Oh, for fuck's sake

Sigh.

Apparently, the US is a criminal sex offender. So be on the look-out should this country move into your neighborhood.

I suppose this shouldn't come as a surprise... I've found myself rather in agreement with critiques of recent years observing that we've come to accept prison rape as an informal additional punishment, a nonchalance which can't help but be reflected in the actual approach of the prison-industrial complex to investigating and stopping it. There's a good point to be made that we shouldn't accept rape as an informal punishment any more than we would accept it as a formal one -- I can't imagine (or I can, but'd rather not) it would pass Constitutional muster as a NON-"cruel and unusual" punishment, but our being so blase about invites it to stay part of our system.

Speaking, unfortunately, of rape, there is the continuing and seemingly worsening wave of sexual violence in the Congo, where apparently we're (the US and UN) helping to mentor other countries' armed forces in sexual violence:

AMY GOODMAN: Now, what about this issue of the US-, the UN-backed Congolese army in the area now increasing the rate of rapes? And we’re actually not just talking about women and girls, but also of men and boys, as well. Is that right, Christine?

CHRISTINE SCHULER DESCHRYVER: That’s totally right. I have to say, since they started like with the new operation called “Kimia II” with the Congolese army and supported by the UN forces, the situation here on the ground is terrible, terrible, because now we have the militias just—not just going and rape the women, they are burning villages, they are killing the people, they’re raping men. They are like—they already use the same methods like Janjaweeds in Darfur. So now the level of violence in both North and South Kivu is just incredible. There’s no more words to describe what’s going on. And we still, like—we all, like—like the international NGOs, the local, the national NGOs, all of them made reports to alert the world that there’s a tragedy going on with this operation. But they’re still continuing, and we don’t understand that.

I... have nothing else to say, really. This has sort of sapped the pithiness right outta me.

Republicans: Saving the economy ruins the economy (seriously?)

There's been a meme that's been getting bigger and bigger, much to my profound annoyance; that of the right/Republicans claiming that not only did FDR's New Deal not help end the Great Depression, but rather helped prolong it. The Heritage Foundation, some kooky hyper-libertarian on Colbert a couple months ago, Ron Paul on Bill Maher's Real Time with Bill Maher. (Not that Ron Paul isn't a kooky hyper-libertarian.)

David Sirota wrote at Salon two months ago about this, as part of a larger analysis of Obama's stimulus package.

Sirota:

[Obama rejected] conservatives' increasingly loud claims that the New Deal "prolonged the Great Depression" - claims that are demonstrably false. As Census data shows, the pre-WWII New Deal spending and regulatory agenda resulted both in robust GDP growth rates and the single biggest decline in the unemployment rate in American history. Unbelievably, conservative think tanks have resorted to quite literally lying about government data, claiming, as the Heritage Foundation has, that the "New Deal never drove unemployment below 20 percent." As you can see from the Census Bureau's verifiable data from 1936 and 1937, that claim is a patent lie - and it's great that Obama and his economic team seems to understand that.

Sirota also points out how raising taxes does not hurt productivity or GDP growth, according to, you know, research rather than rhetoric, and according to a Republican's analysis, GDP growth is larger from infrastructure building than from tax cuts. Of course, I myself could give a shit about GDP growth, for nine reasons from Sunday, but once again the work/blog balance calls out, and work, I must go to her.

But before I go, I got on to all of this by reading this article on The Root about the racism that barred the New Deal from helping Blacks anything remotely near as much as it helped Whites, the need for African-Americans today to vocally and forcefully act and support the stimulus, and its spending in the "blackest" states, like Louisiana and Mississippi, whose governors have threatened not to spend stimulus money sent to the state to provide aid to the unemployed and other programs to help the economically disadvantaged, despite the fact that "in two of the blackest states, both with governors threatening to reject the aid, Mississippi and Louisiana, the rate [of unemployment] is three times that of whites". So yeah, go read Michael Dawson's article, too.

