Human rights violations (genocides, capital punishment, torture, institutionalized racism), the environment, reproductive rights, and gender/sexual identity rights, to name a few
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The Terrapist Satire Magazine
Because if no one talks about it, it won't change.
The title of this post is the best pro-immigrant protest sign I have seen to date. It points out the vital role immigrants play in the U.S. economy, and the ludicrousness of trying to prevent illegal immigration. Breaking from Republican ranks, the president is proposing an immigration reform policy, that, while it leaves something to be desired in immigrant rights, is far preferable to the plan endorsed by the House.
This break is not merely a fluke or a desperate appeal to the left in the face of rock-bottom approval ratings. Cases like immigration reform and the Dubai Ports World deal highlight a growing rift in the Republican party - between the rich, coastal business-interest Republicans, who clamor for conservative economic policy, and the "heartland" Republicans; the low income, patriotic, fervently religious traditionalists.
Since the neoconservative movement rose to prominence with Reagan, it has generally presented a unified face and consistent ideological pillars. However, this uniformity belies the fact that the American right is in fact a coalition of disparate groups with different interests.
As the Republican party feeds its corporate power base with subsidies, it appeases small-government conservatives with large tax cuts and broad gun rights. The tax policy is stacked against low income voters in rural America, but heartland conservatives are brought on board by the clear religious message of the Republican party - against gay marriage, in favor of the ten commandments, prayer in school, God in the pledge, abstinence-only education, and creationism. By casting military actions as a defence of good against evil in an almost biblical sense (an appeal bolstered by the U.S.'s strong support for Israel), the religious right is brought on board to support the war in Iraq, which had until recently generated overall support for the president, political capital he has invested in his industry backers.
We see then that today's Republicans fall into these three general groups:
With the small-government conservatives generally more aligned and overlapping with the heartland crowd. On issues like globalization, which benefits American corporations and hurts American workers at the same time, the dischord within the party is mounting, and the administration is losing support from its voter base. In fact, data compiled by SurveyUSA on May 15th show that Bush's approval rating is below his dissaproval rating in all but three states: In Wyoming, the scores are tied, and only Utah and Idaho still support the president, though the trend is negative in those states too.
Giving new urgency to the rising public outcry against the Darfur genocide, the UN's World Food Program has been forced to halve the food rations for 6.1 million Sudanese whose ability to provide for themselves has been disrupted by civil war and displacement.
Donor states have simply not given enough aid to maintain the humanitarian effort, and the program has been forced to cut the food ration per person by 50%, from 2,100 calories/day to 1,050 calories/day. With other international aid agencies being driven from the region as a result of escalating violence, UN officials have estimated that as many as 100,000 people a month may die of starvation.
An attempt by the African Union to moderate an end to violence was set back significantly today, as the two major factions opposing the Khartoum regime rejected a proposal which the Sudanese government endorsed earlier in the day. The rebel groups objected that the agreement would not sufficiently address the immediate security and humanitarian issues.
With UN peacekeeping operations unlikely to occur without the permission of the Khartoum government, and Russia and China scuttling Security Council efforts to apply even minimal sanctions on the regime, the U.S. and Britain, among other countries, have begun considering NATO intervention. China relies on Sudanese oil, and provides arms to the government.
On the reduction of refugee rations, James Morris, director of the World Food Program, said, "This is one of the hardest decisions I have ever made. Haven't the people of Darfur suffered enough?"
Earlier today, the UN Security Council passed sanctions on four Sudanese men accused of war crimes in connection with the genocide in Darfur, freezing their assets and instructing nations to block their entry.
This is the first move of any impact the UN has made in response to Darfur, and it is long past due and woefully underwhelming. At the very least, the UN should provide support for the undermanned and under-resourced African Union which is attempting to intercede in the conflict. Ideally, the UN should commit a peacekeeping force to the region (despite the protestations of the Sudanese government), and not tie their own hands behind their back, as was done in Rwanda twelve years ago.
If the international community is serious about preventing agreggious human rights violations, the Security Council must take action to stamp out the murder of thousands of innocent people. This concern ought to take priority over fighting terrorism, which is, simply put, less impactful globally, in terms of loss of life, than the genocide in Sudan or any other state-sponsored attack on civilians occuring in the world today.
In taking a strong stance on the protection of human rights, and in a larger role, working to eliminate extreme poverty from the globe, the international apparatus of the UN and it's partner organizations will also indirectly address terrorism by minimizing the socio-economic struggles which lead many to sympathize with terrorists, and completely delegitimize terrorism as an instrument of social change.
