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Saturday, August 17, 2002
A Rift Among Godless There is a conflict among the "godless":
American Atheists, the New Jersey-based organizers of the march, has invited "all groups and individuals who sincerely declare themselves to be `Godless Americans' " to be listed as endorsers of the march, a protest against a long list of actions and attitudes considered prejudicial to nonbelievers. Two of the many groups that responded, the Order of Perdition and the United Satanic Convenire, describe themselves as satanist; and satanists, in the view of the Council for Secular Humanism, are insufficiently godless. "Satanism is a religion, with supernatural beliefs and a belief in the occult," said Tom Flynn, the editor of Free Inquiry, published by the council. "They should not qualify as endorsers of an event for Godless Americans." The United Satanic Convenire issued a statement on their website:
....Next up, some atheists have expressed concern about Satanists showing up and waving baphomets, pentagrams, and other occult paraphenalia. I can't speak for all Satanists, but anyone under my org will not be doing so. I could imagine that a few Christians would be more than happy to derail the atheist agenda by posing as Satanic atheists, but I give my word that no one under this org will do so. I've talked to Ellen Johnson, and this march on Washington is specifically to call attention to atheism as a viable disbelief, not to Satanism, Humanism, Objectivism, Nihilism, or any other sub-compartment of atheism. I respect that, and will not in any way attempt to portray Satanism. I was asked to portray atheism in a positive light, that, and that alone, is my goal. Let's also take some time to clarify a few things. Not all atheists are Satanists, and not all Satanists are atheists. Some have a deistic conception of Satanism, (Satan as the "unmoveable mover"), some have a perception of Satan as the dark energy which binds things, some have a definition of Satan as the archetype of the questioning-self, and some have the unfortunate belief that Satan is the one and the same out of the Bible. I don't really consider them Satanists, I consider them Christians playing on the other end of the football field. Same stadium, same cheerleaders, different helmets. The march organizers are trying to smooth things over, but also to make a point:
Groups that use invocations like "Hail Lucifer!" — as the Order of Perdition does — are definitely "not our style," Mr. Buckner said. "That would be just as mistaken as saying "Hail Mary, full of grace."
The Order of Perdition is Part of the Satanic Council. The Order seems to be ecumenical in its own way:
Satanism (Modern & Traditional), Luciferianism,Vampirism,Chaos Magick, The Dark Doctrines,Druidism,Enochian Magick,Egyptian Magick,Thelema and others. We believe in keeping the Old Ways of magick alive as well. We understand that when most people hear the word "Satanism" or "Dark Arts," they envision the sacrifice of humans and/or animals, and they seek to destroy our Path. Free will and free thought are priorities to all members of the Order of Perdition. We also have a respect for life and for one another. Therefore, the violation of another's free will or the deliberate harming of any human or animal, in ritual or otherwise, is strictly forbidden in the Order of Perdition. Acts of this nature have never been and never will be tolerated by the Order of Perdition as a whole. We seek only those who have a strong desire to learn, and who have grown tired of the lies and contradictions of the Christian church -- an institution that exists only to enslave the mass of humanity. The Satanic Magickian of The Order of Perdition seeks his/her Power through True Will and Dedication in the Arts, and he/she rises above all mental poisons to see the world for what it truly is. It appears the atheists are convinced, since both Satanist organizations still appear on the official roster of participating organizations. I want to see the Satanists march next to the Gay and Lesbian Atheists and Humanists (notice they don't mention bisexuals - they'll fuck anything). UPDATE Paul Palubicki has infiltrated Satanic inner circles:
"Dude, some help here would be hot ...and would some non-skanky chicks join The Order for once? Like those chicks in Devil's Advocate? Man, that would totally rule! I mean, damn, David Koresh looked like Wierd Al's ugly little brother and he got all that ass by just reading a Bible and telling them he was like, the Messiah or some shit. If God can help out a homely cracker like that, can't you at least send some of that poontang my way?" Dude, are you telling me I look like Pacino? "No, no way, HoofDude. I just want some high quality tail to come my way. Just once. I'm not asking much." Do I look like a pimp to you? "What?" I said, Do I look like some kind of pimp to you? "N-n-no, Great Dark Dude. I just want to get laid. You're like, supposed to be into all that." Oh, so you think I should spend all my time trying to get you fuckers laid, is that right? I got some heavy shit going on with the Old Fart upstairs, but Junior here wants some bearded clam, so I should just drop all my Heavenly War shit just to help pop your cherry? "If your Dark Powers can't help me get a date or move out my folks, basement, then why am I even serving you, dude?" You know, that's a good fucking question. How the hell am I supposed to be taken seriously and inspire fear in the hearts of Men with ass-clown geeks like you representin' me? I'm supposed to be leading Men's souls to their dooms with Pizza Face the Pied Piper! Tell me why I shouldn't strike yo sorry ass, down muthafuckah! "B-b-b-because no one else will do it?" Damn. Entitlement With the Major League Baseball players strike date set, saturation coverage of the announcement yesterday, and my ongoing preoccupation with the danger of Islamist word and deed, I probably shouldn't have been surprised to have had an oddly vivid dream last night. Despite the fact that I staunchly believe in the need to root out militant Islamism in the most severe manner, I don't want to give the impression that I dehumanize people who happen to have adopted this unfortunate view of the world. And suddenly last night I had a flash of empathy with them. Islamism still must be utterly discredited and rooted out ruthlessly, and those who refuse or are incapable of an ideological transformation may need to be killed before they can kill us - one of their professed goals - but at least I now have a door through which to enter the Islamist mind. In my dream, I sat in the stands at Jacobs Field, home of the Cleveland Indians since 1994, in a fast-forward through every winning home game over the past 8+ seasons. Not coincidentally, with the opening of the "Jake" in '94, the Indians began a tremendous run of on- and off-field success, winning six Division titles in seven years between '95 and 2001, reaching the World Series twice, and selling out an outrageous record-setting 455 games in a row. Though they didn't win the World Series, expectation was there for them to do so every year, and it was a resonable expectation at that. That run ended with a thud this year with the clearing out of virtually the entire roster of expensive veterans, with the stated purpose of rebuilding with (cheap) youth over the next few years. So in my dream I saw this riveting panorama of success flash by me and sooth my soul. I realized I had COME TO EXPECT IT: hence my disappointment and outrage, and resentment this year when ownership just threw in the towel and broke up the team. When I woke up, I thought about my dream, and even imagined myself as a Yankees fan and the exceptionalism that would come from a fascistic run of 20 championships between 1923 and 1962, then another run of four titles in five years between '96 and 2000. Imagine the fan's disbelief and horror and disrupted sense of ENTITLEMENT whe the Diamondbacks came back and upset them in the 7th game of hte Series last year: "HOW CAN THIS FUCKING BE???????????? IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO END LIKE THIS." This all sounded familiar to me:
You see, Western Europe wasn’t the direct inheritor of the cultural climax of Rome. Barbarian invasions and a general lack of urbanization caused a collapse of this area so thorough many local peasants believed the marbled columned ruins were built by gods. The heavily urbanized, and therefore highly literate and well educated, section of the empire was in the East. When the Bedouin exploded out of their wasteland home they conquered an area holding libraries of knowledge ten centuries old. They carried with them a religion and law that emphasized all learning as valuable, and so these libraries were saved, expanded, and eventually bettered in every way. Islam began to be seen by its adherents as a force of history, which was self-evidently better than any other lifeway it encountered. For a thousand years it met, matched, and overcame every obstacle thrown at it, and was better for each challenge. However, for reasons not entirely clear, something went very, very wrong. The last great Islamic empire, the Ottomans, stood at the gates of Vienna for three months in 1688. If they had broken through those walls Europe would've been open before them, and we all might be chanting "God is Great" today. But they didn't, and this watershed event represented a zenith that would not, and in fact could not, be equaled again. In a little more than one hundred years all the rules of warfare would be changed, and for whatever reason the Muslims never got the new playbook. In the real world, this sense of resentment hasn't faded with time in the Islamic world, but has festered and boiled and intensified over the last several hundred years, and spurred by the total collapse of Islamic power with the end