Still No Sunset for Patriot Act Measures

News and analysis…

Once again the US Patriot Act has entered the fray between security and freedom of speech. Within the last month there have been two separate debates circling the act. First is the issue of freedom of speech in relation to the Patriot Act’s prohibition on “material support” of terrorists groups, (a broadly defined term that includes everything from supplying weapons to teaching “terrorist” leaders how resolve disputes peacefully). Second is the recent extension of the Patriot Act without any increased restriction to protect privacy rights of citizens. These are fascinating debates to follow because it so clearly expresses how our government deals with issues of dialogue, privacy, and justice for those groups it declares suspect, and how the ideals of freedom of speech, privacy, and “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” are balanced against national security.

For an extensive background on the current debates surrounding the Patriot Act I recommend this article featured on Truthout.

The Huffington Post |  Dashing the hopes of liberals, the Senate Wednesday night instead passed – by voice vote without debate – a one-year extension of key parts of the USA Patriot Act that would have expired on Sunday.

Thrown away were restrictions and greater scrutiny on the government’s authority to spy on Americans and seize their records.

The House was prepared to approve the extension Thursday, dropping even more extensive privacy protections approved by the House Judiciary Committee.

The Democratic retreat is a political victory for Republicans, who gained new ammunition for their election theme that the GOP can better protect America. The outcome is a major disappointment for Democrats and their liberal allies, including the American Civil Liberties Union, who believe the Patriot Act fails to protect Americans’ privacy and gives the government too much authority to spy on Americans and seize their property.

Foreign Policy  | Senate Judiciary Committee ranking Republican Jeff Sessions, R-AL, confirmed to The Cable that the current thinking was to extend the Patriot Act provisions in their current form, ignoring the changes his own committee approved.

“The Patriot Act has worked and the last thing we should do is weaken it. So I think it’s a good development that we are going to continue it as is,” said Sessions. “That’s the right direction.”

Here’s the scope of the three provisions that will be extended, according to Congressional Quarterly:

One of the expiring provisions allows the government to seek orders from a special federal court for “any tangible thing” that it says is related to a terrorism investigation. Another allows the government to seek court orders for roving wiretaps on terrorism suspects who shift their modes of communication. The third provision allows the government to apply to the special court for surveillance orders involving suspected “lone wolf” terrorists who do not necessarily have ties to a larger organization.”

Alter Net | The specter of McCarthyism is again hanging over America, but this time it has found a new name. Next week, the Court will hear Humanitarian Law Project v. Holder, a case that calls into question broad restrictions on speech. The lawsuit challenges parts of the Patriot Act that prohibit American citizens from speaking with groups said to be terrorists. The government argues that speaking with or on behalf of these groups can be seen as “material support.” This is an eerily similar argument to the one made against Adrian during the Red Scare. I have heard family stories of screenwriters labeled communists for bringing food to a canned food drive loosely connected with the Communist Party. This kind of guilt by association is poison for a free society.

The Patriot Act’s provisions go even further than the Hollywood blacklists that ended careers and forced an entire generation of talented artists, intellectuals, and activists into the ranks of the unemployed and exiled abroad. Now, speaking with the wrong group can get you fifteen years in federal prison.

The upcoming suit is brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of Ralph Fertig, a civil rights lawyer and president of the Humanitarian Law Project, a nonprofit group that has a long history of mediating international conflicts. His organization hopes to do human rights trainings around the world to promote nonviolent conflict resolution — but if he does so, he may be thrown in jail under the Patriot Act. It is a tragic irony that under the current law promoting nonviolence could get an American citizen imprisoned as a supporter of terrorism. Throwing Americans in jail for trying to convince terrorist groups to lay down their arms doesn’t make us safer. It weakens our democracy.

NPR | Federal law makes it a crime to provide material support to any organization designated as a terrorist group by the secretary of state. But the definition of material support includes not just providing weapons, money or bomb-making skills; it includes providing any sort of expert advice, training or personnel — including advice on how to resolve disputes peaceably or training on how to make human rights claims before the United Nations.

The nonprofit Humanitarian Law Project has a long history of engaging in such activity, mediating international conflicts and promoting human rights. But it has stopped doing some of its work for fear of being prosecuted under the material support provision.

“My speech is particularly nonviolent,” says Ralph Fertig, president of the organization. “I’ve gone to jail in the United States for my advocacy for peace.”

The federal government, he maintains, cannot constitutionally make it a crime to help others advocate lawful, peaceful solutions to international conflicts. In particular, Fertig and his organization have helped the Kurdistan Workers Party, known as the PKK, make human rights claims before international bodies. They have trained Kurdish leaders in peacemaking negotiations and have brought them to Washington to lobby. But when the PKK was designated an international terrorist organization under the Patriot Act, that all stopped, and the Humanitarian Law Project went to court.

The government, arguing that the PKK had engaged in terrorist activities that have cost some 22,000 lives, said it was justified in making the organization a pariah. Thus, the government contended, even filing a legal brief on behalf of the PKK in an American court would be a crime.

Best of the web…

Sudan Parties Sign Darfur Ceasefire  |  Al Jazeera

The conflict in Darfur, which has pitched ethnic African tribesmen against the Arab-dominated Khartoum government, has raged far the last seven years.

While numerous ceasefires agreements in the past have been short-lived, analysts say that the forthcoming elections in Sudan and increased international pressure could give this initiative a better chance of survival.

But officials warned a March 15 deadline for a final peace deal was overly ambitious.

“After the agreement is signed, the rest will come through more negotiations,” said Adrees Mahmoud, a Europe-based Jem representative, who was in Qatar for the signing.

El Sadig el-Faqih, a former adviser to Sudan’s president, who was also in Qatar, told Al Jazeera the move was a “framework to start discussing the details” and a peace deal could only go ahead when all parties were involved.

Twitter Reaches His Holiness, Now Online @DalaiLama  |  The Raw Story

The Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has joined micro-blogging service Twitter, attracting over 55,000 followers in just two days.

The Dalai Lama’s Twitter feed — @DalaiLama — was launched on Monday, a day after he met in Los Angeles with Evan Williams, one of Twitter’s founders.

“Met the Dalai Lama today in LA. Pitched him on using Twitter. He laughed,” Williams “tweeted” following the meeting.

The next day, however, the Tibetan spiritual leader had an account and received a “Welcome @DalaiLama” message from Twitter’s new spokesman, Sean Garrett.

Drug-resistance Malaria ‘Growing’ on Cambodia  |  BBC News

Parasites are developing resistance to one of the most important anti-malaria drugs, according to experts.

Artimisinin has been highly effective, particularly in places where resistance to other drugs has developed.

But now some patients along Cambodia’s border with Thailand are taking longer to respond to the treatment.

Experts on the disease are meeting village health workers in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, to discuss ways to stop drug-resistant malaria spreading.

Utah Bill Criminalizes Miscarriage  |  RH Reality Check

In addition to criminalizing an intentional attempt to induce a miscarriage or abortion, the bill also creates a standard that could make women legally responsible for miscarriages caused by “reckless” behavior.

