It's hard to see what Obama can do to stem the tides when there's so much hate speech coming out of the Middle East. These people can't control themselves - it just spews out naturally. Take a look - this is the situation we're trying to step into, make civilized. Any chance of that happening? And if we don't succeed, it just reflects badly on us. Make sure and watch the video - it's the straight-to-camera attitudes that often get filtered out of the news, lost in translation.

Better to focus our energies on rebuilding Detroit. Those people share our values.

PS - here's Glenn Greenwald's take on Obama "interfering in Israeli politics"

PPS - And I find something distasteful about Bill Ayers advertised over to the right. Okay, I give - give me back the Muslim women matrimony ads - I'll take sexist over... over whatever Ayers is supposed to be.

Red Cross

I didn't care much for the speech, I guess it served its purpose.

But one thing I found encouraging is to read that his team's backing it up with lobbying Capital Hill hard to close Gitmo. Good for them. Like Obama? Lobby your Congresspeople. Give him a success, on something we care about. No more "some day, one day". Close it now, next week, last week. Amnesty International's still reporting abuse coming out of Gitmo, the "last chance to torture before they take it away" challenge. Get out now.

I don't want Gitmo closed to open another one. I want it closed because the whole concept sucks - military tribunals, indefinite preventive detention, torture and mistreatment that barely skirts the definition of torture. It all sucks. We have real prisons that have enough security and enough human rights problems to control. Better than one that avoids any oversight at all. And if we can't convict? Follow the American way, let them go, do a better job next time. The FBI and CIA and police work all the time on preventing crime, not just arresting after the fact. 9/11 didn't change that. The only that changed is we got scared. And now we can start to recoup that - better late than never. Vote. With your emails, telephones, feet.

PS - about releasing those pictures, seems Petraeus wants to get them out:

Petraeus argued in favor of release, saying "Let's lance this boil." He feared that the damage from withholding the photos would be greater than that from releasing them, because it would fuel suspicions that the photos are worse than they are. General Ray Odierno took the opposing view.

So it's not a slam dunk "this will hurt the troops" or "this will hurt Iraqi civilians" - our generals even disagree. So how about we resort to law and ethics and transparency in government and military - get them out there, lance the boil - show them Americans can face the truth about themselves.

 

Red Cross

We can't really claim to be blameless or fully magnanimous, but reading someone's comments on the speech, I am a bit struck that we helped get Egypt back the Sinai with a nice annual payoff, helped push the Russians out of Afghanistan, helped ease the Shah out the door, pushed the Iraqis out of Kuwait, fought in Somalia to try to calm things down, went into Bosnia and Kosovo to protect the people, complained loudly and initally somewhat effectively about Chechnya, and even have government broadcasts for freedom to the Muslim region now known as western China. And yet we're always giving these speeches saying, "hey, we really don't hate Muslims". For a nation built on marketing, we're really bad at PR. In fact, our Middle East efforts are really expensive bad PR. Bush even sent an accomplished PR agent on top of Karen Hughes and Condi Rice, and all of them came across ridiculously flat. And now, with change, a speech that consists largely of, "yeah, we've really got a lot of great accomplished Muslims" without naming one (okay, Keith Ellison, whoopdie), a speech that pretends we have no power designs on the rest of the world, a speech whose center point seems to be explaining something that should have been obvious quite some time ago, that 9/11 pissed us off, so much that we lost our heads and invaded Iraq. Oh wait, he didn't quite say that, did he? No, I think there was something about fighting for their freedom. I don't know. Maybe if we didn't drive expensive gas guzzlers, we wouldn't have to be coming up with such transparent nonsense to deal with the Middle East, and we wouldn't have to pretend to be at war with Islam. After all, Morocco was way cool in the 60's, Malaysia used to be a William Gibson cyberpunk fantasy, Indonesia? What can I say, give me 5 years there on the beach. Lebanon (without the civil war) - ooh la la, the cuisine, the cafés. Turkey? Fantastisch, has it all. The Gulf States have become party & money countries. Ignore Syria, insignificant, the only countries we have issues with are Iraq, Iran, Saudi and Libya. That's it. And Saudis are mostly our allies, even if they're a bit stiff. So 3 countries. Pakistan-India's just sibling rivalry, nothing much to do with us, they're mostly British anyway, think of it as football hooliganism. Afghanistan's irrelevant without Al Qaeda training camps. Tunisia, great vacation spot. Algerians? All up in Paris & Morocco now playing Rai music, France's issue, and mostly they just want jobs. Nigeria? Keep the oil flowing, that's all anyone needs to know. So why 55 minutes of explaining? Could have just brought in Rachid, "Rock El Casbah". Ein Volk, ein Kultur, it's all hip-hop now anyway. We've been enchanted with this part of the world ever since the time of Alexander. About time we figured out how to get down with it.

