I’ll be away until January 5th on a much anticipated trip to the Galapagos Islands. I’m told there is not internet access from the area! Even if there were I’d most likely feel more focused on the flora and fauna that breaking world news.
Have a great couple of weeks and I hope to have you coming back for visits in the new year.
Will Kirkland
willblog@cpe-sf.com
Keith Ellison, newly elected to the House of Representatives from Minnesota, converted to Islam while in college. Virgil (not so) Goode, House of Representatives from Virginia, went public with his objections to Ellison’s taking the oath of office on the Koran. Goode was wrong in all manner of ways but had given Ellison lots of air time to show himself as a pathbreaker - not only in his faith but as a voice of reason.
Lone Muslim Congressman Speaks Out
[Spend some time with readers' comments to meet some not-so-reasonable folks.]
Juan Cole has a few reminders for No So Goode:
Islamophobia or Anti-Muslimism is now among the more pressing social pathologies infecting the US. If it becomes established and acceptable, then lots of other forms of bigotry will also grow in virulence. There could end up being blood in the streets.
We read from time to time that ice-pack melting in Antartica and Greenland will lift sea levels into the sewers and streets of major cities of the world, including New York, Miami, Los Angeles. What is less often said is that the same melting, taking place in high mountain glaciers, will enormously impact the rivers flowing from those glaciers and the people dependent on their waters.
“In three to four decades these rivers that feed more than a billion people in our society and adjoining countries will become seasonal rivers,” Ahluwalia said.
Almost every one of more than 300 large glaciers studied worldwide — from the Andes in South America to the Himalayas — is in retreat, international glaciologists reported in October in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
I hope those religious folks who disparage science and depend on faith are praying like maniacs, cause one billion people need all the help they can get…
David Lazarus, the SF Chronicle’s business columnist, continues his valuable work looking at business and economic life with facts and stories most of his colleagues pass over.
“U.S. Taxpayer Census,” the envelope says on the outside in big letters. “Do Not Tamper: Reply Within 5 Days.” …
In reality, the “Census” is a mailer from something called the Christian Seniors Association. And of the nine questions it asks, six involve a slanted look at Social Security and three involve donating money to the right-wing organization.
What the mailer doesn’t tell you, though, at least not in so many words, is that any funds contributed to the Christian Seniors Association will in fact go to its parent group, the Traditional Values Coalition.
Last week the Saudi Ambassador to the US abruptly went home — to spend more time with his family, of course. There was a good deal of head-scratching among the foreign policy wonks: what did this mean, exactly? It turns out to mean there is a major foreign policy split within Saudi Arabia: how to deal with Iran? The cards on the table of course are 1) Iran is majority Shiite and Persian; 2) Saudi Arabia is majority Sunni and Arabic; 3) Iraq is a bloody battle ground between a minority Sunni which has been ripped from its 1,000 year old dominance over the majority Shiite. Power throughout the region, political, military and psychological is in play, with just about everything at stake. This article by Hassan Fattah, with a nod to blogger Steve Clemons, is pretty interesting.
Saudi newspapers now denounce Iran’s growing power. Religious leaders here, who view Shiism as heresy, have begun talking about a “Persian onslaught” that threatens Islam. In the salons and diwans of Riyadh, the “Iranian threat” is raised almost as frequently as the stock market.
“Iran has become more dangerous than Israel itself,” said Sheik Musa bin Abdulaziz, editor of the magazine Al Salafi, who describes himself as a moderate Salafi, a fundamentalist Muslim movement. “The Iranian revolution has come to renew the Persian presence in the region. This is the real clash of civilizations.”
Saudi Split over Approaches to Iran
Clemons, by the way, says an important article about the Saudi split will be forthcoming in the Washington Post by Robin Wright.
No politics. No commentary. Just a good tool.
Flurries of speculation in October and November about US carrier task forces in waters around Iran — making ready for an “October surprise”– turned out to be just that: speculation. Now, if Shanker has sourced his story correctly, more than rumors are in play.
…officials said that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates was expected this week to approve a request by commanders for a second aircraft carrier and its supporting ships to be stationed within quick sailing distance of Iran by early next year.
The British addition to existing forces is said to be two mine hunters. The named ship from the US, likely to join the USS Eisenhower, CVN 69, is the USS John C. Stennis, CVN 74, (and here)along with its battle group.
