With Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas and The Social Construction of the Ocean on my Amazon wishlist, I thought I'd give a little hello to water news from the last few days:

• Who knew that the Gulf of Mexico has a "deadzone" the size of New Jersey due to runoff from the Mississippi River? Environmental damage and global warming have apparently already drastically altered the chemistry and ecology of ocean waters.

• California residents are increasingly recycling their own"gray water" - a practice that is currently illegal in that state. My two cents: while the actions of these individuals are laudable and important, how effective can any water recycling or conservation efforts at the individual level be when industrial agriculture is the main user and polluter of water in California?

• In local news, WUNC recently held an in-depth panel discussion of water issues in North Carolina. Did you know that South Carolina sued North Carolina over river water? Neither did I until I listened to this great report!

In the category of "I thought we were in agreement on this issue," presumed guilt for Guantanamo detainees is still very much an acceptable perspective for an average American to hold. I will now demonstrate this through the very scientific rhetorical technique known as "here's a conversation I had today with a person."

When I found out today that the Guantanamo Uighurs were probably going to be sent to Palau, my first thought was "is that the country that sold their domain name?" Apparently not, that was Tuvalu. Since at the time (full disclosure: two hours ago) I didn't know that Palau was a trust territory of the US until 1994 and has since been in a free association agreement with the US - facts that would make their cooperation on this issue seem less random - I wanted to share this exciting bit of trivia with a coworker.

I was planning to say "hey, they decided to send the Uighurs to Palau. How weird is that?" But then I realized that my coworker might not know who the Uighurs were or the controversy surrounding their detention in Guantanamo, the highly publicized trials, and the humiliation the Bush administration suffered when the courts ridiculed their claims that the Uighurs were terrorists. So I just said "hey, those Chinese Muslims held at Guantanamo who were innocent-" at which point I was cut off by my coworker saying "so how come they're at Guantanamo?"

I experienced a momentary loss of words and then explained to him about that whole thing where most of the people at Guantanamo have actually not had any trials so we don't know whether they're innocent or guilty but these fellas were in fact tried and were found to be quite innocent so now they have to be let go like real innocent people. That took the punch out of my tidbit about Palau.

But it reminded me of my preoccupation with presumed guilt. In any conversation about Israel, I generally assume that my conversation partner thinks that all Palestinians are terrorists. It's not that hard for me to inhabit this perspective because when I was growing up this is what I was told and this is what I believed. Even up through high school when I generally considered myself a politically engaged young person (hey hey policy debate), I still pretty much thought that Palestinian = terrorist. It's as if somehow the entire population of the West Bank and Gaza were collectively guilty of the violent actions of some Palestinians. It sounds crazy to me now but it's a standard pro-Israel narrative. After all, why would collective punishment be necessary if it weren't for collective guilt?

Due to this personal history with presumed guilt and the rhetoric of the Bush administration during the last eight years I became accustomed to the perspective that Guantanamo detainees were necessarily terrorists and assumed that any conversation partner on the issue of Guantanamo would hold this perspective. But since a majority of Americans supported the closing of Guantanamo in January, I assumed that mostly doctrinaire conservatives would be the ones holding on to this belief six months later. But apparently not. The closing of Guantanamo has become much less popular since Obama first took office. I suspect this is mainly due to Republican "no terrorists in my backyard" PR which eagerly attempts to rehabilitate the myth that everyone in Guantanamo is a bona fide evildoer.

Despite the widely covered disageements over the issue and what I assumed was common knowledge that the Guantanamo detainees were being held without trial (or even charges in most instances), the desire to assign collective guilt to the accused remains strong. Just the fact of Obama's election has widened the scope of political debate and changed the nature of popular consciousness on many issues. More liberal positions have been legitimized as part of the national dialogue on some issues - to the point that the last eight years of incredibly constricted political debate have in many instances been totally whitewashed. Watching a 2006 Phil Donahue debate with Bill O'Reilly about the legitimacy of the war in Iraq instantly took me back to a very recent past in which the need to get out of Iraq was a highly controversial position instead of a given. At the same time as some positions have become commonplace, other popular misconceptions have not been so easily changed. There's still a lot of work to be done.