PS - Brilliant, I guess the keywords triggered off an ad campaign for "The International Muslim Matrimonials Site". "7 Brides for 7 Brothers", I suppose, down ol' Al Qahira way. Sing a song about them Sabine women, back when musicals were musicals and politically correct was something for the McCarthy hearings.

PPS - Also strange that the 'g' got lopped of "Assessing" in deriving the post URL - I guess Hassan-I Sabbāh has his eye on me, better make myself scarce. Who needs Alamont when we have Alamut? Who needs TV when we got T-Rex? Just call me Isma'il.

Red Cross

I finally had the breakthrough that let me get my head around the Preventive Detention debate. And I realized it's been our major anti-crime method for decades, just we haven't acknowledged it.

You see, we've locked up millions of people for marijuana charges because smoking marijuana is a sign that one day you might actually take a dangerous drug and do something violent. (Of course quite a few people drink and beat their spouses, but we're talking about hard drugs, not liquid drugs).

Not that heroin specifically makes you kill - it usually just makes you poor and desperate, which could lead to robbery. Safer to lock someone up. It used to be easier to cut straight to the chase and lock people up for indigence until they became digent again, but most of those laws have been taken off the books, so this is a more acceptable method to our sense of caring and compassion. Besides, think of the child victims we're saving.

Even then, it's not a sure thing. Inmates in Guantanamo have been getting more and more violent, engaging in more manipulative "self-inflicted injurious behavior" (SIB, in the Army's terminology, hunger strikes to the un-initiated) and have accelerated to "permanent self-inflicted injurious behavior" (otherwise known as "suicide" in lay terms). One Yemeni prisoner resorted to manipulative refusal to breath just yesterday, and despite medical and military counter-tactics, officials were unable to reverse the effects.

This is a direct attack on America's good will, even more so than civilians callously using the spread of Agent Orange defoliant in Vietnam to push their cause via unfair propaganda showing pictures of burned and deformed children. In this case, the inmates' cold actions endanger our relations with major oil producers and the Middle East as a whole, a dangerous development in these economically tense times. At some point, we'll see past the need for Preventive Detention to the next step, which is Irreversible Pre-emptive Restraint. Whether the facilities will be accepted on American soil remains to be seen - steadfast Congressional leaders will need to weigh in on the potential effects of these most incorrigible detainees working against our basic freedoms directly in Amercia's Homeland. However, presuming these restraint cemetaries are kept well separated from existing civilian facilities, with no chance of runoff getting into the water table and our general drinking supply, chances are they will pass muster. At least we'll be certain that these preventively-detained risk factors won't rise up to potentially threaten our freedoms anytime in the future.

Firefox ate my lunch, or my post at least, so the quick version (okay, not that quick):

The freak Gordon Liddy, famous for eating rats' testicles, burning his arm and other feats, is still with us worrying about women in power menstruating.

Sotomayor is just another prominent woman suffering racist and sexist abuse on prime time media, just because that's part of what sells. Comments and imagery of castration, cleavage, and cellulite, "Mothers I'd Like to Fuck", botox babe, and the various derogatory characterizations waiting for women who step into the public arena, Democratic or Republican, of whatever ethnic group. "Bitch", "Cunt", "Pimp", "Bimbo" and anything else - it just shows those clever talking heads are "edgy". But males in power are serious. They have "cojones". Women are just aggressive ball-cutters when they're not sluts in bathing suits, dykes or plain too ugly to exist. Even the leader of Germany had to endure an unwanted backrub from our President, just part of ritual humiliations.

Blogging over the weekend turned into "why do black men always get blamed", when the statistics really beg us to ask, "why are women, black and white, so much the victims?" All the advice for women about how to fight back, when 2/3 of all attackers are known by the women - over 1/4 are husbands or boyfriends. So take that Significant Other to rape prevention class and practice gutting him with a pair of scissors - otherwise all is for naught in that special moment of intimate decisions back home, because you can't exactly lock them out when they're already in, and don't forget, they'll expect an omelette in the morning.