Using the legal standard of “reckless behavior” all a district attorney needs to show is that a woman behaved in a manner that is thought to cause miscarriage, even if she didn’t intend to lose the pregnancy. Drink too much alcohol and have a miscarriage? Under the new law such actions could be cause for prosecution.

“This creates a law that makes any pregnant woman who has a miscarriage potentially criminally liable for murder,” says Missy Bird, executive director of Planned Parenthood Action Fund of Utah. Bird says there are no exemptions in the bill for victims of domestic violence or for those who are substance abusers. The standard is so broad, Bird says, “there nothing in the bill to exempt a woman for not wearing her seatbelt who got into a car accident.”

Such a standard could even make falling down stairs a prosecutable event, such as the recent case in Iowa where a pregnant woman who fell down the stairs at her home was arrested under the suspicion she was trying to terminate her pregnancy.

Going “Nuclear” Again?

News and analysis…

It is amazing how history repeats itself… Especially in Washington D.C. where it seems to run in a four year cycle. This phenomena is readily apparent in the most recent argument on Capital Hill–namely filibuster reform. Back in 2005 Republicans tried to introduce an option, (the so called ‘nuclear option’), to kill the filibuster in retaliation to the threats of an uncooperative Democrat minority. Fast forward to the present and we now see Democrats trying the exact same thing in response to a stubborn Republican minority. While is seems unlikely to get anywhere, filibuster reform certainly illustrates the problems of excessive bipartisan ship and why it is so difficult for anything to be accomplished in Congress.

The Hill | Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) intends to introduce legislation that would take away the minority’s power to filibuster legislation.

Speaking to The Hill, Harkin said use of the filibuster has ground the legislative process to a halt.

“While there are reasons to slow bills down and get the public aware of what’s happening, there’s no excuse for having a few people just stop everything with a filibuster,” he said.

Several liberal activists as well as Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) this week have called for filibuster reform to make it easier for legislation to pass.

In the House, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) this week introduced a resolution urging the Senate to lower the filibuster threshold, adding in a statement that the legislative tactic “has begun to erode the integrity of our Democratic process.”

Under Harkin’s bill, which is co-sponsored by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), 60 votes would still be necessary to cut off debate on an initial procedural motion. If senators failed to reach 60 votes, a second vote would be possible two days later that would require only 57 votes to cut off debate. If that also failed, a third vote two days after that would require 54 votes to end debate. A fourth vote after two more days would require just 51 votes.

NPR  | As he [Evan Bayh] has said all week, one of his main reasons for deciding to leave the Senate is that, with 60 votes seemingly needed to pass anything these days, nothing is getting done. Demanding the magic number of 60 is a tactic “abused” by the Senate minority, Bayh said. He said he would support lowering the threshold from 60 to 55 — the “right way to go,” he thought — reminding us that when his father, Birch Bayh, was in the Senate (1963-80), lawmakers lowered the magic number from 67.

He also got a bit wistful about the filibuster itself; make ‘em do what Jimmy Stewart did in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, if they want to hold up legislation. If the Republicans feel that strongly about stopping this or that, Bayh said, “make them go to the floor” and actually filibuster, rather than simply threaten it, as is the custom today.

Daily Kos | What we’ve come to know as the modern filibuster these days rarely involves anything even remotely resembling marathon speeches on the floor. All of the “action” is abstract. Objecting Senators indicate their willingness to refuse assent to any unanimous consent agreements to bring a measure to the floor for debate, and that resolve is either tested by filing a motion for cloture and holding a vote (with the well-known threshold 3/5 of Senators chosen and sworn — 60 in a full Senate — required to end debate), or else the point is conceded, temporarily or otherwise, that a cloture vote would fail for lack of support.

But that’s not the end of the story, and most of the advocates for “forcing” a filibuster are more interested in what happens next, though in modern practice, what happens next is: nothing. That is, a failed cloture vote or declining to even take a cloture vote because it’s expected to fail usually results in pulling the bill from the floor or otherwise indefinitely delaying its consideration. To be a little clearer about it, then, those who want to see a filibuster forced are interested in what happens if the Senate leadership refuses to give up on a bill that’s being blocked and can’t currently get 60 votes for cloture.

Can’t Harry Reid just leave the bill on the floor for debate, they ask, and keep trying for cloture over and over until someone breaks? Or is a cloture motion even really necessary? If you’re willing to tough it out on cloture votes over and over again, why not simply let the obstructionists talk themselves into a coma instead?

This is all theoretically possible, but none of it would happen in a vacuum. Remember that at any given time, there are hundreds of measures which could and should be moving through a properly functioning Senate. If one measure is stuck on the floor for some indeterminate length of time, that means none of the others are moving. And some of those other measures can by themselves cause enormous problems when they don’t move on time.

TMPDC | The problem is political. ”It’s a brute force move that basically blatantly ignores the existing rules,” said Norm Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “It would be the equivalent of in a Super Bowl game, a team basically tackles all the referees, ties ‘em up and throws them onto the sidelines and declares that a penalty is invalid.”

Reforms by ruling have occurred in the Senate in the past — but mostly for much smaller things, Binder said, like jump-starting debate on a nominee. To use the “nuclear option” on something much bigger — like filibuster reform — Binder believes the majority would have to be absolutely “convinced that what they’re doing is going to be popular.”

Not to mention the fact that Democrats almost certainly won’t have a Senate majority forever. So whatever watering down of the filibuster they push now might end up hobbling them when they become the minority again one day.

“As long as senators think like that, they’re gonna think twice about giving up their own parliamentary rights,” Binder said.

Ornstein notes that the “nuclear option” wouldn’t be quite so nuclear if it came at the beginning of a new Congress. In that case, the presiding officer’s ruling would be a little different — essentially, that the Senate isn’t a continuing body, and has the right to rewrite its rules when new members join, rather than that the Constitution gives the Senate the right to write its own rules carte blanche.

Washington Post | Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) on Thursday dismissed an effort by some Democrats to eliminate the filibuster, saying the chamber’s procedures were designed to prevent the majority party from unilaterally changing the rules.

Minutes before a pair of colleagues formally unveiled their proposal to eliminate filibusters, Reid told reporters he adhered to the long-standing Senate rule that only a two-thirds majority could change the chamber’s rules. This high hurdle — established decades ago in an effort to prevent a party with a simple majority from ruling the chamber with an iron fist — would require eight Republicans to join the 59 members of the Democratic caucus to alter the rules, something Reid said is not going to happen.

“I’m totally familiar with his idea,” Reid said of the latest filibuster-reform resolution, from Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). “It takes 67 votes, and that, kind of, answers the question.”

Best of the Web…

Absolutely Normal Home Schoolers  |  GetReligion.org

This brings us to a perfectly normal news report in the Washington Post about homeschooling. Actually, that is not quite right. This story treats home schoolers with complete and total respect, which is not always the case in the mainstream press.
The news hook, of course, is the fact that the story centers on the choices made by Muslim families — here in the United States. Here is the top of the story by Tara Bahrampour:

Saudi to Grant Women Court Access  | Al Jazeera

Saudi Arabia could soon allow women lawyers to appear in court to argue cases for the first time.

Mohammed al-Issa, the justice minister, said the government is drafting a new law to permit female lawyers to argue family-related cases, including divorce and child custody.