Access to housing and the right to build  new homes in Israel and the Occupied Territories has been in the news lately as the Obama and Netanyahu administrations wrangle over settlement policy.

Both Clinton and Obama have made unequivocal statements regarding the need for a stop to settlement construction (including so-called "natural growth" construction) as a prerequisite to the beginning of peace talks.

The Netanyahu administration has agreed to remove some "illegal outposts" but has not accepted the call to freeze natural growth construction (natural growth is defined as expanding current structures and building new ones in established settlements). Israeli official Mark Regev recently said that "Normal life in those communities must be allowed to continue." Netanyahu himself stated that it "wouldn't be fair to ban construction to meet the needs of natural growth." Giving a "real life" example, he said that as children grow they will need new homes in the settlements to start their own families.

Netanyahu's unremarkable defense of adequate housing for growing families becomes quite remarkable when considering his administration's attitudes toward housing for Palestinians living in Israel and tolerance of settler attacks on Palestinian land and homes. So on Monday, in retaliation for the removal of several small illegal outposts, "settlers torched a wooded hilltop near Nablus and set trees and Palestinian agricultural land on fire near the village of Hawara, residents said." Palestinians did not remove the outposts - the IDF did - but Palestinians were nevertheless the targets of settler "retaliation."

Today The Washington Post reports that "Israeli settlers are waging court battles to evict dozens of Palestinians from homes in an East Jerusalem neighborhood...They have already won property rights to six Arab homes, whose residents were subsequently evicted. Palestinians and an Israeli rights group say settlers are trying to evict a further 27 Arab families from 28 buildings...Settlers have moved into six Arab buildings in Sheikh Jarrah, home to consulates and trendy restaurants. Armed men guard the buildings where settlers have hoisted Israeli flags to assert Jewish dominance...[The Israeli Ir Amim rights group] said that Israeli courts do not accept similar Arab claims to land and property in Jewish West Jerusalem. The high-end neighborhood of Talbieh is abundant with old white-stone houses whose Palestinian owners fled or were forced to leave during the 1948 war over Israel's creation."

In addition to court-based takeovers of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, the outright destruction of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem continues unabated. As The Times reported in early May, "Scores of Palestinian-owned structures are demolished every year by the Israeli authorities on the grounds that they were built without the required permits. But many Palestinians say Israel limits construction to push them out of East Jerusalem, which they claim as the capital of a future Palestinian state. The report states that only 13 percent of East Jerusalem land is currently zoned by the Israeli authorities for Palestinian construction, and much of that is already built up, severely restricting the possibility of obtaining a permit. More than a third of East Jerusalem, meanwhile, has been expropriated for Israeli construction since 1967, according to the report, while 22 percent is zoned for green areas and public infrastructure and 30 percent remains "unplanned."

So when it comes to land and homes for Israelis in occupied Palestinian territory, life must continue normally and any limits to construction are considered totally unreasonable. Yet when it comes to the land and property of Israeli Palestinians in Israel, legal takeovers and outright demolitions are standard operating procedure.

And this doesn't even begin to cover Israel's position toward Palestinian-owned land and homes in the West Bank and Gaza.  IDF strategies in the occupied territories toward private property range from turning individual houses into temporary "bases" (which involves keeping the family out of the house or keeping them all in one room) to outright demolition. When I was in the West Bank in 2005, we encountered a peace-time situation where a group of IDF soldiers had turned a multi-floor home for an extended family into a temporary base. The multigenerational family of 20 people had spent the last several days in one large room of the house as soldiers turned the rest of the house into their quarters. This was not an unusual occurance and the practice continues to this day. You can see the policy in action in a January report from 60 Minutes here and here.

It's somewhat encouraging to see the Obama administration making useful noises regarding the settlement issue, but how serious is his commitment and how much progress is actually being made? Although some illegal outposts have been dismantled (we'll leave aside what an illegal outpost could possibly mean since all building on occupied territory for the benefit of the occupier's population is illegal under international law), housing advocates argue that the removal of this handful of outposts (some of which were already abandoned and some of which had been evacuated before) is just PR.