If you missed the White House press conference on Friday, you missed a beautiful thing. Last week, Scooter Libby, former chief aide to Dick Cheney, revealed in grand jury testimony that President Bush himself authorized Cheney to authorize Libby to disseminate classified information, namely the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame.
As soon as the testimony hit the news, the press was abuzz, and by Friday afternoon, they gleefully tore into Press Secretary Scot McClellan with fangs bared. For his part, McClellan put on a brave face and attempted to deflect the blows with "It is the policy of this administration not to comment on an ongoing investigation," and "You have to draw a distinction," apparently, between the sort of leaking that threatens national security (which the Plame leak did), and the sort of leaking that is purely political but it's ok because the president said so.
On the subject of distinctions, however, McClellan conspicuously ignored the distinction between the president formally and publicly declassifying records he feels are in the public interest to disseminate, and sneakily instructing lower level staffers to whisper cherry picked pieces of intelligence to favored reporters, then denying any White House connection to the leak and promising to prosecute anyone connected to it.
Well, now Mr. Bush is connected to it, and while declassifying information is, for him at least, not a crime, there is some uncertainty as to whether the proper procedure was followed, and whether revealing the information was truly in the public interest. Given that revealing Plame's identity publicly created threats to her life and those of her contacts, and destroyed one hard-earned undercover intelligence post, thereby potentially weakening national security, and given that the only possible benefit to the public of knowing this information would be the discreditation of Plame's husband, Joe Wilson, whose information about Iraq's nuclear ambitions turned out to be spot on (thus making the leak more of a public detriment than a benefit), this will be a hard case for the White House to argue.
The plain fact is that the White House intentionally exposed Valerie Plame, either in an attempt to discredit her husband, or as an act of revenge for her husband's column on Iraq's supposed attempts to obtain uranium, and subsequently attempted to distance itself from the whole affair.
While the White House can usually argue (with some plausability for the only partially engaged) that their policies are designed with the best intentions for the public in mind, this case lays bare that President Bush and the White house are simply more concerned about self-preservation, political gain, and revenge than they are about national security.
At 36% approval and falling, the country may just be coming, finally, to the same conclusion.
"Simply rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." This was Sen. Charles Schumer's assessment of the announcement that White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card is set to resign from the post he has held since the beginning of the Bush administration, nearly three times longer than the average chief of staff. Card will be replaced, as of April 14th, with Budget Director Joshua Bolten.
Mr. Bolten, a former investment banker for Goldman Sachs, is yet another long-time Bush family friend, having been the policy director for George W.'s first presidential campaign. It seems, like Harriet Miers redux, that Mr. Bush is simply unable to distinguish between familiarity and the skill set required for a particular assignment.
The president is certainly feeling the heat, from his own party in particular, as midterm elections loom and his approval rating sinks to an all-time low of 37 percent, with only 74% approval among Republicans. Lacking good news from Iraq to stand behind, still attempting to maintain distance from the Vice President, and desperate to distract the press from the proceedings of the Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld challenge to his unconstitutional military tribunals, Mr. Bush's hand is not looking good. In an attempt to present the image of a significant shake-up of the White House staff, Bush is letting go of one under-qualified loyalist and replacing him with another.
On January 23rd, the U.S. cast a vote in the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to deny consultative status to two LGBT organizations, the International Lesbian and Gay Association, and the Danish group LBL.
More than 3000 organizations hold consultative status, the only means by which NGO's may take part in discussions on UN policy.
In voting to dismiss the groups' applications, the US was joined by Cameroon, China, Cuba, Iran, Pakistan, the Russian Federation, Senegal, Sudan, and Zimbabwe.
The U.S. stance is particularly appalling in light of the fact that the US State Department has studied the need for global political assistance for LGBT people. According to Joe Solmonese, President of the Human Rights Campaign, "The State Department's 'Country Reports on Human Rights Practices' show severe human rights violations based on gender identity and sexual orientation occur around the world."
In Iran, homosexuality is punishable by death. Zimbabwe's dictator Robert Mugabe has declared gays and lesbians to be "people without rights."