Filipino Group Helps Women Find Life Outside of Trafficking  |  CNN World

Funded by individual donations, as well as grants from UNAIDS and the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, Renew offers shelter-based programs, housing, food, legal representation and education courses, all of which aim to help women return to their families or reintegrate into the community.

Renew also has a keen interest in helping child victims of the sex trade; an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 children in the Philippines are involved in prostitution rings, according to Minette Rimando, a spokeswoman for theU.N.‘S International Labour Organization’s Manila office.

No Girls Allowed  |  Daily Kos

It’s always something.

Time and again, phony concern for women has been used to justify their exclusion from countless Boys Only clubs. And this year, it’s on display again at the Winter Olympics, where ski jumping is the one sport in which only men are allowed to compete.

It didn’t matter that the International Ski Federation voted 114-1 to let women jump. And the Supreme Court of British Columbia — the Canadian province where Vancouver is located — ruled that the International Olympic Committee was clearly committing gender discrimination. No matter: the IOC could not be shamed. As IOC President Jacques Rogge “explained”:

Will ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Be Repealed?

Analysis …

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen last week signaled a change in the military’s attitudes about gays serving openly in the military when he told U.S. senators that repealing the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ ban is “the right thing to do.” Mullen said:

“No matter how I look at this issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.”

The Pentagon says it could take nearly a year to study all the various issues caused by the ban’s potential lifting, which Defense Secretary Robert Gates said is necessary to prevent the military from “rushing into it, (and) mandating it by fiat with a very short timeline would be a serious mistake.” Over the weekend, other voices weighed in on the discussion, with Fox News war analyst Oliver North calling a possible repeal “a stunning assault on the military” and Gen. Colin Powell reversing his former position against the repeal, now speaking out in favor of allowing gays to serve openly.

Box Turtle Bulletin |  “The Military Times is a newpaper targeted at career military personnel. For the past several years the paper has been surveying its readership on the issue of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Tomorrow they will be releasing the latest results and today they pre-reported the findings.

“Opposition to gays serving openly in the military has declined sharply among those wearing the uniform today, the Military Times newspapers will report Monday.

“An exclusive survey of some 3,000 active-duty troops shows such opposition has fallen sharply from nearly two-thirds (65 percent) in 2004 to about half (51 percent) today. The survey results appear Monday in Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times and Marine Corps Times.”

Slate |  “The secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs both endorsed the eventual repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy at a Senate hearing on Tuesday. Since its implementation in 1994, more than 13,000 members of the armed services have been discharged for homosexual conduct. We know what happens to a soldier who tells about his sexual orientation, but what happens to one who asks? Nothing. For most service members, it’s not even against the rules. The “don’t tell” half of the 1993 agreement between Congress, the president, and top military brass is a matter of federal law.”

Foreign Policy |  “Viewed from Israel, the continuing witch hunt against gays and lesbians in the U.S. military makes little sense. I have studied and written about the experience of gay soldiers in elite combat units of the Israel Defense Forces, where restrictions on gay enlistment were lifted in 1993, the same year the United States introduced the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy requiring gay and lesbian servicemembers to say in the closet or risk being discharged. There has never been any suggestion that the participation of these men has hindered the performance of Israeli combat units.”

RaceWire |  “What we haven’t heard is, who’s really being affected by this?

“From The Task Force study, Black same-sex households in the United States: A report from the 2000 Census:

““Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has been used to kick Black women out of the military at a much higher rate than other groups. In fact, Black women are discharged under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” at three times the rate that they serve in the military. Although Black women make up less than one percent of servicemembers, they comprise 3.3% of those discharged under the policy.

“But wait, it gets better. The same report notes people can be discharged under DADT even if they are not gay or lesbian, apparently there are cases where men have accused women who refuse unwanted sexual advances of being lesbians, or because the women are successful and some men do not want to serve under them.”

Open Left |  “There are a whole number of ways this could be done. It could be swift implementation overnight, or the Administration could slow-walk it with a 15-year plan, complete with segregated showers and pilot programs of integrated units. Or there could be another “compromise”. Later this week I’m going to be exploring what the range of possibilities and what an ideal implementation would look like. We still have a ways to go in terms of making sure the votes are there for repeal, but a new front is opening up on how and when repeal will be implemented- an effort which is also critical to keep an eye on.”

Best of the Web …

What if Senators Represented People by Income or Race, not by State?  |  Washington Post

What if the 100-member Senate were designed to mirror the overall U.S. population — and were based on statistics rather than state lines?

Imagine a chamber in which senators were elected by different income brackets — with two senators representing the poorest 2 percent of the electorate, two senators representing the richest 2 percent and so on.

Based on Census Bureau data, five senators would represent Americans earning between $100,000 and $1 million individually per year, with a single senator working on behalf of the millionaires (technically, it would be two-tenths of a senator). Eight senators would represent Americans with no income. Sixteen would represent Americans who make less than $10,000 a year, an amount well below the federal poverty line for families. The bulk of the senators would work on behalf of the middle class, with 34 representing Americans making $30,000 to $80,000 per year.

Race, Disability and Denial  |  Racialicious

Although I have been both black and disabled my entire life, for years I lied to myself about being disabled. I could appreciate the pride that accompanied the black experience, the historic and perpetual triumphs and tragedies that inspire the progress of a people. But disability was different. Disability was a curse much worse than the curse of Ham, and instead of accepting it I fled into a lie of being someone I could never be and should have never wanted to be. I became a victim of an able-bodied orthodoxy, one memorialized into my memory, derived from the seeds of my lived experiences and the veil of myths through which those experiences are strained. I believe we all succumb to societal orthodoxies in some way, because the procurement of favor demands it and it allows us to live without troublesome confusion. But for many of us, orthodoxies become a memorial, a shine at which we pray and to which we cling, all the while privately acknowledging that the shrine is not of our making, not to our liking and that it segregates and kills us very casually, very privately and very slowly. This photo helped free me from my denial.

In Bad Faith  |  The American Prospect

In advance of yesterday’s National Prayer Breakfast, President Barack Obama was under pressure to use the opportunity to condemn the anti-homosexuality bill pending in the Ugandan Parliament. The legislation, which would criminalize homosexuality and require the death penalty or life imprisonment for certain “offenses,” has been described by human-rights activists as tantamount to instigating a genocide against sexual minorities, who are already persecuted in the African nation.

Obama, speaking just before the first anniversary of the launch of his Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, once again fell into the religion-in-public-life trap: Faith is intended for good, and we must present it as such — regardless of its exploitation for ends that are less than pure, and regardless of one’s stated commitment to secular government.

Money for Nothing? Or Buying Votes?

Analysis …

The U.S. Supreme Court last week issued a 5-4 ruling Thursday that struck down prohibitions on political campaign contributions by corporations, saying that such measures aimed at control infringe on corporate First Amendment free speech rights. The decision means that corporations and unions will be able to spend unlimited funds on independent campaign expenditures. Reactions to the decision ranged from outrage by some who said the ruling has made U.S. democracy more corrupt to indifference because such practices are already in place anyway. What do you think of the ruling?

