the new MT and my new IMac computer. But if someone has access to images and MT editing, please feel free to add one.

Elie Wiesel:  “Peace is not a gift from God to man, but a gift from man to himself”.

Peace

This peace monument is located near the Eiffel Tower. The glass features the word “peace” written in many of the world’s languages. The park in which the monument sits, the “field of Mars” was a training ground for the Ecole Militaire, which is reflected in the monument’s glass in this picture. Since then, the park has been the site of five world expositions, including the one in 1889 for which the tower was built.

The Original “Letter From Paris”: Janet Flanner

If I remember correctly, “Letter from Paris” was the name of the column written weekly from Paris by the American Janet Flanner. Unlike me, she had more than one week to do it, and did not have to write from a MacDonalds on the Champs Elysses on a rapidly-draining laptop! Janet Flanner (1892 - 1978) was a journalist who served as the Paris correspondent of The New Yorker magazine from 1925 until she retired in 1975. She was part of the group of American writers and artists who lived in the city between World War I and World War II. During the 20s and 30s, under the pen-name “Genêt”, she was a member of the expatriate community which included Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, E. E. Cummings, Hart Crane, Djuna Barnes, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein. She introduced Americans to the work of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, André Gide, Jean Cocteau, and the Ballets Russes. In 1948 she was made a knight of Legion d’Honneur. Her work during World War II included pieces on Hitler’s rise (1936) and the Nuremberg trials (1945), and a series of little-known weekly radio broadcasts for the NBC Blue Network during the months following the liberation of Paris in late 1944. She covered the Suez Crisis, Soviet invasion of Hungary and strife in Algeria which led to the rise of De Gaulle.