of the Ottoman Empire a century ago, has finally come to throbbing venomous head. We still have to lance the head and destroy the infection with extreme prejudice, but at least I can empathize with its origins. Go Tribe. Headline Closet Secrets of the Pros Turns out it's about closets - I wasn't aware that there were closet professionals, although I am certain there are many professionals in the closet. Iraq Etc In the interest of continuity, I have kept all news and opinion on Iraq to one post. Please see here for background and the latest developments. In a Name Dr. Weevil has more on the pseudo-blogo-nym issue. I haven't said anything about it heretofore, but here are my brief thoughts. All blogs are avatars of their creators: they are cyberspace projections of whatever aspects of a person's personality they choose to project. No blogs are "really real," therefore the name attached is simply part of that projection. Just because I call myself "Eric Olsen" doesn't mean that what I write is any more or less "real" than if I called myself "Projectile Vomit" or "Mephistopheles" or "Humbert Humbert." A blog is a persona and the name attached doesn't make it more or less so. If a pseudonym helps someone to get "into character," then that name is more "real" for that blog than the person's birth name. I also have no problem understanding work or personal pressures that may lead a person writing under his/her own name to be "less real" than when working under the umbrella of a pseudonym. Therefore I see "authenticity" as a non-issue. Either the WRITING is authentic or it isn't: the name attached doesn't much matter. I don't much care if there is a disconnect between blog and person because like any work of art, the blog exists on its own, like a cyber-child. With the disconnect inevitable, what difference does it make to place the added layer of a pseudonym? None, to my thinking. Write under whatever name you want, just be interesting and don't suck - a name is just a label stuck on what really counts: the writing. P.S. - As Dr. Weevil notes, it would be a real shame if anyone wre driven from blogging due to pressure to "reveal" themselves. Don't go "Edward." Friday, August 16, 2002
Grace It's been 25 years since Elvis died on the toilet, a big fat freak of 42. He was an old man, but two years younger than I am now. Think about this: Elvis has been dead longer than his career lasted, and I'm including the crappy 70s. Yet the King remains as popular as ever (to the tune of $37 million last year). I would say that the real Elvis has been lost under the tidal wave of Elvis-the-cultural-icon, but that isn't really true because people still listen to his music, and his music is the REAL Elvis. In the car I was listening to NPR's tribute to Presley (they have an excellent page with a wealth of audio and textual resources) in a somberish mood. The Elvis story always makes me melancholy: the revolutionary music with Sam Phillips, the meteoric rise, the "commercialization," the dead period of bad movies in the 60s, the comeback, the decline unto a pathetic death. But then going into the break, they played an extended portion of "Suspicious Minds," and I remembered how - for all his otherwordly gifts - charmingly real and fragile Elvis was, and this was as big a part of his appeal as the wondrous voice and the animal magnetism. Elvis KNEW his movies were mostly shit, his music in the middle-60s shlock, and by the time of his comeback TV special in '68, he was insecure and unsure of his ability to deliver anymore. But deliver he did and the joy of that connection, or rather reconnection, was truly lovable. His best music undoubtedly came from the '50s and early-60s, but the best Elvis was the magical return to grace in '68/'69, capped by the Memphis glory of "Suspicious Minds," his first #1 in seven years and the last #1 of his life. Hearing the stark soul groove highlighted by Reggie Young's curling guitar and Gene Chrisman's light but insistent backbeat, and Elvis's restrained/powerful/yearning vocal - living the lyric, loving the music - almost brought a tear. At that point in his life and career, Elvis and his fans needed each other equally: you can sense the energy flowing both ways, restoring Elvis and rewarding his fans for their faith and support. That moment of equilibrium is the Elvis I love best. Mike Hendrix loves Elvis too:
....Even as a kid of 19 or 20, working in the studio with seasoned pros from New York, LA, and Nashville, Elvis ran the show, no ifs, ands, or buts. When he recorded "Hound Dog" the day after the Allen show, he insisted on doing take after take, and the song evolved throughout from the bluesy grind of Big Mama Thornton's version into the rollicking, savage romp we all know now. A tired and somewhat exasperated Steve Sholes (producer on the session) said after the twenty-sixth take that he thought they had it, but Elvis once again insisted that they keep rolling tape.