The American Prospect |  “If the Court rigidly insists that Congress can regulate only to prevent quid-pro-corruption, narrowly defined, then Citizens United has implications that extend well beyond what corporations can do. Justice Kennedy’s own opinion even hints at the possibility, as he notes that the evidence supporting the “soft money” limits – which apply across the board — rests on evidence about the connection between money and political access. While Justice Kennedy backed off from saying anything definitive, we may find that it was the Court’s discussion of corruption, not corporations, that matters most in the long run.”

Matt Welch @CNN |  “Even if you just can’t bring yourself to believe that people who take civil liberties seriously have long-held serious civil libertarian criticisms of campaign-finance laws, or if you simply think they’re all wrong, I’ll offer this last salve: It has never been easier for groups of citizens to swarm together and flow money through the Internet toward campaigns and candidates who excite them. Ask Ron Paul — or more relevantly, Barack Obama — what’s more powerful: $10 million from Dr. Evil Industries, or $10 each from 1 million people who can actually vote?”

Julian Sanchez |  “Why is it that so many people who clearly do think books and magazines and talk radio shows enjoy unambiguous constitutional protection, despite being corporate funded or operated, are simultaneously absolutely sure that paid broadcast spots are in an utterly different category? If one is above all concerned with exacerbating the translation of economic inequality into political inequality, it seems rather odd.  In effect, it means you only get to use your corporate money to get your agenda on the airwaves if (like GE or Time Warner) you’re big enough to buy them wholesale. But that’s OK, because you can pump money into all those other means of trying to influence voters; it’s just broadcast advertising that’s out. So I’d like to flip the reductio question around and ask: Given that people seem to mostly agree that all this other stuff constitutes protected political speech, why do so many people have such a different attitude about paid ads?”

Informed Comment |  “In Web 3.0 consumers will likely download content via the internet at will. Media is becoming pull media– individuals pull down what they want when they want it. Television may have to go to an iTunes model of charging per episode. In a pull-media world, for advertisers of any sort, whether pushing products or candidates, to get their message out and control it will become more and more difficult. Pull-media allows a fracturing of viewership (or participation– many consumers will be playing games rather than watching passively). The fact is that viewership for the 4 networks has already plummeted, and the advertising rates that companies now pay them to air commercials are unrealistically high, and appear to be a function of habit. What else could you do? There are hundreds of channels, then you add in the video blogs, the online gaming, and the blogs. Even if a network only pulls in a household share of 9 for the evening rather than the household share of 65 that that Gunsmoke used to on CBS, at least you’ve got that many households in one place, which is rarer and rarer. One of the few things Rupert Murdoch is right about is that there is not enough advertising to spread throughout the internet so as to support any particular newspapers or magazines. The buy of a half-hour attack ad by e.g. Morgan Stanley on CBS dissing Obama on October 25, 2012 just may not mean then what it would have meant in 1960 when CBS had a large proportion of television viewers and most Americans were television viewers, and there were only 3 networks. And if the attack ad is inaccurate, it will be shredded on social media or just ignored. All the vicious attacks on Obama, after all, did not prevent his landslide victory, since voters were tired of Republican shenanigans. Reality is still more important than media depictions of it.”

Alas, a Blog |  “As I think about it more…say goodbye to stopping global warming. In fact, bring it on!!! And there go environmental regulations!! And our food system will be going STRAIGHT to hell. No pass go, do not collect $200. Let us not even begin to think of the effects on the rest of the world. Remember how corporations did nasty things to Latin America with the full backing of the US gov’t? Does anyone think that they will stop now? Bolivia for instance, is already under pressure for its lithium.”

Best of the Web ..

The Advocate’s Foolish and Sad ‘Gayest City’ Ranking  |  Box Turtle Bulletin

I appreciate the Advocate for many reasons, not least of which is that they are a gay magazine that is still in business. But their recent effort to light-heartedly identify the “gayest cities” in the United States betrayed our community’s occasional inclination to still buy into the most negative stereotypes as though they define us.

Yes, It’s Perfectly OK to Have a Wind Turbine Near Your House  |  Global Comment

I too worry about unintended effects of wind energy on wildlife populations, particularly birds. We clearly need to minimize these impacts as much as possible. However, to limit wind production in a core wind-producing region because corporations and landowners worry the state will change makes no sense in the face of an urgent energy and climate change crisis. These localized concerns have far-reaching implications that affect national and international events, from funding for wind projects in Congress to rising sea levels and growing numbers of climate refugees in Bangladesh.

Human Rights as Animal Rights  |  alias Bruce

Recently, a person I was talking with suggested that when we talk about civil and human rights, we ought to start bringing the rights of non-human beings into the discussion as well. Her idea being that just as we link, say, black rights with women’s rights with gay rights, we need to begin to link the rights of humans with the rights of other sentient beings. So that the welfare of non-human animals becomes part of the everyday progressive discussion about “justice” instead of being quarantined to the PETA and environmentalist end of the table.

This project gets messy. Because it is full of human ideas that we cannot just slap onto animal consciousness. For starters, what exactly is “sentience?” Who has it and who doesn’t? Is it even a fair standard? Can a non-sentient existence rank as highly on a worth-of-experience scale as a sentient one? And what is “freedom” or “the pursuit of happiness” to a garter snake?

Making maps to fight disaster, build economies  |  TEDTalks

As of 2005, only 15 percent of the world was mapped. This slows the delivery of aid after a disaster — and hides the economic potential of unused lands and unknown roads. In this short talk, Google’s Lalitesh Katragadda demos Map Maker, a group map-making tool that people around the globe are using to map their world.

Local Actions, National Results…

Last fall I had the unique opportunity to attend a series of lecture by acclaimed activists from around the world. Much emphasis was given to the importance of local political participation, stressing that global action is rooted in local action, and that change in a community must come from its people (for who else can be trusted with the future of one’s home?)

I found such words to be quite refreshing in today’s atmosphere of political ennui, where a large segment of the population does not even bother to register, much less vote in any election (one can visit the US census bureau for more precise information regarding American voting habits). I can not begin to recount the number of times I have heard people say “No I’m not voting, I’m a <insert minority political persuasion> so it’s not like my vote is going to count”, or “No I’m not voting, I’m a <insert majority political persuasion>, and it’s a shoe-in election so why bother”, or “There was an election?” Really there is just no winning with people these days…

Such excuses ignore the reality that that it is through small actions, such as voting in local and state elections, that major results are achieved. A lovely example is the recent Senate race in Massachusetts, where the election of Scott Brown (R) has the potential to greatly alter the current situation in Washington. Many political analysts have remarked that one reason a Republican candidate was able to gain such strength in a long time Democrat state was because Martha Coakley (D) ran such a lack luster campaign where she assumed that she would win based on her party affiliation. Instead voters in Massachusetts decided to overturn the long standing Democrat domination of the state, which shows that even strong party ties (such as exists in Oklahoma with the Republican party) can change dramatically if voters are unsatisfied. Independent voters, so often overlooked in the bi-party system of US politics, also played a crucial a role in deciding the campaign. Considering the importance of this race to the outcome of the national healthcare debate and the ability of the Obama administration to carry out its agenda, the voters of Massachusetts possessed considerable power in shaping the course of the nation.