And despite the fact that the public disagreement between Obama and Netanyahu is getting wide coverage, it's easy to see that this rift is only getting so much ink because the last eight years found the Israeli and American leadership in agreement on almost every issue. For some perspective on how mild Obama's criticism has been so far, he is apparently not going "so far" as to recommend that loan guarantees to Israel come with conditions regarding settlement construction - a move so radical that George H.W. Bush proposed it almost 20 years ago.

After a long weekend off the RNC stumbled into the work week by accidentally sending copies of its Sotomayor talking points to members of the media. They are phenomenally uninteresting. Except for one part. Here it is:

"Justice Souter's retirement could move the Court to the left and provide a critical fifth vote for:

• Further eroding the rights of the unborn and property owners;
• Imposing a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage;
• [etc.]"

So there it is. The RNC would like to communicate that there are two groups of Americans whose rights concern them:

1. the unborn
2. property owners

Then there are groups of Americans who should have their rights restricted:

1. gay people

I reflected on these two very short lists. I thought about how these two concern-worthy groups of Americans perfectly reflect the contemporary Republican Party's marriage of the religious right and libertarian capitalists. And then I thought about what kind of national party baldly claims to only support the rights of their interest groups (presumably at the expense of concern for the rights of any American in general).

After that I thought about the absurdity of the GOP's high level of concern for not-yet-people and active desire to limit the rights of some actual people. I then had a side thought regarding how ridiculous it is that restricting individual rights actually has any traction in this day and age. I mean, who's the target audience for statements like "I think that we should make sure that rights enjoyed by some Americans don't bleed over for groups that are currently denied those rights." Opponents of gay marriage rarely talk like this, but I wonder how tenable their position would be if they did?

And what about "property owners"? How absurd would it be if the GOP always took the side of the party that owned a house in a sexual harassment case? But what if they both own houses? ("Sorry folks, can't really be bothered to be concerned with the rights of that guy getting beat up over there. I am primarily concerned with the rights of fetuses and property owners. See, that fella is already born and we don't really know whether he owns a house. Plus, he might be gay.") Of course this is not what the phrase means at all. When Republicans say they are concerned with the rights of "property owners" they really just mean "property." So into this group fall things like "not wanting to raise taxes," "all corporate interests trump all individual interests," "intellectual property," "eminent domain," etc. More broadly, it means that one of the chief concerns of today's Republicans is making sure that those who have a lot of money can hold on to it. But that's cool. I mean, I thought there was something about people getting wronged and something about justice, but apparently not: money.

But who makes a list like this anyway? For homework tonight: "Please list all groups whose rights you are interested in protecting. Extra credit: List at least one group whose rights you'd like to deny." And then because it's hard to come up with a question like that without immediately trying to answer it, I thought about what my own list of "morally relevant" concern groups would look like. But even thinking about this gave me a headache. I mean, you can't put like "Estonian immigrants, but not Canadian immigrants." Or "cat lovers, not bird lovers." Thinking about the wide spectrum of progressive pet legal issues (gender and race discrimination, workplace and union issues, queer rights, animal welfare, environmental issues, privacy issues, media consolidation issues, drug issues, disability issues, immigration issues, separation of church and state, human rights, and ending the death penalty), a theme might emerge: "interest in things and people that are likely to be exploited by those with power." But what ideology unites fetuses and property owners? I can't even come up with something funny to say about this because there is literally nothing that ties these two interests together besides "they are both things that some people who make up the modern Republican party are interested in." Which I guess was my whole point. Today's Republican Party: no unified ideology besides religion and capitalism. Everyone else (especially gay people!): go to hell.

Red State, the popular online community for conservative thought, recently featured a letter from a movement conservative reaching out to American black people. Here's an excerpt:

"Dear American Blacks:

Sometimes the very best act of friendship I could do is tell you that the person you think is your best friend actually works against you behind your back, laughing at you, mocking your hardships, secure in the knowledge that you need him too much to ever leave him.