New Recruit? Doubting Thomas reviews a veritable library of books here. How about joining Blogcritics.com, Mr. Literary? Commissioner Steve Newly-married Vodka Steve has a creative take on the restructuring of professional baseball:
Call them, say, the Federal League and the North American League. The "joined" leagues will be governed by the all-new Professional Baseball Association, or whatever you'd like to call it. The names aren't important. What is important is that they are completely unaffiliated with the NL, the AL, MLB, the MLBPA, and the umpire's union. No more than 24 cities, 12 in each league, will be allowed to bid for teams. Let's not continue to dilute our pitching talent, and let's get rid of some deadweight players in other positions, too. The election for PBA Commissioner will be held between George Will and Bob Costas. The loser will head up the rulebook-writing team. (Buh-bye DH rule and arbitrary strike zones!) The PBA constitution will state that no team may accept government funding or tax breaks for ballparks, concessions, parking, etc. The PBA will have salary caps and revenue sharing, and the Commissioner will be selected by the same fine sportswriters who vote players into the Hall of Fame -- not by the owners...... UPDATE And not just a thinker - how about this for timing:
The date was set during a conference call among 57 player representatives Friday morning. The vote for the Aug. 30 strike date -- the Friday before Labor Day -- was unanimous, the Major League Baseball Players Association said. If the players walk out, it would mark baseball's ninth work stoppage in the last 30 years and the first since a 232-day strike in 1994 that led to the cancellation of 921 games and the World Series. "Baseball owners and baseball players must understand that if there is a work stoppage a lot of fans are going to be furious, and I'm one," President Bush ( news - web sites) told reporters during his working vacation at his Texas ranch. "It is very important for these people to get together," said Bush, who before he entered politics was a part owner of the Texas Rangers. "They can make every excuse in the book not to reach an accord. It is bad for them not to reach an accord. They need to keep working." At the heart of the negotiations is a proposed payroll tax. Owners of the 30 professional baseball teams say a so-called "luxury tax" will help stem rising player salaries, which average nearly $2.4 million. But the players believe the tax will limit the growth of the salaries because teams would be reluctant to sign big-money contracts if there was a "penalty" tax involved. "The players are committed to reaching a fair and equitable agreement, one which takes into account their views, and not just those of the owners," the players' union said in a statement announcing the strike date. "Needless to say, we are prepared to meet and bargain with the owners' representatives until an agreement is reached." Last Monday the players delayed announcing a strike date after a meeting of their executive board in Chicago. Owners and players seemed in agreement then that they could gain momentum to overcome the sticking points of revenue sharing and the luxury tax. But Friday the league said on its Web site, http://MLB.com, "It is generally believed the last two days of negotiations did not produce the progress toward a new collective bargaining deal that both sides desired." MLB.com said both sides declined to comment about any new developments from Thursday's negotiating session in New York. "But negotiations appear to have slowed considerably," it said, saying no new sessions had yet been scheduled. Rob Manfred, MLB's vice president of labor relations and human resources, said through a spokesman that management is "ready and willing to meet at any time." Whenever that next meeting occurs, some players downplayed that a strike date would necessarily lead to work stoppage in America's pastime. "I'm still cautiously optimistic, probably more cautious," said Atlanta Braves pitcher Tom Glavine. "I don't honestly think there is a specific amount of time that it would take to get something done. "It could take 20 minutes or 20 hours. Whenever someone puts the right offer on the table, we can get going with it. If it takes a bump in the road to get things going again, hopefully we'll start moving in the right direction," Glavine said "If they strike, it's going to be a disaster," said Arthur Bernstein, sports consultant and former executive director of the advocacy group United Sports Fans of America. "Fans will see this as arrogant and egotistical on both sides. "Back in 1994 fans were receptive to being re-inspired," he said. "You had the Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa home run battle. You had Cal Ripken. You can't count on that anymore. "There is a lot more competition for the sports dollar and the entertainment dollar. It's a different world." Management wants to tax the amount of payrolls above $100 million by 50 percent. The union wants the threshold at $137 million. Other issues still to be settled include a minimum players' payroll of $45 million per team, drug testing and salary arbitration. Why He Does It There has been a fair amount of talk this summer, including here, about some of the dark side of blogging: time and energies spent, neglect of other duties and pleasures, and the like. David Hogberg has a very nice piece of the positive side of blogging - his glass is more than half-full:
....2. Practice makes perfect. Well, not quite perfect, but there is a lot of improvement. I’ve noticed that the more I do it, the more I look for new ways to express ideas, for ways to shorten what I write, and so forth. ....3. Discipline. Man, has blogging ever forced me to discipline myself. I can’t regularly put out the Daily Diatribe, along with all the other posts, unless I force myself to limit my procrastination and just get on with it. ....4. Engaged in the “Debate.” Blogging makes me feel like I’m thoroughly engaged in the debate over ideas. I get to contribute my two-cents worth on the issues of the day, and some people actually read what I say! ....6. New acquaintances. If you’re not like me—someone who works behind a desk all day and is a little shy to boot—you may not realize how important this is. But I’ve met a lot of really nice people who have similar interests. Another Blow We reported last week on the conflict developing between the major labels and the independent promotions companies over fees paid to get songs played on the radio. RCA and Atlantic had reduced fees paid as of last week, now Universal is slashing fees by 50%:
The action by Universal Music, owned by media conglomerate Vivendi Universal, comes as lawmakers and federal agencies are trying to determine whether current independent promotion tactics violate payola laws, which bar radio stations from playing songs in exchange for money or anything valuable without identifying the transaction. ....Record companies have complained to the Federal Communications Commission and lawmakers about giant radio conglomerates using their muscle to ratchet up promotion prices. Sources said Universal Music Group--which consists of the Interscope, Def Jam, MCA, Universal Records and Lost Highway labels--pays more than $50 million annually to independent promoters to pitch songs by such stars as No Doubt, Ashante, Mary J. Blige and Nellie to radio stations. Universal declined to comment. But sources at the company said its labels notified promoters Tuesday that they are slashing promotion payments 50% to about $200,000 a song. Universal's labels also plan to reduce the number of radio stations nationwide for which promoters will be able to collect fees for pitching their songs, sources said. From the Mind of the Bunny The Big Bunny has some innovative thoughts on integrating bloggers with the mainstream media - makes a lot of sense:
Don't want to fool with the copy? I'll tell you what. Find a blogger, there's at least one out there who could use the work, ok two, and pay them the money you'd pay an intern. Give them ftp access to some remote corner of your site, and then send them a copy of the story 10 minutes before it's uploaded. At the bottom of each story, put a link to the blog in and say "For more information, see our blog at http://fakereutersaddress.com" The blogger will find the extra info and post it beneath a link back to the original story. In less than a month it'll be the most popular page on your site. Don't want to go to the trouble of finding a blogger? Would you prefer round-the-clock updates? Well, contact an organization of bloggers, and they'll contract out the updates to bloggers from all over the world. It's cheap. Most do this for nothing anyway, so they'll do it for next to nothing. Iraq Today Pressure is building on all sides regarding Iraq: if we could direct all of that brain power, we could vaporize Saddam and call it a day. What is the basic case against Saddam? It hasn't changed much since this BBC report from March, other than with every passing minute the likelihood of disaster inexorably grows:
Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens, leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections, then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilised world. Weaponry "The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade." Washington and London say this accumulation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) poses a threat not just to the region but to the wider world. But exactly what kind and how many weapons Baghdad has is not known, as UN weapons inspectors have not been in the country since December 1998. A report published by the US State Department earlier that year, said that Iraq had the potential to develop WMD. "Enough production components and data remain hidden and enough expertise has been retained or developed to enable Iraq to resume development and production of WMD." It is believed, the report adds, that Iraq maintains "a small force of Scud-type missiles, a small stockpile of chemical and biological munitions, and the capability to quickly resurrect biological and chemical weapons production". In the same document the State Department says that "Baghdad's interest in acquiring or developing nuclear weapons has not diminished". A UN report released in March last year suggested that Iraq still had chemical and biological weapons - as well as the rockets to deliver them to targets in other countries. Iraq denies this. And, on Wednesday, US diplomats said photographs taken by spy satellites show that trucks imported by Baghdad for civilian purposes have been converted into mobile missile launchers. Arms control "This is a regime that agreed to international inspections, then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilised world." Saddam Hussein agreed to allow UN inspectors into the country as part of the ceasefire accord that ended the Gulf War in 1991. But the body in charge of the inspections, Unscom, complained it was not allowed to its job and was withdrawn in 1998 ahead of a bombing campaign by the US and the UK. Iraq, meanwhile, accused the commission's monitors of spying for Washington. After its withdrawal, Unscom was replaced by Unmovic (UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission) which has not been allowed into the country.