And this power is not limited to high-profile states. While Oklahoma elections are rarely paid as much attention as the 2010 Massachusetts Senate race, that does not lessen their importance. Believe it or not, what occurs in this state is noticed by the world (even it if is only to once again make our state a subject of ridicule). Senator Inhofe (R-Tulsa) and his outspoken denial of global warming, the controversial HB 1595, and Oklahoma’s high rates of female incarceration, are all the result of local and state-wide actions (or lack thereof), which have been noted on the national, and even international level. If Oklahoma is to grow and escape its reputation as a poor, rural state it will only be through the political and social involvement of individuals within their communities and through the responsible election of state officials.

2010 will see several important local and state wide elections throughout Oklahoma. For those of you living in Cleveland Co. Oklahoma, local elections for the city wards and mayor are rapidly approaching. This November are the midterm elections, when we will too will be electing a new senator, as well as state governor, three justices of the Oklahoma supreme court, and numerous other state and local offices.

You have a chance to shape your community, and through it the state, nation, and world—go forth and vote!

Is Yemen the Next Battleground in the War on Terrorism?

Analysis …

The United States and Britain over the weekend announced that they were closing their embassies in Yemen due to threats by al-Qaida and growing concerns about terrorism in the region. Yemen has received scrutiny since the failed attempt by the Nigerian-born Umar Abdulmutallab to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas. Abdulmutallab was trained in Yemen. President Obama this weekend said that the al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen had ordered the attempt. How did Yemen end up as a base for al-Qaida’s growth? And will it be the next setting for the West’s war on terrorism?

Global Post |  “The long trail to understanding bin Laden’s connection to Yemen begins in some sense in Wadi Doan. Osama bin Laden’s father, Mohammad, left the village before World War II to make his fortune in the Saudi construction industry.
Mohammad died when his private jet crashed over the Asir province in Saudi Arabia in 1966. Osama is believed to have spent very little time in Yemen, according to research by author Steven Coll. But Osama bin Laden has long expressed deep emotional connections to the region and to his father’s ancestral land.”

New American Media |  “There are definitely a lot of extremists there, but I think the bigger framework to think about Yemen is not as a hotbed of radicalism and terror but as a state where the government does not control all of the land. They’ve been fighting a significant insurgency in the North for six years now and there’s a separatist group in the South that’s in an armed conflict. The Ministry of Interior estimates that there are 60 million weapons outside of government hands in Yemen. And that’s in a country of 20 million people. So it’s a highly-armed, fragmented society and the government hasn’t really had control over the entire country for some time, if ever. So certainly there’s extremism there, but there’s a lot of stuff going on that the government isn’t really in control of.”

The Daily Beast |  “The great challenge for policymakers moving forward is to recognize the existence of American interests in countries like Yemen without overstating them. American foreign policy has never been comfortable with gray areas, and the press prefers table-pounding statements of resolve. But the idea of real, but limited, interests is completely coherent. Around the world we face a number of places where international terrorists can or might gain a toehold, and what’s needed is an approach that can realistically be applied in a broad way, not an endless series of wars as we play whack-a-mole with the latest would-be bomber.”

Foreign Policy |  “Direct American military intervention in Yemen is so obviously ludicrous that it shouldn’t even need to be said. Even the hyper-interventionist conservatives at the Washington Post op-ed page allow that “U.S. ground troops are not needed, for now.” They never should be. The U.S. is already struggling to fully resource and equip a mission in Afghanistan which has been defined — rightly or wrongly — as vital to American security and interests. The U.S. simply does not have the resources to embark on a military mission in Yemen. If you think Afghanistan is a sinkhole, you will love Yemen. The yawning gap between the extent of U.S. interests and the resources necessary to make a difference is even greater in Yemen than in Afghanistan. And the optics of yet another American military intervention in the Arab world — under Obama, no less — would be devastating to the wider Obama outreach strategy. (On the positive side, at least committing scarce U.S. troops to Yemen would make a military strike against Iran that much less likely.)”

Informed Comment |  “I have been to Yemen three times, before and after unification, and have traveled outside Sanaa. I’ve spoken publicly in Arabic in front of big audiences and interacted with Zaidis, Salafis, Sufis. It is an extremely complicated society with multiple ecological zones. It is an arid, tribal (segmentary-lineage) system. Most of the scholars I know who work on Yemen have been kidnapped by tribes or thrown in jail by the government at least once. People are either Arab nationalists or Muslim ones. They have very little use for outsiders. If the US tried to establish a big presence there, they would make the Iraqi resistance look half-hearted and weak-kneed.”

Best of the Web …

Top Ten Good News Stories from the Muslim World in 2009 that You Never Heard About  |  Informed Comment

10. Saudi Arabia opened its first coeducational college campus, the King Abdullah Science and Technology University. In a country where the sexes have been so separated in public that some have spoken of ‘gender Apartheid,’ this move, which came from King Abdullah, provoked raging controversy. When a prominent cleric criticized having male and female students on the same campus and the teaching of modern scientific theories like Darwinism, the king summarily fired his ass. It may seem a small thing, but many big social processes start small. Most Americans forget that Princeton U. did not become coed until 1969.

9. Qatar is on track to average 7.5 percent per annum growth for the next few years. …

Useless democracy promotion efforts? There’s an app for that  |  FP Passport

The Voice of America recently unveiled a new iPhone application that allows Iranian “citizen journalists” to send video and images directly to VOA’s Persian News Network. The app, designed by the Washington D.C.-based company Intridea, is being advertised as a cutting-edge method for Iranian reformers to spread their message across the country. The application “empowers Iranians at a time when the government is staging a crackdown against opposition protesters,” announced the head of the Persian News Network.

I’m sure that this initiative was begun with the best of intentions. However, there’s only one problem — oh, who am I kidding, there are a whole slew of problems. To begin with, a normal iPhone won’t work in Iran.

The 00s: A Bad American Decade  |  Global Post

A decade’s end lends itself to reflection. As a historian, I am thinking about how the 2000s compare to previous decades. While time and perspective may alter my thinking, I believe the 2000s is the worst decade Americans have experienced since the Civil War.

Five Lesser-known Countries That Changed the World in 2009  |  GOOD Magazine

You couldn’t swing a dead cat in 2009 without hitting headlines about the troop escalation in Afghanistan or the troop withdrawal in Iraq. The same goes for the rise of China and the not-so-democratic presidential “election” in Iran. These were some of the big international attention-getters of the year, and for layman and foreign policy professionals alike, they’re stories that most of us have heard about.

But let’s be fair. There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 countries in world, not just the 10 we hear about on television. Here are five countries that changed the world in 2009—and are largely absent in mainstream American press coverage.

Paying for War

Analysis …

As President Obama prepares to announce this week whether he will boost troop levels in Afghanistan, questions over how the U.S. will continue to pay for the war — as well as fund the increases — are cropping up among Washington’s politicos. Rep. David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, recently suggested a graduated tax for corporations and individuals, a “sharing of sacrifice” to help fund the conflict whose price tag has reached $3.6 billion a month. Although the proposal is currently considered more rhetoric than actual legislation, it has sparked discussion over how the U.S. — both the government and its people — are paying for war.