I just want to remind you how much fire-power is involved here. It is always interesting to play the substitute word game to get the full implications of what is being said:
The United StatesChina andBritainIndia will begin moving additional warships and strike aircraft into thePersianGulf of Mexico region in a display of military resolve towardIranthe U.S. that will come as the United Nations continues to debate possible sanctions against the country,Pentagongovernment and military officials said Wednesday.
This building-peace-by-threatening-war approach is especially nuts given the very interesting internal politics in Iran now. As usual, the paint everything one scary color, favored by the powerful, is far from the truth.
“On the next floor below are the abdominal and spine cases, head wounds and double amputations. On the right side of the wing are the jaw wounds, wounds in the joints, wounds in the kidneys, wounds in the testicles, wounds in the intestines. Here a man realizes for the first time in how many places a man can get hit.
Two fellows die of tetanus. Their skin turns pale. Their limbs stiffen. At last only their eyes live, stubbornly.
Many of the wounded have their shattered limbs hanging free in the air from a gallows. Underneath the wound a basin is placed into which drips the pus. Every two or three hours the vessel is emptied.
Other man lie in stretching bandages with heavy weights hanging from the end of the bed. I see intestine wounds that are constantly full of excreta. The surgeon’s clerk shows me X-ray photographs of completely smashed hip bones, knees and shoulders. A man cannot realize that above such shattered bodies there are still human faces in which life goes its daily rounds.
And this is only one hospital, one single station. There are hundreds of thousands in Germany; hundreds of thousands in France; hundreds of thousands in Russia. How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done or thought when such things are possible.
It must be all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture chambers and their hundreds of thousands.
A hospital alone shows what war is.
I am young. I am twenty years old. Yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently, slay one another
I see that the keenest brains of the world invent weapons, and words, to make it yet more refined and enduring
And all men of my age, here and over there, throughout the whole world, see these things. All my generation is experiencing these things with me. What would our fathers do if we suddenly stood up and came before them and proffered out account? What do they expect of us if a time ever comes when the war is over? Through the years our business has been killing. It was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of life is limited to death. What will happen afterwards and what shall come out of us?”
Chris Hedges took a break from war reporting a couple of years ago. He wrote a book — War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning. Then a few stories appeared about the lives of the poor and marginalized in American Cities, sad stories but not particularly dangerous to him. He couldn’t stay away it seems. This story about Gaza is chilling. Not new. Not unknown but as the Right has learned, the only way to get your message out is to repeat it and repeat it and repeat it. This is true even if the message is the truth.
The stark reality of Gaza, however, has failed to penetrate the consciousness of most Americans, who, when they notice the Israeli and Palestinian conflict, prefer to debate the merits of the word “apartheid” in former President Jimmy Carter’s new book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” It is a sad commentary on the gutlessness of the U.S. press and the timidity of the Democratic opposition that most Americans are not aware of the catastrophic humanitarian crisis they bear so much responsibility in creating. Palestinians are not only dying, their olive trees uprooted, their farmland and homes destroyed and their aquifers taken away from them, but on many days they can’t move because of Israeli “closures” that make basic tasks, like buying food and going to the hospital, nearly impossible.
I mentioned the hapless duo of Brooks and Friedman appearing on Press the Meat on Sunday. Here’s more.
On yesterday’s Meet the Press, Tim Russert spoke about Iraq with a two-man panel—David Brooks and Thomas Friedman. What made this panel so intriguing? Each man supported the war from the start! Thus continued the media custom known in these precincts as “rule by the wrong.” If you were right from the start about Iraq, you’re pretty much banned from network discussions. Only those who were wrong can still comment. It’s something like a basketball tourney where only the losers advance.
$700 million US taxpayer dollars poured into Colombia in 2006 — most of it for the military, most of that for the war on drugs. Alongside the regular military were hundreds of para-military units, with thousands of “soldiers.” Now, from details on a confiscated laptop computer, it turns out that elected officials, judges, party loyalists — all from the President Alvaro Uribe’s coalition — have deep and lasting ties to the paramilitaries.
The scandal began early this year when two political parties that support the conservative Uribe — the Bush administration’s closest ally in South America — expelled five of their congressional candidates for ties to right-wing paramilitary militias, which have killed tens of thousands of civilians and run drug-trafficking networks.
But the affair exploded last month after the Supreme Court ordered the arrest of three legislators and a former congresswoman — all Uribe allies — for being part of a paramilitary group that brutally massacred 16 villagers in 2000 using rocks and machetes, a trademark paramilitary method of murder.