Given that the LGBT rights in the U.S. are better than in many parts of the world, with Massachusetts allowing gay marriages (a right which exists outside the U.S. only in Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada and Spain), and given that a lack of LGBT consultative status at the UN will likely have the effect of countering progress on LGBT rights worldwide, it's entirely possible that the U.S.'s homophobic action at the UN will have the ironic result of increased immigration of LGBT people to the United States. I wonder if the religious conservatives influencing the Bush adminisration considered that.
Information:
"United Nations: U.S. Aligned With Iran in Anti-Gay Vote" Link
"Gay is the new black." I encountered this witty t-shirt slogan for the first time a few weeks ago, and I think it very nicely delivers an important message: civil rights are civil rights, no matter who you are.
Now, certainly, the social struggles of blacks and homosexuals in America are far from identical - the historical weight of slavery in this country is a burden without equal in the history of oppressed people struggling for equality. However, there are similarites in the obstacles faced by out gay men and women to those which precipitated the African American civil rights movement. Gays and lesbians have been discriminated against in hiring and promotion; they have experienced hate crime and public reproach for daring to expect equal status and recognition of their identities; they have been treated as unwanted members of society, an unclean caste. The terror of AIDS in the 1980's, coupled with its perception as the "gay disease" (an impression re-enforced in the propaganda of religious firebrands) did a great deal to support that last position.
A great deal of progress has been made in assuring legal protection for gays and lesbians, and at the same time, society has become more accepting of different sexual orientations. Homosexuality found it's way into the popular culture in television and movies, though it is still very often presented in near-caricature. Celebrities have lent their status to increasing acceptance, as WNBA basketball star Sheryl Swoopes did when she came out this past October, a courageous decision in the still-often-homophobic world of professional sports.
But it is not enough to be satisfied with the progress that has been made so far. The issue of gay marriage has only recently emerged in the national spotlight, but its seeming novelty as an issue is absolutely no excuse to consider it unimportant. That gays deserve identical status to heterosexuals in all legal contracts, including marriage, is a Constitutional - and moral - no-brainer. That the Democratic Party, which in the 1960's came to define itself as the party of civil rights, has not taken up this cause whole-heartedly is a shame and an embarassment.
For now, progress on this issue comes in the form of periodic court victories. The latest was in my home state of Maryland, where Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge M. Brooke Murdock ruled that a law barring same-sex couples from wedding in Maryland violated the state constitution. The judgment is suspended pending appeal.
The published opinion (available online here) dissected the arguements of the state with surgical precision. On the arguement that same-sex marriage bans are not discriminatory, because all men are free to marry all women and vice versa, the judge concluded thusly:
"This Court finds that the equal application theory fails as a matter of law because it is inherently illogical as a matter of fact."
On the arguement that a discriminatory law can be allowed if it serves a particular state interest, Judge Murdock wrote:
"...these assumptions are not rational speculation, they are broad unsupported generalizations that do not establish a rational relation between same-sex marriage and the State's interests in promoting procreation, child-rearing, and the best interests of children."
On the arguement that the demands of gay couples could be adequately met with civil unions:
"If these ancilary statutes make a married couple and a non-married couple essentially equivalent with respect to the effects of marriage, there is simply no rational reason to prevent the marriage."
In the 2004 election, 11 states voted by referendum on constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. All of these initiatives passed. Public opinion in America remains largely against gay marriage. As with the civil rights struggles of the past, it is in the courts where progress will be made, at least for the time being. Ultimately, though, it is the responsibility of Congress and the state legislatures to enshrine protections. Before equality is fully realized, gay marriage will have to face more battles in the political realm, and fare better than it has done in the past. This demands the unwavering support of the Democratic party. It also demands that each of us take a strong stand: the protections of marriage are not special rights, they are basic rights. To discriminate against individuals based on who they chose to marry - whatever the justification - is wrong. Gay is the new black - and discrimination is ugly, whoever the victim may be.
Mr. Bush certainly does seem determined to achieve some kind of victory in Iraq. Of course, for there to be victory in Iraq, the Iraqis would have to acknowledge that things were going well, and so Bush has made this his primary mission. In the past 2 weeks, it was revealed that Iraqi newspapers were being payed under a U.S. military program to run stories casting the reconstruction in an unrealistically positive light. These stories ran with no disclaimer as to their origins. While the president and secretary of defense have stated their shock and concern over the issue, I find it unlikely that it comes as a great shock to senior officials in the tightest PR administration in modern times. From the Chicago Tribune, Dec. 4th:
President Bush is disturbed by the U.S. military's practice of paying Iraqi papers to run articles emphasizing positive developments in the country and will end the program if it violates the principles of a free media, a senior aide said Sunday.