Sometimes -- no, actually always -- the true friend is the one who tells you what you don't want to hear. The one who does not indulge you, the one who will neither promise you nor give you candy and other bennies. Instead he tells you to sit down and eat your green beans and spinach -- and if you want that nice car, then quit whining, get an education, earn a good job, and earn that nice car.

The really ironic thing is that the slick, good-time "friend" will tell you what a jerk your true friend is. And you will believe him. You will believe him, that is, until you grow up, or until your good-time friend sells you up the river so far that your life is wrecked, and your future is ruined. Your wisdom will have been gained at a steep price.

But your true friend will still be there. And eating your green beans, securing an education, and working hard are still the path to success.

[...]

A Proposal

So while the Democrats toss your children's hopes and dreams aside, secure in the knowledge that you'll always vote for them, remember that your true friend is still here.

I ask you to consider, why is it that you hate Republicans so much? [...]

Republicans do not know how to approach you. Democrats and the Democrat-dominated press have misled you and stoked up your wrath to the point that you will not listen to us.

So I propose this: how about listening? How about listening to what Republicans have to say, instead of what the Democrats say we say? How about listening to what we have to say before booing us out of the building?

You may find that we make sense, not just for rich white people, but for everybody. To wit:

• Republicans stand, as much as anything, for equality of freedom, equality of opportunity. We do NOT stand for equality of outcome. Hard work is rewarded, laziness is not.
• Want a good job? Get an education.
• Want special treatment? Tough.
• Want the opportunity to escape poverty, crime, and poor schools? Then quit voting for the Democrats that put you there.
• Tired of 15% unemployment in your areas? Then quit supporting the Democrats who raise taxes and force increase regulations on employers. [oh yeah, the Democrats call them the 'rich', but when was the last time a poor man gave you a job?]

Eat your green beans! Do the thing that frees you!

It's tough love, but I assure you, friend, it's love. That's why we fought like hell to restore the DC School Vouchers. That's why we fought like hell to lower taxes on businesses, so employers could hire more people and create more success for everybody.

We received not one ounce of gratitude from you, but we did it anyway. And we will continue to do what is right for America, for whites, for blacks, for Latinos, for Republicans, for Democrats, for today, and for the future."

At the urging of this letter, we will now listen to what the Republicans say and consider some of their actions regarding race. So, a list!

• Republicans invented and successfully implemented the Southern Strategy.
• Republicans (along with many Dixiecrats who would later join the GOP) opposed the Civil Rights Act and other civil rights measures.
• Republicans invented the concept of the "welfare queen" and successfully achieved the demonization of welfare recipients (who were always portrayed as black and often portrayed as female).
• Willie Horton anyone?
• Republicans are the party of strong anti-immigration sentiments.
• Republicans have led the way in anti-muslim rhetoric.
• Republicans have created many code words (states' rights, etc.) to talk about race without actually talking about race.
• There's Trent Lott's entire existence.
• Jesse Helms' entire existence (that was a good ad, you know, the one with the hands?).
• Of course there's Rush Limbaugh.
• Then there's Michael Savage.
• And Bill O'Reilly.
• And how could we forget Fox News?
• Republicans were slow to act and quick to blame the victim in Hurricane Katrina.
• The 2008 election found conservatives using anti-muslim, "suspicious foreigner," and generally racist language and imagery to describe Barack Obama.
• Republican politician Chip Saltsman distributed copies of the song  Barack the Magic Negro to members of the Republican National Committee.
• Conservatives believe that lending to minorities caused the subprime crisis.
• Recently several conservatives have stated that Obama is purposefully hurting the economy to justify "forced reparations."
• There's the recent rise of segregationist Republican Senator Jeff Sessions (current ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee).
• Many conservatives have made racist statements about swine flu and Mexicans (or immigrants in general).
• And most recently, conservative author Byron York wrote that the opinions of black people shouldn't be included when measuring Obama's popularity.

So now that we've taken a look at some of what conservatives and Republicans have to say about race, I'm sure that all Americans concerned with racial justice can agree that the GOP really is the party that has the best interest of american minorities in mind. I expect that as the letter-writer urges, black Americans will now turn to the GOP in droves. I mean, now that it's clear who's really a friend of whom.