Forbes |  “It’s doubtful that this legislation will be enacted. But that’s not Obey’s purpose. He will probably offer it as an amendment at some point just to have a vote. Republicans in particular will be forced to choose between continuing to fight a war that they started and still strongly support, or raising taxes, which every Republican in Congress would rather drink arsenic than do. If nothing else, it will be interesting to see those who rant daily about Obama’s deficits explain why they oppose fiscal responsibility when it comes to supporting our troops.”

Time |  “How much the extra troops would cost is in dispute. Orszag pegs it at $1 million per soldier per year, which works out to an additional $30 billion a year for 30,000 more troops. The Pentagon says it’s half that. But a new study by consulting firm Deloitte makes clear that fighting inside a landlocked country where the Taliban has shut down much of the meager road network has drastically inflated even routine costs. The average U.S. trooper in Afghanistan requires 22 gal. (83 L) of fuel a day–but the cost of buying a gallon of fuel and shipping it to the deepest corners of the country averages $45. That’s nearly $1,000 a day per soldier.”

Alas, a Blog |  “Of the many genuinely brainless and irresponsible things Republicans and blue dogs believe, the childish belief that we can endlessly cut taxes while increasing our spending may be the most harmful. (Well, that and their belief that it’s okay to do nothing to address climate change).”

Tapped |  “While this does present a serious challenge for those who would champion putting more resources into the conflict, but it will be hard for them to argue against this bill in good faith. These members of Congress are right to point out that many Americans are insulated from the effects of this conflict, and the least they can do is feel it in their pocketbooks. Should this bill come to a vote, it will be especially hard for Republicans who support the war effort but don’t, in general, support higher taxes for any reason. (That’s fiscal responsibility!) For now, it’s just one more wrinkle in President Barack Obama’s effort to make the right choice in Afghanistan, but if it forces him to make a real case to the American people about what U.S. forces are doing in Afghanistan and why it is worth the price, then it can only be a good thing. And if this legislation highlights his inability to do that, even better.”

Political Animal |  “Support for escalation in Afghanistan appears, by some measures, to be growing. The question then becomes fairly straightforward — do Americans expect future generations to pick up the tab, or do they support higher taxes now to pay for the conflict?”

Best of the Web …

Bill Sparkman’s Death Ruled a Suicide  |  Pandagon

Bill Sparkman, the Census worker found dead hanging from a tree with the word “Fed” scrawled across his body, was found to be a suicide.  This news is sure to cause some darkly amoral celebrating on the right, who will claim that this vindicates their paranoia and hatred they’ve built up against innocent, hard-working federal bureaucrats as part of a larger anti-tax-for-the-wealthy program.  It does not, and I flinch to think of how tasteless this is going to get.  Sparkman’s death was a tragedy, no matter how you slice it.  That he staged it as a murder to get the life insurance payment most likely only speaks to his concerns about his inheritors, probably his son.  Depression is a terrible and often deadly disease, and obviously, it distorts people’s thinking.

Video Game Veterans and the New American Politics  |  The Brookings Institution

Finding your future warriors via a video game sounds a bit too much like the plot of the 1984 film “The Last Starfighter.” But it works. The Army has found it, according to testimony to Congress, more effective at recruiting than “any other method of contact.” Indeed, a 2008 study by two Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers found that “30 percent of all Americans age 16 to 24 had a more positive impression of the Army because of the game and, even more amazingly, the game had more impact on recruits than all other forms of Army advertising combined.”

Selling Out Democracy in Honduras: The U.S. and the Honduran Election  |  AlterNet

The June 28 military coup d’etat that overthrew Honduras’ democratically elected president provided President Obama with “a golden opportunity…to make a clear break with the past and show that he is unequivocally siding with democracy,” as Costa Rica’s former vice president put it.  However, the U.S.’s recognition of the sham election Honduras’ de facto regime (staged) on Sunday makes it quite clear that Obama is choosing instead to side with the  far-right Republicans who support the coup.

That Couple  |  FiveThirtyEight

I am sick to my stomach over That Couple. And now comes news they are peddling their exclusive story to the highest media bidder. Disgusting, but hardly surprising.

I’m not going to use their names because you can be sure that, between giddy calls to their agent and lawyer, they are rushing to their computer every half hour to Google themselves. Who’s talking about us now? What are people saying? Look, another picture of us on the web! We’re more famous than any of our friends—no, all of our friends, combined! Tehehehee—the joke’s on you, America!

Who Can Solve Honduras’ Political Crisis?

Analysis …

The BBC reported this week that Honduran interim leader Roberto Micheletti has asked the government to lift an emergency decree that suspended civil liberties in the nation after President Manuel Zelaya was ousted in June. Meanwhile, U.S. officials’ planned fact-finding missions to Honduras raises questions about a resurrection of ’80s-style foreign relations between the U.S. and the Latin American country; and Zelaya takes heat for stating that he believes Israeli agents were behind the coup.

Truthdig |  “There may finally be movement in Honduras’ political crisis, as representatives of ousted President Manuel Zelaya and interim President Roberto Micheletti will reportedly meet next week to discuss a potential deal to end the crisis that began with June’s coup d’état. Also in the news is the visit to Honduras by several U.S. Republican congressmen despite a U.S. ban on direct discussions with the architects of the coup against the democratically elected Zelaya.”

CSMonitor.com |  “A Nobel Peace Prize laureate tried and failed. Pressure for a brokered solution has also come, to no avail, from presidents, top diplomats, and the world´s most credible global organizations. Now, a new round of ideas, deals, and calls for dialogue is emerging from the one place so few had looked before: Honduras itself. Some think a solution is impossible without the outside world. But from church leaders to well-heeled businessmen, new compromise proposals from within the country are being floated to end the standoff between ousted President Manuel Zelaya and the interim regime of Roberto Micheletti.”

Global Comment |  “Mainstream papers have chosen to paint the dispute about DeMint’s trip as one over policy—as if the de facto government is simply an opposing political party rather than a military-backed group that forced Manuel Zelaya, the democratically-elected president, from the country. Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, refused to give DeMint permission for his trip, but minority leader Mitch McConnell arranged a plane for DeMint and his cohorts, Representatives Aaron Schock, Peter Roskam and Doug Lamborn. Separately, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen plans to head to Honduras to meet with the de facto regime, which employs her former press secretary and his PR firm.”

• Related link: Democrats Target Jim DeMint’s Honduras Trip  |  Politico

The New Republic |  “On September 12, the United States government revoked the visas of de facto Honduran President Roberto Micheletti and 14 of the country’s Supreme Court justices. Days earlier, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a U.S.-government body, voted to cut off $11 million in aid to the cash-strapped Central American country. The move came two months after the Honduran military, on the orders of its Congress, Supreme Court, and attorney general, removed Micheletti’s predecessor Manuel Zelaya from office following his repeated attempts to undermine the country’s constitutional provision limiting presidents to a single term. Explaining its decision to not recognize Honduras’s interim government, which it has repeatedly declared came to power via a “coup d’état,” the Obama administration says that it is sending a “very strong message” to “anyone, be they civilian or military, who are thinking of deposing or removing from–illegally removing from office a duly elected president in any country.” Yet according to a recently released and widely overlooked report drafted by the Library of Congress, the actions the Honduran government took in removing Zelaya were consistent with that country’s constitutional procedures.”