Apparently, the mere existence of this program does not constitute such a violation of principles.
This is not the first example of Bush's cavalier attitude toward a free press. In 2004, the administration payed commentator Armstrong Williams $241,000 to promote Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, which he dutifully did on cable television and in his newspaper column. Additionally, the administration has engaged in the practice of staging fake news reports with fake reporters, and sending them along anonymously to local news stations, which often air the stories unedited and without comment. From the Washington Post, March 15th:
The Bush administration, rejecting an opinion from the Government Accountability Office, said last week that it is legal for federal agencies to feed TV stations prepackaged news stories that do not disclose the government's role in producing them.
Legal, unlikely; ethical, not a chance. Not that the administration even considers such behavior to be a question of ethics. To quote Bush from a discussion of Medicare reform: "In my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."
Now, while Bush's personal intelligence (or at the very least his grasp of his first language) may be questionable, I believe he knows the difference in meaning between the words "truth" and "propaganda". No doubt it has been explained to him by his advisors. I believe he simply doesn't care. He sees no reason for messages transmitted by his government to adhere to the literal truth, or even to reveal their origins. To Mr. Bush, propaganda effectively becomes the operative truth - a distinction that only becomes consequential when the administrations operatives are caught.
I certainly don't mean to imply that these violations of the independence of the fourth estate constitute the extent of the dishonesty of this administration. On the contrary, political historians will likely spend decades filling volumes on the subject of things this administration said which were total bunk. Entire books will probably be devoted to the study of Dick Cheney's pathological inability to be honest.
However, the breaking down of journalistic independence is by far the most dangerous trend in the information war. With the loss of legitimacy of voices in professional journalism, we lose the ability to view government messages critically.
Certainly, one cannot replace those voices by investing a great deal of legitimacy in the blogosphere - for as much as a multitude of voices is vital to a functioning democracy, the problem is not one of supression, but one of delegitimization. Blogs share hearsay, they largely lack the journalistic credentials of, say, the New York Times or the Chicago Tribune. And when the big newsmedia have failed in their role as government bullshit detector, the little guys are unlikely to be any more successful.
The genius of Bush's program of journalistic subterfuge (for when it comes to PR, the administration is certainly filled with geniuses) is twofold then: first, those messages that do get through without raising a flag represent that much more misinformation slipped under the rader of understandably credulous audiences. Second, with each public revelation of propaganda having snuck through, the legitimacy of the mass media, and thus its power to challenge the truthfulness of government messages, is lowered.
Whether the hectic schedule of 24-hour news coverage, the downfall of the print newspaper, or just a relaxation of journalistic standards is to blame, the situation is growing worse. A powerful ideology sits in the Oval Office, and it is determined to influence how you think. It is up to the media, if they are at all concerned for their future as an independent voice, to redouble their efforts at keeping propaganda out, and it is up to the public to follow multiple sources of information, to keep a skeptical mind about what they hear, and to determine for themselves what messages are trustworthy, and which carry an ulterior motive.
On Friday morning, Kenneth Lee Boyd was executed in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was the 1000th person to be executed in the U.S. since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976. This would seem an appropriate milestone to reexamine and reconsider our fanaticism with the death penalty in this country. Among developed democracies, only the U.S., Japan and South Korea still perform executions. Last year, 59 people were put to death in the U.S.; only China, Iran, and Vietnam executed more people.
In California, protestors plead with Gov. Shwartzenegger to grant clemency to death row inmate Stanley Tookie Williams, founder of the Crips gang and convicted murder turned anti-gang and anti-violence activist. Williams has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize each year since 2001. In 2004, he helped create a landmark agreement, called the Tookie Protocol for Peace, that established a truce between the Crips and the Bloods, two of the most notorious gangs in the country. For this, he recieved a letter of commendation for social activism from none other than President George W. Bush.
Given that Bush had somewhat of a reputation during his tenure as governor of Texas for being "execution happy," with Texas executing 131 prisoners during his term, far more than any other state, let's take a moment to examine his record on the subject. From the New York Times, June 17th 2000:
...In answer to questions about that record, Governor Bush has repeatedly said that he has no qualms. "I'm confident," he said last February, "that every person that has been put to death in Texas under my watch has been guilty of the crime charged, and has had full access to the courts."