Colombia Leaders Tied to Death Squads
Of course Uribe is described as President George Bush’s closest ally in South America. Those of you with special ties to South America could do worse than keep the attention of the newly elected Congress focused on where our money is going and how it is used.
Kudos to the SF Chronicle for front-paging the article.
For more on Colombia, and a handhold to get some action, here’s an article about a link to — you guessed it, United Fruit Company.
A political ally of President Alvaro Uribe is under investigation for allegedly doing business with illegal right-wing militias as head of a company that sells fruit for shipment to the United States and Europe.
Uribe Ally Accused of Ties With Militias
To contemplate what it’s like to speak out against the militias and their government enablers read this IPS article
You can say what you want about the San Francisco Chronicle and its propensity for lurid, full color ledes, and I often do. Sometimes however the splash is about something truly world shaking. No other paper I have seen recently has featured global warming stories with top-of-the-fold, eye-catching coverage, or given their environmental writer such billing. Be sure to read today’s article
SPRING GETS OUT OF SYNC
The shift in seasons around the world is of enormous concern as climate change takes hold. Over the millenium evolution has pressured adaptation of larve, butterfly, food source, temperature and scarcity of predators to each other. Now, as food source ripens and dies before the larvae needs the food, and so dies without maturing, the fine complex web of being is threatened with unravelling.
Evolution of course will eventually deal with it. The species, or sub-species with the ability to adapt will survive and those without, will not. Adaptation, however, doesn’t respect human time frames, and may not be pretty if great die-offs precede emergence of new species — with totally unpredictable characteristics, it might be said. You think you’ve seen “shock and awe?” Once upon a time there were no mammals. What now non existent class of beings might appear in a new world order?
The news finally percolated up to the western media from China
The baiji is Functionally extinct. Lipotes vexilifier is the first species of cetacean – whales, dolphins and porpoises – to disappear from our globe in modern times…the first large mammal to go extinct as a result of man’s destruction of their natural habitat and resources.
Appearing in the NY Times “World Briefing” section today, Dec 14, 2006, it originally began appearing early in the month in AP articles.
It’s bad enough for a species to blink out, let alone a higher mammal. The scary thing though is not the loss of a species but the cause of the loss. Death by pollution is not species specific.
For more information you can go to www.baiji.org
I have to admit, when I first heard that South Dakota’s Senator Tim Johnson had a stroke or heart attack my first thought was polonioum 210. I reprimanded myself for paranoia and thinking evil of the opposition and concentrated on wishing him a speedy recovery. The news then arrived that it was not a stroke or heart attack and I allowed myself to relax a little, until I read last night brain surgery. That cost me a few hours of sleep, contemplating a scene from Romulo Gallegos’ Canaima in which a dead man is propped up in bed long enough to marry him to his lady friend who would otherwise be cast out in the streets by the family of the deceased.
This morning’s news that some tangled blood vessels in his brain had caused bleeding, and thus his disorientation, and had been successfully operated on was a relief in its concreteness, and a further worry because of what it implied. So I am left lopsided until we hear more. Meanwhile I’m sure the Republican Governor of South Dakota is going through his roledex for possible appointments, who would serve through January of 2009 at least, and have to stand for election in November 2008. You can be sure that no one being considered is of Senator Johnson’s party…
Newsday: Senator Johnson
“Researchers in Switzerland have demonstrated more-efficient water-splitting solar cells based on a cheap, abundant, and long-lasting material: rust. The advance could lead to a cheap and energy-efficient way to generate hydrogen for fuel-cell vehicles using solar energy.”
Go lads, go!
With a trip to the Galpagos two weeks away I’ve been reading the exhaustive Janet Browne biography of Darwin and have listened to The Origin of Species in its Audible version. So it was particularly interesting to run across this article in the NY Times this morning:
A surprisingly recent instance of human evolution has been detected among the peoples of East Africa. It is the ability to digest milk in adulthood, conferred by genetic changes that occurred as recently as 3,000 years ago, a team of geneticists has found.
It’s a short, accessible article about separate instances of genetic mutation in tribes with large milk-producing cattle herds. The mutation works to leave lactose tolerance opperative after weaning. The way the mutation spreads is that couples with permanent lactose tolerance leave some 10 times as many off spring as those whose tolerance is switched off — a perfect example of “survival of the fitest,” which is not usually survival in warfare or predation, but in better adaptaptability to the surroundings and eventual out-breeding of competing sub-species.