FP Passport |  “The Anti-Defamation League has raised the alarm over the use of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric by supporters of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya: “From President Zelaya himself down to media pundits and political activists, there has been a troubling undercurrent of anti-Semitism in the situation in Honduras,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director.  “We know from history that at times of turmoil and unrest, Jews are a convenient scapegoat, and that is happening now in Honduras, a country that has only a small Jewish minority.”"

News …

• Swine flu vaccines hit hospitals and doctors’ offices; what you need to know about them (Read more).
• What would happen if legal immigrants were barred from participating in a reformed U.S. health care system (Read more).
• Texas judge’s ruling over same-sex divorce may pave the way for same-sx marriage in the Lone Star State (Read more).
• A book about gay penguins tops the list of the most-banned books in the U.S. (Read more).

Nicaragua Journal: Ghosts of the Revolution

People in the United States often say that “real” social change must begin with the individual. What one sees in Nicaragua is a dialectic between individual change and changed social and economic conditions. The individual spirit is nurtured by the community, which gives opportunity and hope to the individual, and which itself depends upon the individuals who sustain it. A collective spirit emerges. The inherited poverty of the past and the hard times of the present are enlightened. Individuals share the spirit to build and create, to go beyond the given society. This spirit of struggle and hope is the heart of the revolution.
– John Brentlinger, The Best of What We Are: Reflections on the Nicaraguan Revolution

By Barbara Schwartz
Editorial Director
The Xenia Institute

My visit to Nicaragua took place a little more than a month before the nation’s planned 30th anniversary celebrations of the 1979 revolution that brought the ouster of dictator Anastasio Somoza and the opposition Sandinistas (Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional, or FSLN, and named after early 20th-century guerilla revolutionary and national hero Augusto César Sandino,) into power. There were signs of the celebration everywhere, if you looked for it. The most obvious, of course, were the cotton candy-colored posters and billboards that decorated the right-of-ways of the highways and the walls of buildings in León.

Pink, by the way, is the new color of the Sandinistas, replacing the party’s  traditional colors of red and black, and leading some critics of President Daniel Ortega to question is commitment to the ideals of the revolution. They say he’s turned he’s become a bourgeois, free-market supporter that’s hungry for personal political power. Other defend him, saying that he’s still on the side of the people. I heard arguments on both sides while I was in Nicaragua. And this is what I’ve learned about the revolution and the civil war, and wished I’d known before going.

After the Sandinistas overthrew Somoza on July 19, 1979 (after armed struggles that killed more than 30,000 people), the FSLN, which named Ortega as president, or “first among equals,”  began a series of reforms meant to undo the harm caused by the Somoza family’s decades-long dictatorship. These reforms included literacy programs, free health care clinics, and education and land reforms that took land that had been “confiscated” by the Somoza regime and returned it to the campesinos (farmers) with an eye toward creating collective or cooperative farms. According to a recent article by Al Jazeera about the anniversary of the revolution:

The Sandinistas installed a so-called government of national reconstruction encompassing moderates from the business community, intellectuals and both conservative and Marxists politicians.

It was a revolutionary experiment without precedent in Central America.

The new government promised political pluralism and a mixed economy, which included initiatives such as a widely-praised literacy campaign that reduced the illiteracy rate from 60 per cent to just 13 per cent.

Not everyone favored Ortega’s style of government. A BBC article about the revolution says that the Sandinistas began to lose support because people found Ortega’s style of government “authoritarian and proto-communist.” These reforms, as well as Nicaragua’s ties to communist Cuba, led the U.S. government to believe that the Sandinistas were creating a base for the spread of communism throughout Latin America. In the early 1980s, the U.S. government under President Reagan began funding covert and overt CIA operations to fund a counter-revolutionary group, or Contras, with the goal of undermining the Sandinista government, and implemented economic sanctions against the country . The Sandinista government responded defensively, implementing censorship and other authoritarian measures, and turned to the Soviet Union to buy arms for its army. The result: 12 years of bitter civil conflicts that divided the country, killed more than 50,000 people (out of a then-population of 2 million) and devastated Nicaragua’s infrastructure and economy. Ortega and the Sandinistas were voted out of office in the 1990s, and a non-Sandinista government led the country for 16 years. However, Ortega was re-elected president in 2007 with less than 35 percent of the vote. According to an article by Global Post, Ortega — like a few other Latin American presidents — hopes to change Nicaragua’s laws to allow him to run for president again in 2012, and perhaps an unlimited amount of terms after that.

That’s the textbook history — maybe even the Wikipedia history — full of facts to act as little signposts for interpretation. Whether the revolution was good or bad for Nicaragua politically or economically isn’t really the question (it’s always good when a dictator is ousted, no question); whether its results and ideals were able to last might be a better one. Critics say that Ortega’s presidency suffers from corruption, too, with government jobs and public works projects going to friends of Ortega’s wing of the party, and all government workers being pressured to join the Sandinista party. But Ortega still has his supporters:

Eden Pastora, a former Sandinista hero of the revolution who later fought against the government as a Contra leader, agreed the government is doing many good things, and he does not agree with those who call Ortega a “dictator.”

“Where is the dictatorship if there are no political prisoners? Where is the dictatorship if there is no one being tortured? Without any people killed? Without any exiles? Without anyone being beaten? Tell me, where is the dictatorship without a single media outlet closed, not a single radio station, television station, newspaper or magazine?” he said.

Nicaragua still remains the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Unemployment is high, hovering at 80 percent, and most people in the country live on less than $1 U.S. a day. It’s not uncommon to see families picking through the garbage dumps to scrounge food or other items for survival. For all the revolution’s promises, has it been able to deliver?

Like any country, Nicaragua’s politics and its economy are not self-contained. We visited Ortega’s home, a guarded compound located across from a park in a middle-class neighborhood in Managua (Ortega’s home, incidentally, also serves as the seat of government; his attempt, I was told, to stay in touch with the people). Our group leader went inside the guard shack and asked whether  we might be able to take pictures of the home or talk with someone about Ortega’s policies. She returned and joked, “He said Daniel says we have a picture if we can get the IMF to forgive Nicaragua’s $6 million loan.” With such global pressures to keep in mind, I’m sure that my opinion, as an outsider from a country that’s responsible for putting most of that pressure onto Nicaragua, doesn’t outweigh those of the Nicaraguans who are quite literally living with the ghosts of the revolution in their homes and communities.

On our first full day in Nicaragua, my group visited a marimba school in a small neighborhood in Managua. The marimba is a national instrument of Nicaragua, and the backbone of the campesino music that provided a soundtrack to its history. The school provides instruction for children in the neighborhood and those around it, providing scholarships where they can, so that this piece of Nicaraguan culture doesn’t die away.