In what appeared to be another bid by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ( news - web sites)'s government to stave off a possible U.S. strike, Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan told Abu Dhabi Television in an interview Iraq was "open for dialogue" with the United Nations.
Earlier this month, it invited chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix to visit Baghdad for technical talks. But Annan rejected the offer, saying these talks could only take place after inspectors returned. ....Ramadan said Iraq was taking the U.S. threats seriously, but he added Iraq was encouraged by the growing European and Arab opposition to any strike. "We do not ignore these threats. We are preparing all that we can prepare with all of our capabilities," he said. "Should it (the attack) take place they would find a new situation and a new confrontation that they have not faced anywhere." But Ramadan also repeated that Baghdad was willing to start a dialogue with Washington so long as it was without provisos. "I do not think we have ever rejected direct dialogue with the U.S. administration...(provided that) there are no terms. We want a dialogue in which each of us respects the opinion of the other and does not interfere in internal affairs," he said Israel - immediately in the line of fire and likely first target of an Iraqi assault - says get them NOW:
Israeli intelligence officials have gathered evidence that Iraq is speeding up efforts to produce biological and chemical weapons, said Sharon aide Ranaan Gissin. "Any postponement of an attack on Iraq at this stage will serve no purpose," Gissin told The Associated Press. "It will only give him (Saddam) more of an opportunity to accelerate his program of weapons of mass destruction." ....As evidence of Iraq's weapons building activities, Israel points to an order Saddam gave to Iraq's Atomic Energy Commission last week to speed up its work, Gissin said. "Saddam's going to be able to reach a point where these weapons will be operational," he said. Gissin said Israel was not seeking to dictate the timing of a U.S. military campaign but said that, faced with the threat of one, Saddam was fast developing weapons.
"It's understood," Myers said, without elaborating. "We understand the point." Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said earlier Thursday that he would not stand idly by in the event of an Iraqi attack against Israel. Eleven years ago, Iraq fired Scud missiles against Israel during the Gulf War. Israel did not retaliate, bowing to U.S. pressure. Then President George H. W. Bush was concerned that Israeli counter-measures against Iraq could prompt Arab countries to pull out of the international coalition that had taken up arms against Iraq.
Possibly the most dire consequences would be the effect in the region. The shared view in the region is that Iraq is principally an obsession of the U.S. The obsession of the region, however, is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If we were seen to be turning our backs on that bitter conflict--which the region, rightly or wrongly, perceives to be clearly within our power to resolve--in order to go after Iraq, there would be an explosion of outrage against us. We would be seen as ignoring a key interest of the Muslim world in order to satisfy what is seen to be a narrow American interest. Even without Israeli involvement, the results could well destabilize Arab regimes in the region, ironically facilitating one of Saddam's strategic objectives. At a minimum, it would stifle any cooperation on terrorism, and could even swell the ranks of the terrorists. Conversely, the more progress we make in the war on terrorism, and the more we are seen to be committed to resolving the Israel-Palestinian issue, the greater will be the international support for going after Saddam.
Second, it needs to show that it has a credible military option even if the Saudis and Kuwaitis refuse to participate in a war on Iraq. If the U.S. military attacks strictly from the north, there is some possibility that Iraq might strike at Jordan. As a key ally and buffer between Iraq and Israel, the United States can't risk this. More important, the U.S. military will face the danger of SCUD missile launches from western Iraq as it did in 1991, and it needs Jordan as a base for suppressing the SCUDs. Since the feasibility of the Iraqi plan is coming under heavy scrutiny in the Pentagon and Congress, letting everyone know that Jordan is in is critical. Jordan has a number of reasons for supporting U.S. policy. The most important is that the government is deeply concerned by both the rising influence of radical Islam in its long-time antagonist Saudi Arabia and the radicalization of the Palestinians....