Idly following links from one article to another I came across this 2002 article about the 1962 October Cuban Missle crisis. Much has been written about it, and how close the world came to a terrifying nuclear exchange. How close and how dependent on the actions of two men only became known during a symposium in Havana in 2002.
The Joint Chiefs had recommended air strike and invasion of Cuba, as of 4 p.m. The Cubans were firing on all the low-level US recon flights. At the conference, we found out that exactly at that moment, US destroyers were dropping signaling depth charges on a Soviet submarine near the quarantine line that was carrying a nuclear-tipped torpedo — totally unbeknownst to the US Navy. The Soviet captain lost his temper, there could be a world war up there, let’s take some of them down with us, etc. Cooler heads prevailed, specifically the sub brigade deputy commander named Vasily Arkhipov, who was onboard and calmed the captain down. The sub came to the surface about 15 minutes after Soviet ambassador Dobrynin left Bobby Kennedy’s office carrying RFK’s urgent message to Khrushchev, time is running out, invasion in 48 hours, if you take the missiles out, we will pledge not to invade Cuba…
The nuclear torpedoes were the equivalent in destructive power of the US bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Aimed at surface ships, at sea, the human and visibile destruction would have been far less than Hiroshima. Ships further than 1 mile from the blast likely would have survived, structurally. Fallout would have followed the prevailing winds and more likely contaminated Cuba than Florida. The extreme damage would have been the follow up. The US would not have held its nuclear trigger finger knowing the USSR had already begun. The missles in place in Cuba would likely have been fired in response to, or in anticipation of, the US firing. The USSR itself would not have been far behind and the US to the USSR. Bye Bye.
It’s interesting that what stopped the initial launch were words, arguments, not guns, not even threats of court martial or torture…
As one commenter asks: Where is the Nobel Peace Prize for Vasily Arkhipov?
You can see more of Blanton’s comments at the National Security Archives. (Do a search for “Vasili” to find a similar claim.
In my new zeal to see all the movies I’ve ever missed I saw The Story of the Weeping Camel via Netfix last night.
As most of the reviewers say, it was slow to the point of mesmerization, an anthropology film in many ways, in which the more manic side of the brain pops up from time to time to ask “ok, where are we going here?” From grandmother ladeling out another form of milk to the young mother brushing dust off the yurt after the howling windstorm we are curious and comfortable watching daily lives unfold.
The drama, such as it is, is that a mother camel, after a difficult (and first) birth — assisted by human beings before your very eyes– rejects the brute (literally, a big and white colt.) The camel is wealth, of course, though it’s clear by the human actions that much more and deeper is involved in the care and worry; it will die unless the mother bonds with it. Though the young woman of the film does do some hand milking and feeding through a nipple-ended horn that is not enough –probably not in food, and certainly not in bonding, leading and companionship. As the colt grows weaker and all efforts to bring the two together fail the family turns to an old tradition: a ritual with a two stringed instrument called a morin khuur.
What isn’t commented on much in the reviews I’ve read is the mysterious power of music even as it is so central to the story. The tribes in southern Mongolia apparently have a long tradition of using a certain set of ritual song and music to break the spell of rejection between mother and child, more typically sheep than camels. Initially the morin khuur is slung by a tie over the mother camel’s hump. Either from the wind or from resonance with the camel’s lowing, the strings begin to vibrate. Or perhaps, in response to the strings’ vibration the camel begins to low.
We had seen the mother camel just before snapping, spitting and growling — even to stop the offending instrument from being placed upon her; and then, in the space of minutes, we see her calm down. The morin khuur is removed and the player begins to stroke a familiar tune, to which the young woman of the family begins to sing, sweetly and clearly, her hands stroking the long fur of the camel, soothing with voice and hand. The camel seems to listen, to dwell, and to vocalize in return. The expressive eyes, which according to legend, are always looking at the horizon for the return of the antlers it was due from the gods, are a wonder to watch.
As the music and the human and the camel voices went on, as emotions and connections began to fill, I began to think about the origins of speech, how closely bound such meaning-filled sound was to the later (as I think) syllabetical morphemes of meaning; how song may well have risen as intelligence-driven imitation of the natural world, and how language might have come out of song.
As the camel calmed, the white furred colt was brought closer and finally led to suckle, from which it had been dislodged so often before by a sharp jolt to the jaw of the mother’s thigh bone, or by her simply wandering away in disinterest. And the mother stood still. The colt looked around, and suckled again. The mother encouraged it with her nose pushing at its hindquarters. The watching humans see that it is time to go. They move to the yurt for some milk and more song. The mother and child camel are left, standing and moving together, the mother camel with water spurting from her eye.