We were treated to a performance by a group of teens who were studying at the school; at one point, a young girl left her spot behind the marimba and began to dance to the music of a traditional Nicaraguan ballad that had been sung during the revolution and the civil conflicts afterward. Our group leader began to weep. A committed social justice worker who has been traveling to Nicaragua several times a year since 1986, she was moved by how much Nicaragua has changed since the first time she had heard that song and now. “Back then,” she said, “that little girl would have been carrying a rifle and ready to go off and fight. Now she’s dancing to music.”

We didn’t have to go far to see what might have happened to that little girl 20 or 30 years ago. Attached to the marimba school, which is a still-functioning liberation theology-style base community, is the Garden of the 13 Martyrs, a small cemetery that cradles the remains of 13 members of the neighborhood who died during the civil war. Two of them were young women, barely out of their teens before dying in the conflict. We found their pictures in a room in the school that displays the photos of the 89 youths from the neighborhood who died in the conflict, some of them bystanders who were caught by a bullet or a bomb. A sign hanging over the cemetery proclaims in black-and-red Sandinista letters: “Nuestro Pueblo Es El Dueño de Su Historia, Arquitecto de Su Liberacîon (Our People are the Owners of Their History, the Architects of Their Freedom).” Our host at the school, one of the teachers, told us that the garden represents their understanding that Jesus’ resurrection is found within the people: Those they lost during the conflict and the freedom they fought for are not lost, but is still to be found among the people that keep their memory alive and take up the work that is left to be done. And in addition to the garden, to the school, there’s also a clinic that provides free health care to the neighborhood, and a youth center that provides tutoring and a place for neighborhood youths to go in the afternoons. The government may not be able to continue in the spirit of the revolution, but it lives  on in the people.

Did the revolution make a difference? I still don’t think that’s the question. Did it have significance, did it mean something? No doubt that it means something to those who lived through it, suffered through it and are building a world out of the wreck the revolution and the U.S.-backed war left behind. The question that I found myself left with is what difference this event has made for me, and what responsibilities I bear as both a U.S. citizen and a person of faith who is committed to creating a socially just world. These are questions I’m still working out, haunted as I am by all the ghosts of the Nicaraguan revolution.

Watch …

Al-Jazeera has a four-part report on Nicaragua’s history, including the revolution and its legacy. You can access all four parts below:

Dropping the F-bomb

Analysis…

On Monday a report by Gen. McChrystal was released, stating troop efforts in Afghanistan will most likely fail without reinforcements.  The dire situation of the troops will not see an improvement without additional support.  The conundrum that is causing everyone to scratch their head in thought is that McChrystal’s report follows a weekend of TV talk shows in which Pres Obama said he would not send supplementary soldiers to the Middle East.  Obama believes the right strategy must be found before additional forces are sent.

The confidential report was leaked to The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward; and the White House has not yet made a decision regarding the request.

NewsHoggers |  President Obama spent much of the day on TV talk shows telling America that he was skeptical about troop increases in Afghanistan and that the strategy there wasn’t set in stone.
Then, just as everyone was talking about that, the Pentagon gave the Washington Post an exclusive copy of the unclassified version of General McChrystal’s report. In it, he says that he needs more troops or the mission “will likely result in failure”, and that the new mission is quite definitely “Focus On The Population”. I’ll have more on that tomorrow but for the moment the domestic internal politics of the exclusive leaps out.
Way to make the President look clueless on what his commanders seem certain about!

Daily Kos |  As anybody who can read well knows, the news from Afghanistan has not been good. Since the U.S. surge began late this spring, both Taliban and other insurgents have been fighting an innovative and effective guerrilla war that has gained them a wider presence in areas of the country they haven’t had access to since the U.S. invasion in 2001. More than one-fourth of total 841 U.S. military fatalities in the 8-year-old war have occurred this year. Twenty-nine U.S. soldiers and marines have died this month so far. NATO forces are also taking heavy casualties. Massive fraud afflicted the elections that the U.S. was counting on to legitimize the Hamid Karzai government. The training program for the Afghan National Army, which is eventually supposed to field 240,000 troops, is a disaster. Although there are supposedly 90,000 ready-and-able troops already in the ANA, there were few of them available to fight with the 4000 U.S. troops recently battling in Helmand province. Growing poppies for heroin provides 10% of the country’s gross domestic product. Corruption is endemic. War criminals like Rashid Dostum still have considerable clout. And on and on.
Happily, important questions are being asked by more and more members of Congress – by the usual suspects, obviously, but also by Senators such as Dianne Feinstein. If everybody agrees there is no wholly military solution, why is there a 20-to-1 military-to-civilian budget ratio for Afghanistan operations? Can the U.S. counter-insurgency plan really work without hundreds of thousands of combat troops? After eight years, is U.S. presence more of a problem than a solution, creating more enemies with each air strike that kills civilians? What benchmarks will have to be met before success can be declared? And what’s a realistic guessestimate for when the troops can come home? Is it General Petraeus’s suggested decade or more? Or British Army Commander General Sir David Richards’s 40 years?
President Obama has asked the most important question of all. “Are we doing the right thing?” Most Americans say no.

Think Progress |  Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, “warns in an urgent, confidential assessment of the war that he needs more forces within the next year and bluntly states that without them, the eight-year conflict ‘will likely result in failure.’” McChrystal adds that if insurgent momentum is not reversed within the next year, “defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”

The Daily Dish | General McChrystal is to be congratulated, it seems to me, for the candor and seriousness of his report to the president on what has gone so wrong in Afghanistan and what can be done to set it right. McChrystal’s role is to find a way to win: he’s a soldier fighting a war. And yet this hardest of hard-nosed military men essentially concedes that this is a political problem at its heart. You cannot fight a counter-insurgency on behalf of a government that is as corrupt as Karzai’s. And you cannot fight a counter-insurgency without vast numbers of troops to protect a population in an extremely remote and ungovernable region. And you cannot fight either without tackling the real source of the terror – in Pakistan.
It seems to me we are at another turning point in the road, and one of the few moments when American enmeshment in Afghanistan might be turned back. We have to weigh the chances of serious terror groups re-grouping and operating even more freely throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan against the risks of more money, more troops, more casualties and more blowback. And let’s not fool ourselves: neither of these is a good option. That’s the Bush legacy.

The Washington Independent |  Yes, Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s strategy review says that the Afghanistan war needs to be properly resourced. But there are so, so, so many elements within it that place that statement within a subordinate context. For instance: “Additional resources are required, but focusing on force or resource requirements misses the point entirely.” And: “Resourcing communicates commitment, but we must also balance force levels to enable effective [Afghan force] partnering and provide population security, while avoiding perceptions of coalition dominance.” And: “We cannot succeed simply by trying harder; ISAF must now adopt a fundamentally new approach… in addition to a proper level of resourcing.”

News…

• The FCC is advocating an open Internet that is accessible to everyone and void of any blocked content (Read more).
• The number of people with dementia globally is estimated to nearly double every 20 years, according to a report released Monday for World Alzheimer’s Day (Read more).
• A nascent technology called WebGL for bringing hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the Web is getting a lot closer to reality (Read more).
• Harvard receives more LEED certificates than any other university (Read more).
• Harrison Ford’s pitch to stop deforestation (Read more).

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