Powerful Stuff

The Conquest and Theft of América, Pt. 13

“You all do and undo,” he said. “So you can do whatever you want with me.” To him we were part of the system keeping him from being deported back to his country, where his children, wife, mother, and sister depended on him. He was their sole support and did not know how they were going to make it with him in jail for 5 months. None of the “options” really mattered to him. Caught between despair and hopelessness, he just wept. He had failed his family, and was devastated. I went for some napkins, but he refused them. I offered him a cup of soda, which he superstitiously declined, saying it could be “poisoned.” His Native American spirit was broken and he could no longer think. He stared for a while at the signature page pretending to read it, although I knew he was actually praying for guidance and protection. Before he signed with a scribble, he said: “God knows you are just doing your job to support your families, and that job is to keep me from supporting mine.”

There was my conflict of interest, well put by a weeping, illiterate man.

EPA: Climate Change Puts US Way of Life at Risk

Interesting framing. I mean, you could say, 'climate change opportunity facing America', instead, and it would be the same, wouldn't it?

Dr. Horrible Rocks!

Watch Act I & II now (and III on Saturday), then buy the DVD/download when it comes out!

Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog. It's a supervillain musical! Hooray!

Lysistrata, Anyone?

I mean, honestly, if we all closed our legs until these yahoos grew a brain, it might improve things.

HHS Moves to Define Contraception as Abortion

We Must Put Things Right

War Crimes? Yes. To our great shame. There is only one way to cleanse this stain from our dishonor, and that's to put the perpetrators on trial. Which is more than detainees got.

A Blind Eye to Guantanamo?

A CIA analyst warned the Bush administration in 2002 that up to a third of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay may have been imprisoned by mistake, but White House officials ignored the finding and insisted that all were “enemy combatants” subject to indefinite incarceration, according to a new book critical of the administration’s terrorism policies.

The CIA assessment directly challenged the administration’s claim that the detainees were all hardened terrorists — the “worst of the worst,” as then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at the time. But a top aide to Vice President Cheney shrugged off the report and squashed proposals for a quick review of the detainees’ cases, author Jane Mayer writes in “The Dark Side,” scheduled for release next week.

“There will be no review,” the book quotes Cheney staff director David Addington as saying. “The president has determined that they are ALL enemy combatants. We are not going to revisit it.”

(H/T The Agitator)

The rest of the world knows the truth. American military deserters may have an asylum claim in Canada now. Read it here.

Cool! Real-Time Tracking of Intl Space Station

Real-time satellite and space station tracking. You can watch the International Space Station move. Cool.

WTF?

what?:

"CAL THOMAS, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: In this campaign, we are being asked to accept three things simultaneously, the first woman with a credible chance of being president, the first African-American with the chance to being president and, whoever Michelle Obama is going to be styled, the angry black woman, first lady? This is an awful lot."

I'm sorry, what?

What was that? What was that? What was that?

This isn't an awful lot to be asked to accept. You idiots just need to stop pining for your rose-tinted-glasses version of the 1950s. Michelle Obama is a modern black woman, thank god.

(HT to angry black woman.)

Latest Story Rejection

Weird Tales rejected The Red Sea, which definitely qualifies as a weird tale, and the thought has cross my mind that it's really an excerpt, or spinoff, of something quite a bit longer in a universe that's been evolving in some dank corner of my brain.

In other news, my apartment is hot and that does not make me happy. Fortunately, in New England, summer is one of MANY seasons. Unlike Southern California.

Prison Ships

US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships

You know what's so shameful? The title of the article may say "US accused," but there's no question in my mind.

How can we recover from this?

Pro Bono Advocate Award

I received a pro bono advocate award last night at Alternatives for Community & Environment's annual fundraiser and award ceremony. More info: here.

Personal Excitement!

Hm. That sounded like the title of a message from an email spammer, didn't it? Well, of course it's not. No, friends, yours truly interrogated people today. By which, I mean, cross-examined expert witnesses in an administrative proceeding. But "interrogated" just sounds so much more Guantanamo Bay, don't you think?

So, my maiden voyage as an attorney, cross-examining on some dry technical stuff. Well, it was fun/educational for me...

Time to Weigh on the current White Feminist Debate

I'm conflict-avoidant, and really busy, and, let's face it, a beneficiary of white privilege so I am "free" to ignore it, otherwise I would have said something sooner. I should have anyway.

First, to nutshell if I can: white feminist Amanda Marcotte didn't give proper intellectual props to Brownfemipower, a big cheese in the feminist blogosphere, when she should have. You can get plugged in here, here and here. To make matters worse, at about the same time, Amanda's publisher, Seal Press, said some privileged shit about how she "wants" to publish women of color but just can't seem to find them. That sounds just like the "where are the women bloggers" meme that goes around constantly, doesn't it? And then Seal Press put into Amanda's feminist "survival" book a bunch of imagery of, shall we say, questionable merit from a race-conscious perspective. (h/t to Angry Black Woman for most of this.)

So, here's the thing, and I want to give proper thanks to Twisty Faster at I Blame the Patriarchy for schooling white feminists, including me: my benefiting from white privilege makes it easy for me to wave off or ignore as "ironic" or "ignorant" or "but that's not the message they were trying to send!" instead of recognizing that if a member of a minority group calls something out, you should listen to their assessment, since they're the ones who can't wave this shit off or ignore it. To quote Twisty: "That this was unintentional is of no consequence; it was perceived by many, and rightly so." This is exactly what feminists get stuck saying to men all the time: what you thought you were saying, buster, ain't what I heard, and you need to care about my point of view. The fact that someone is having a different experience does not mean they are shrill harpies, or otherwise invalidated. It means they are having a different experience. If you have an expert in the house, listen to what they have to say.

Just so. And white feminists need to listen, and care about the point of view of women of color, and minority voices. This does not, I believe, dilute the feminist movement or its goal of equality for women - and I don't think it requires that women put our advancement as women on the backburner while we "fix" some "other problem" - but rather that understanding the complex experience of different women can help all of us learn new tools and strategies for the advancement of all women. Because different areas of the fight may need different tools. And because one size, does not, as they say, fit all.

Executive Branch Cranks PR Machine For War, Torture, Etc.

Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the [military] analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley.

In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.

A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis.

“It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’ ” Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said.

Yes, They Condoned Torture

What is the delay, here? Impeach!

Shakes Sis Kinda Nailing it on My Dem Candidates

really pretty much how I feel.

(Oh, and Clinton wants to treat gay people like people. Ooo, radical!)