So here are your talking points/marching orders/background information sources to go out there and fight the conservative unreality-based-community, because seriously, yo, this shit about the New Deal prolonging the Great Depression -- pending some SERIOUSLY stronger and more mainstream analyses -- is getting on my last mother-lovin' nerve.

Obama's Deep Gooey Substance

I've got your audacity, right here.

A GREAT article by Slate's John Dickerson, on Barack Obama: "A Few Inconvenient Truths. Is Obama as much of a straight talker as he claims?"

Another election year must-read, in my humble opinion.

(Deep gooey substance? What the Eff? This the Eff. Though I'm toying with the alternative descriptive phrase for Obama and (to a lesser extent) Edwards, as having the politics of the "gooey nougat center". Opinions?)

Grow up!

A nice piece from Herman Daly (a founder of ecological economics) can be found at an exciting blog discovery, here at Growth madness (though the top blogpost right now is about how environmental writers do a fundamental disservice by avoiding the problem of population; it's a statement I don't disagree with, but don't agree with; population is part of the problem but with 4% of the world population consuming 23% of its resources, the actual number of people, especially the vast majority who consume far less yet in general reproduce at higher levels than that 4% -- with that in mind, it seems the 4% and those like it are the most significant element of the problem at present, not just the number of people more generally).

Daly talks about growth & development & what they mean, in language that I pretty near 100% agree with (and have "independently derived" if you will - I haven't read this by him before, but have used pretty similar definitions for growth and development as he does).

And in other, more important news: Antonio Taguba, of the famous (infamous?) Taguba Report (aka the ARTICLE 15-6 INVESTIGATION OF THE 800th MILITARY POLICE BRIGADE) retired this year and is now talking more about what happened. He says there's more that's not being released, and pretty much flatly contradicts the idea that the torture at Abu Ghraib didn't come from higher up -- not earth-shatteringly surprising news, but news that deserves to be told and retold nonetheless. I, for one, had certainly not heard about this:

… descriptions of the sexual humiliation of a father with his son… Iraqi woman detainee baring her breasts… a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee… photographs of Arab men wearing women’s panties…

“Sodomizing a female detainee”? That is rape, folks… anal rape. I really wish the media would call these things a little more bluntly. “Sodomize” just sounds so Playboy Channel. “Oohhh… kinky fun fun.”

(from Hell's Handmaiden).

See the links for more on Taguba's revelations and his poor treatment ("You and your report will be investigated,") in return for doing his duty -- making sure the US does its best to live up to its ideals. (Wow, is that an idealistically patriotic sentiment, especially coming from me! But I mean it here...)

The New York Times: General Says Prison Inquiry Led to His Forced Retirement, June 17, 2007

The WaPo: Abu Ghraib Investigator Points to Pentagon

and The New Yorker again: Annals of National Security: The General's Report

We owe Gen. Antonio Taguba a debt that only history will fully realize.

Olmert: Oh... shit. And: another attempt to say something sensible about Israel-Palestine.

Apparently, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud "Lebanon War" Olmert is not doing so well, politically speaking. According to Slate's Today's Papers (quoting from the NYT Olmert's approval rating is lower than that of VP Dick "I'm a Dick" Cheney, whose rating is somewhere in the 20s, though he has gone as low as 19%.

We here at the J Continuum are mainly suprised that Slate didn't use the doughty time-tested phrase, "...Which gives him an approval rating slightly lower that that of [INSERT DISEASE HERE]." Common inserts are The Plague and The Common Flu.

While I have to admit I still find that phrase funny, it's gotten a bit overused. Though the basic ridiculous idea -- that diseases get approval ratings ("21% of those polled approved of the job the Common Flu has been doing this season, while only 19% approved of Mr. Cheney's performance") is still golden. I think my favorite part is my mental image of a press conference where The Common Flu is trying not to be too smirky about beating VP Cheney's approval, and trying to make clear that it knows it "has a lot of work to do to regain the trust of the American people."