That defense of the record ignores many notorious examples of unfairness in Texas death penalty cases. Lawyers have been under the influence of cocaine during the trial, or been drunk or asleep. One court dismissed a complaint about a lawyer who slept through a trial with the comment that courts are not "obligated to either constantly monitor trial counsel's wakefulness or endeavor to wake counsel should he fall asleep."
In one-third of [the] cases...the lawyer who represented the death penalty defendant at trial or on appeal had been or was later disbarred or otherwise sanctioned. In 40 cases the lawyers presented no evidence at all or only one witness at the sentencing phase of the trial.
Not a very reassuring record. But in order to fully comprehend the president's apathy towards human life, let's hear it from the man himself; I present you with a long forgotten incident, revived this week by Slate.com. The following exchange was reported during the 2000 presidential campaign by Tucker Carlson, no enemy of the right, and published in the National Review:
In the week before [Karla Faye Tucker's] execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. "Did you meet with any of them?" I ask.
Bush whips around and stares at me. "No, I didn't meet with any of them," he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. "I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like 'What would you say to Governor Bush?' "
"What was her answer?" I wonder.
"Please," Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "don't kill me."
As you probably know, the U.S. Senate recently voted 90-9 in favor of an explicit ban on torture by U.S. forces. This would seem to be something everyone can agree on, right? That torturing people in our custody isn't a very good idea, not to mention an aggregious human rights violation which even the most soulless, Machiavelian pragmatist would have a tough time morally defending?
Well, apparently not. The president has stated an intent to veto any bill which contains the anti-torture language, and Cheney has all but stated, "I'm a big fan of torture." As White House council, Alberto Gonzales wrote key memos allowing the Justice Department to sidestep the Geneva Convention entirely, paving the way for the abuses at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. Gonzales was rewarded with a promotion to Attorney General. And Gitmo and Abu Ghraib are only the tip of the iceberg.
With recent revelations of secret CIA torture camps around the world, some in eastern European counties who last saw such human rights violations in the form of Soviet gulags (a comparison recently made by Amnesty International, and indignantly rejected by the White House), and the discovery of new torture allegations in Baghdad, it has become apparent that torture at the hands of U.S. forces can no longer be cast as a series of unfortunate but isolated incidents. This administration has carefully and methodically institutionalized torture over the past four years. They have silently encouraged military interrogators to "push the boundaries", with assurances that those further up the chain of command would look the other way. This strategy has been incredibly successful for the Defense Department leadership, as Donald Rumsfeld so ably demonstrated at his hearings before Congress a year or so ago when the first images from Abu Ghraib emerged, carefully evading any personal responsiblity while vowing to remedy the situation.
Would that the acts depicted in the Abu Ghraib photos, or even the religious violations reported at Guantanamo Bay were the worst of the offenses. The sad truth, however, is that a great number of individuals have died as a result of U.S. torture. Detainees in our custody have been drowned, died as a result of severe beatings, and suffered fatal heart attacks in numbers suspiciously high for such a young group of people.
And the world is taking notice. One cannot overestimate the damage done by the Abu Ghraib scandal to the popularity of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, the abuses marked a turning point, before which most of the population was generally amicable to our troops and appreciative of their efforts. Now, the Iraqi population is mostly distrustful and resentful of the American forces. It would be rediculous not to assume that this destruction of trust has manifested itself in increased danger to our troops, and probably increased casualties.
There is a more global impact of our transgressions in Iraq, Cuba, and around the world. The U.S. used to be seen as a champion of the defense of human rights. Now, says Mary Robinson, the former UN Commissioner for Human Rights as well as the former president of Ireland, "It's much harder...for President Bush in China to talk to China about human rights...Where's his credibility?"
Iraqis have begun saying that the human rights situation in their country is at least as bad as it ever was under Saddam Hussein. When one considers the more than 10,000 Iraqis that have likely been killed by American forces (likely, because no such numbers are confirmable) since 2003, and add in the torture that our government (which fancies itself a model for Iraqi democracy) has sactioned, this statement seems less like hyperbole, and more like the truth.
We have commited aggregious moral offenses, undermined the safety of our troops abroad and civillian population at home, and destroyed our global status as a defender of basic human rights and an enemy of the evils of torture. It is time the "War on Terror" turned its focus inward and exposed the U.S.'s own terrible crimes. Ms. Robinson described the situation best in concluding, "It has been a terrible tragedy of responding to acts of terrorism, that governments have forgotten what it is that they are really defending."
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