It is truly an amazing film, especially, as I understand it, that the film makers did not know what would have at the end when they began. Although I will think about the camels, and recall the temptations of modernity and TV for the youngest boy in the film, it is the power of the music I will recall most often, especially when I hear myself humming, wordlessly, in response to memories of where I’ve been or of the pleasure of friends, of work well done, of love.
Count me among those who think the non-action by the sub committee for Moaning and Sighing is scandalous all by itself.
Howard Berman, otherwise a good Dem,[notably, except for his Invade Iraq vote in 2003] has soiled his good name with this report. [pdf]
Notwithstanding the concerns regarding the specific conduct of some individuals who learned of certain allegations regarding Representative Foley … the Invesitgative Subcommittee did not find any current House Members or employees violated the House Code of Official Conduct.
Even the NY Times Editorial writers get it: “the bipartisan committee produced a report yesterday that was a 91-page exercise in cowardice.”
As Melanie Sloan of CREW says:
“This report is proof positive that the ethics committee is incapable of handling allegations of wrongdoing. To restore the public’s confidence in the congressional ethics process, the new Congress should immediately move to create an Office of Public Integrity to handle complaints against members of Congress.”
Aside from the Committee’s failure to find that any House Ethics rules were broken, two other things struck me. Those people directly reponsible for supervising the Pages, in the Residence Hall and at the School, seem not to have been in the loop enough to be the first point of contact for the offended Pages. Those who did complain went to their sponsoring Representative, which makes sense enough I suppose. But the Pages don’t work for their Sponsors; they are not in their offices doing their work. They work the House floor and for many people. Had I been in their shoes I might have thought to complain to someone I saw often, as a mentor or supervisor; a teacher, a Residence Hall supervisor. That didn’t happen.
The second thing that struck me is that although the letter from the Committee to all Representatives said it was “conducting an enquiry regarding any conduct of House Members, officers, staff related to information concerning improper conduct involving Members and current and former House Pages” the only matter of investigation in the report is about Foley. No Page called the 800 number and spoke of improper conduct of any other House Member? I hope it’s true that all the Ladies and Gentlemen are so well behaved but with 17 year olds of both sexes wanting attention and Representatives of all proclivities frankly, I’m surprised. Adult sexual interest in adolesents is certainly not, by sadly long and sadly documented evidence, a perculiarity of homosexuals.
Interestingly, Berman doesn’t make his e-mail public, but here is the DC address and phone. You might want to send him your comments,
Congressman Howard L. Berman
2221 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-4695
A couple of us went to see Shut Up and Sing over the weekend. The short recommendation is: Go See it. This is another fine Barbara Kopple documentary (Winter Soldier, and Harlan County among many), this time about the country music trio the Dixie Chicks. The Chicks were a hardworking, just-getting-there band when the lead singer, Natalie Maines, let loose with a wisecrack at a London concert in 2003 to the effect that she was ashamed that George Bush was from Texas. The sentence got picked up by London tabloids, then the raging rightwing weblog Powerline in the US and country western radio stations began refusing to play the Chicks’ records (many of the refusals ordered by corporate bosses.) Festive record crushings and death threats followed.
The film gives the whole run-down which alone is worth going to see. But beyond the politics (and there is plenty of that) it’s a great documentary of what goes into a high-powered road show; what is done to drive a group’s career — how many people are involved, what the tasks are. These three young women are the pay-masters for several hundred it seems. There are great sequences of how songs are built, from an idea, or a line, to the complete finished product we hear — and it sure is a product. We see the women with their babies and families, on the road and off. (You think your life is hectic!) Tying all of this together is the sheer, raw energy of the young (just over 30 years old) and very talented musicians. It is amazing to watch, and hear, them perform. Finally, it is a story of growing into a sense of self, of love and mutual aid. The original wisecrack, at first dismissed and tip-toed around, is defended and Maines and the others learn that freedom isn’t always free. Go, even if you are not a country music fan. You could wait for the DVD but you’ll miss out of the fierce anger of the latest album as Maines rips into Not Ready to Make Nice. [ I'm not ready to make nice, I'm not ready to back down, I'm still mad as hell and, I don't have time to go round and round and round ...] I’d go again just to hear her do it.