Anyway. Olmert, despite the drumming he's taking from this report (establishing, basically, that he effed up the war with Lebanon) is apparently going to appoint people to study the report, rather than resigning. Ah, political theatre. "Yes, yes, you all think I did a horrible job, but let's not jump to the conclusion that I'm doing a horrible job. First, it's important to study the document that says I did a horrible job, then, perhaps, examine the actual effectiveness of me doing my job, and then, perhaps within our lifetimes, I will actually contemplate looking at changing the way I do my job." Oh, er, well, good, keep it up then, I guess.

In a different note, a while back there was a little debate between me and J-Friend Becky on Israel, Palestine, and Apartheid, and though I haven't read Jimmy Carter's book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid", it comes highly recommended by a number of friends and trusted mentors of mine. They think Carter takes a minimalist and highly reasonable tact on the issue; in Carter's comments on the book he emphasizes something I myself got wrong in my debate with Becky and agree with in his formulation; he is not accusing Israel of apartheid within its own (internationally recognized) borders; hence, the book is not called "Israel: Peace not apartheid." However, it is virtually undeniable that Israel is running an apartheid system in Palestine, as apartheid is at least in large part defined by having different sets of rules for different groups of people. Palestinians are not able to exercise their full rights in the terrority they nominally control, and there is indeed, besides the "security fence"-"separation wall"-illegal barrier that cuts many of them off from land they rightfully own, a system of highways and roads where some are for the exclusive use of Israelis. One may argue that Israel's nominal control of Palestine is justifiable for self-protection, but the problem is (as has been stated many times by others before), if they are in control then they are occupiers under international law -- and have a long set of responsibilities to the occupied for law, order, and welfare that they are not completing. If they are NOT or don't wish to be in control, then they cannot, for example, block and guard the Palestinian ports of entry and trade that are not within the internationally recognized borders of Israel, nor withhold aid money from other countries that is owed to Palestine in order to exact concessions -- not unless, of course, rather than independence OR occupation, Israel wishes to declare open war.

To my understanding, those are the 3 internationally defined options (occupation, independent Palestinian control, or open warfare) and the combination of these within Palestine itself seems to me to be unambiguously resulting in apartheid. Carter makes it very clear that within Israel itself, he is impressed, or at least satisfied, that the norms of democracy are upheld as Palestinians and other non-Jews in Israel enjoy full democratic rights and liberty. I'm willing cede to his (and many others, such as Becky's) testimony there; I also agree with his analysis about Palestine proper.

Major states (the US, the UK, France, China, Japan, Israel, etc.) have a long and storied history of ignoring international law, especially in the area of colonial, terroritorial, and occupational rights and obligations. I've heard many times the argument that Israel shouldn't have to cede to the 1967 borders because "never before has a winning state in a war had to return terrority." Whether or not this is a historical accuracy seems to me less important than the implication that might makes right, or even worse, that might makes moral. In Shakespeare's Henry V, a significant theme was whether or not military victory was God's blessing on Henry's family's usurpation of the British throne; he pondered whether such an act (believed to be against God's will) could then be ratified by God through His granting of victory against France. In the end, I recall, he seemed content to think it did -- we sinned by taking down the "rightful" king, but I'm king, and I just won a major battle, so God must be smiling on me and ratifying my thwarting of His Own Will. Which, you know, makes none of the typical kinds of sense. It makes no more sense to me in the context of Israel -- you can transgress against international law if you wish, you'd have, if not good company, lots of it. But that is rather irrelevant to morality, imho, just as the fact that most, if not all, cultures practiced slavery and/or enforced servitude up until the, say, 19th century doesn't mean that is was alright for all of them to do so until the 19th century. The modern era's rules are that land gained through war is not a legitimate path to acquire territory. Should Iran take over Iraq, or Canada the US, or US take over Mexico, I wouldn't think it any more legitimate than Palestine conquering Israel or Israel usurping the '67 borders. So, let us say long live the democratic state of Israel -- and may Israeli apartheid in Palestine exist no longer!

Episode 9: Wherein I can't even maintain a token protest

After reading the headline only of what was bound to be another execrable article by Slate's Steven Landsburg, I had had enough:

Dear Editor,

I am afraid I will have to launch a personal -- and, I realize, merely symbolic -- boycott of Slate as it continues to publish columns by Steven Landsburg.