Oh, and should you fight back, as women are frequently encouraged to do, be comforted that you're likely to be thrown in jail even if your attempted or successful rape is caught on camera (item #4).

For dog lovers, you'll be happy to know that the media and wheels of justice and halls of power speak louder for your protection than black or white women getting raped and murdered. For women lovers, no good news today, come back tomorrow. [Of course this overlaps with sports, where Congress would rather discuss steroids in baseball than serious health care issues].

And yes, I feel for Dr. Tiller, but his murder was aimed not just at him but at women across the country. "We own you, we dictate your choices". One of 3 places to go in the country for that horrid decision of terminating a late pregnancy. Not for selfishness, for the shitty decision of "an early almost painless death versus a pre-doomed existence of excruciating pain followed by early death". President Bush posed in front of test-tube/freezer babies-become adults, not incurable babies wracked with pain waiting to die within the month. Somehow doesn't make as pretty a photo op.

In March, Obama created the Council on Women and Children. There is still no similar Council on Why Men Can't Quit Knocking Up Women and Leaving Them to Deal with the Kid. Of course some suggest that forcing the woman and kid to then live with the irresponsible schmuck will solve it all. As if watching even 1 Adam Sandler movie shouldn't clear out that idea permanently. 

Martha Stewart will likely be the longest incarceration we see for stock market crimes, that hefty $40K she picked up by selling a few shares early. Compare this with the million or so of crashing Harkin stock Bush forgot to report, all those military stock options the cabinet had as they went to war, Ken Lay's millions as he sent his multi-billion dollar company to the toilet, Madoff's Ponzi scheme, AIG's collapsing house of cards, all that seamy-sounding "naked short selling" (meaning "pretend to sell stock you don't actually own"). See, Martha's big mistake besides being smart and successful was that she was a woman. Hell hath no fury.... unlike a few trillion dollars misused and stolen. PS - $10 billion a month for wars!

And we can't show those rape and abuse photos from Abu Ghraib because that will make America look bad, unlike all those other rapes and beatings we know about that aren't on camera that just involve American-on-American atrocity.  Thats just part of the price women pay for living in the Land of the Free (for men). 250,000 sexual assaults yearly in the US, only 6% of attackers will spend a day in jail. No wonder people think we shouldn't put the soldiers on the stand. How is it we thought the Taliban's attitude towards women was primitive and backwards?

Health care isn't important to us because it's considered a woman's sport, too much wrapped around children and female issues "down there". Real men endure broken bones without seeing a doctor. Women take care of sick kids and sick parents. Men deal with health care as an emergency, women deal with health care as basic need. Preventive health care for men is like volunteering to go to a ballet performance. When health care can be framed as a basic need like beer, nachos and a good car stereo, it will receive the attention it deserves. Until then, it's just another point of bias - women and poor people abusing the system. Real men just tear off a piece of cloth, apply a tourniquet, grab a beer and get back to the ball game.  

And here's my little bonus, when one of the usual suspects comes along to tell me I'm posting this because I can't get over my anatomy or genitalia, as happened so often over the last year. Because obviously you have to be female to worry about crimes and violence against women, unlike say crimes and violence against children, animals, the environment.

So while planting pipe bombs at the Olympics is a cause for concerted action, years of harassment and threats and beatings and arsons and murders at abortion clinics is just a matter of free speech, protecting the perversely named "Intelligent Design" and all. Dr. Tiller stepped into the middle of this knowingly, did a job that's none-too-pleasant in the first place, provided an honorable service to women (and some responsibly-minded men) in need and endured the threats and abuse as well, for 36 years, including being shot in 1993. His stalkers will feel no shame or irony that he was killed in a Christian church that preaches love and forgiveness.

And despite all our anti-terrorist efforts in Iraq, surveillance against potentially violent vegetarians and Greenpeace in the US, walling off peaceful protesters and tapping millions of calls by citizens, our "justice" and "intelligence" system hasn't figured out that the Montana Freemen association is a group of thugs that commits violent crimes, despite its history of fighting US Marshalls and multiple convictions. So much for our Department of Homeland Security.