I cannot complain specifically about the most recent Steven Landsburg article because I refuse to read it. I have, however, read all of his previously published Slate articles as far as I know, as I have read Slate devoutly since 2002.

Do not think this is fretting about something I haven't seen. I have seen, and commented on, Dr. Landsburg's articles any number of times. I have read perhaps one article by him that I didn't consider to be purely amateurish, poor science, provocative just to be provocative and without any sound evidence or reasoning to back up its contrarian argument. It seems as if Dr. Landsburg gets up and decides to write an Everyday Economics article by thinking "What can I prove using 1 or 2 studies that will surely piss off at least half the readership enough to angrily slobber over my article? I know! 'Is it in the economic interest of black people to eat lots of watermelons and fried chicken, while dancing entertainingly for white people?' Of course it is! Not just before the end of Jim Crow, but now as well!"

As a recent example, view the responses to his prior article, "Women are chokers." I direct you to a post at least nominally by a fellow scientist, Ian T. Ellwood. He reviews how thoroughly poor a study it was that Landsburg relied on almost entirely for his argument. Sure, Slate is not an academic journal, but single-sourced non-peer-reviewed "science" article? No, thanks, that's alright, I'll pass.

If you were to look in the Fray, you'd see that Dr. Landsburg has consistently been critiqued there on scientific sloppiness, sloppiness that goes beyond merely being "casual science" to "almost pure contrarianism with poor scientific reasoning added for rhetorical value."

I cannot for the life of me fathom why Slate continues to publish him, except for the possibility that his provocative churlishness brings in readers and ad revenue. In any case, this issue and Slate's lack of response to readers -- to defend Landsburg, or any other reaction from the top, really -- speaks doubly ill of the Editors, both in terms of publishing tripe and in terms of utterly wasting the Fray, which was notably largely unmentioned in Slate's anniversary self-congratulations. It seems to be a place where we readers can talk to ourselves (and the Freditor), but neither the quality nor quantity of our postings have any effect or elicit cogent responses from those we are writing most often to or about.

Perhaps it's time for Slate to get a Public Editor? That's something I'd like to see, if and when I come back.

Sincerely,

"J Continuum's name"

(This post was greeted by a resounding lack of caring on anyone's part.)

I'm sad to say, I am indeed back, I couldn't keep myself away from Slate for reasons I haven't entirely grasped. I guess because it is the most tolerable -- at times, enjoyable -- way to get a sense of mainstream thought. I love me some Counterpunch, but they are laughably, unfortunately far from mainstream consciousness, and though their articles usually do take mainstream thought into account (and to task), it is not the same as reading and attempting to understand mainstream thought. Which, by the way, is very important -- that is, to understand how people other than those who agree with you think. I'm still occasionally horrified by a liberal who says "Oh, really? I don't really follow mainstream news." WHAT???!! As Chris Rock said about women (and implied about men) who don't give head, "They still MAKE you??" I mean, if you want to effect change, you can't do that. If you're a "Fuck 'em, they're going to screw it all up and kill us all anyway" liberal, then fine, whatever.

I'm drifting away here into digression, so I'll finish with a SNAFU that happened while I actually was (mostly) observing my Slate boycott:

Thursday's headlines here on Slate featured a story, beneath Barack Obama's image, described as "Why Obama is Like a Serial Killer." The featured article, by Jacob Weisberg, was entitled "Candidates and Killers." Generously, we could say it was a light-hearted piece sending up the vapidity of childhood clichés. Somewhat more awkwardly, we could acknowledge that its tentative concluding note about Obama's lonely childhood, in tandem with our promotional headline, struck some readers as downright racist... I'm a scrawny white guy, so I can't speak from a black perspective (I'll leave that to BLACKMOSES). But, aside from the guys talking about God knows what, I can say we created a pretty grumpy mood in The Big Idea Fray.

Is it just me, kiddies, or is Jacob Weisberg's Slate ever-increasingly, if not circling the (toilet) bowl, at least drinking out of it?