Even under President Clinton's weak leadership in foreign policy, the US was able to bring its allies into line over bombing in Bosnia and Kosovo, and neither China nor Russia used their veto powers. This is how the US "playbook" for managing international opinion runs. At first, US policy appears lonely and extreme. The debate is constructed around the idea that the US does not want to be restricted by the UN, which is indeed true. When the US magnanimously decides that it will accept some form of UN blessing, there is a carefully orchestrated sigh of relief that America is returning to the multilateral fold. Britain will be first in line to agree. Russia, which has no interest in a direct confrontation with the US and needs its economic support, including membership of the World Trade Organisation, will quickly follow. Without Russian opposition, France will not want to use its veto. China has a consistent policy of abstention.
Back to Scowcroft, he, like the Guardian leftwinger (strange bedfellows?), sees "instability," "disorder," threats to the "international system" as the greatest threat of all:
Apparently Scowcroft isn't the only Republican getting antsy about Iraq:
....Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska said that Secretary Powell and his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, had recently told President Bush of their concerns about the risks and complexities of a military campaign against Iraq, especially without broad international support. But senior White House and State Department officials said they were unaware of any such meeting. Also today, Lawrence S. Eagleburger, who was briefly secretary of state for Mr. Bush's father, told ABC News that unless Mr. Hussein "has his hand on a trigger that is for a weapon of mass destruction, and our intelligence is clear, I don't know why we have to do it now, when all our allies are opposed to it." Last week, Representative Dick Armey, the House majority leader, raised similar concerns.
"Any postponement of an attack on Iraq at this stage will serve no purpose," Gissin told The Associated Press. "It will only give him (Saddam) more of an opportunity to accelerate his program of weapons of mass destruction."
"Military intervention should be attempted only if we are willing to sustain such an effort for however long it is needed," he added. Far from ruling out military intervention, Mr. Kissinger said the challenge was to build a careful case that the threat of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction calls for creation of a new international security framework in which pre-emptive action may sometimes be justified.
"I think Brent just got it wrong," he said by telephone from France. "The failure to take on Saddam after what the president said would produce such a collapse of confidence in the president that it would set back the war on terrorism." Mr. Perle added, "I think it is naïve to believe that we can produce results in the 50-year-old dispute between the Israelis and the Arabs, and therefore this is an excuse for not taking action."
Such discussions, the official added, would have a sobering effect on the war-planners. Lastly, we are hearing from the military structure itself:
As Lord Salisbury once put it, "If you ask the soldiers, nothing is safe." To which the politicians must respond, "neither is inaction." It is the job of a political leader to take into account the soldier's reservations, to probe for differing opinions and press for innovative solutions.
Saddam needs to go - all agree, but he needs to go the sooner the better. The Israelis - who have to most to lose - say Saddam is only becoming more dangerous as the days go by. We have all the international support we need - whether its expression is tacit at this point or not - and "instability" is the very best thing that can happen in the region, a region mired in festering stability: the festering autocratic stability that has produced violent militant Islamic fundamentalism. It is time to lance the wound, expose the infection, and begin the healing process as quickly as possible. UPDATE Gene Healy says Iraq isn't Vietnam and Donald Rumsfeld isn't Robert McNamara unless it is:
MEANWHILE Bill Quick reported, as of Friday afternoon (ET), operations are already under way in and around Iraq:
Stop and think for a moment. We've got PR releases from Centcom announcing the bombing of Iraqi "communications centers." We're got debkafile rumors of Baghdad flyovers. We've had several rumors of Turkish SOF and US forces inside the borders of Iraq. How, exactly, is this different from an attack and invasion of Iraq? It might not yet be "hot" to the level that Desert Storm reached, but I think you can certainly call it war. Via InstaPundit, GedankenPundit ponders geography after Saddam:
I suppose that folks are worried about the "power vacuum" that would appear should Iraq break up. But let's think out of the box. Is breaking up Iraq such a bad idea? If these groups really detest each other, what is the benefit in forcing them together into a single country? Doing so just encourages each group to try to dominate the political scene, since no group wants to live under a government they don't control. That, in turn, sets up a situation in which the most vicious groups end up seizing control of the government, since they are the only ones ruthless enough to do what has to be done to achieve such a goal. So if forcing mutually intolerant ethnic groups to share a government breeds totalitarianism, why are we so afraid of breaking up Iraq and giving each group its own country to run as it sees fit? UPDATE Jim Henley's opinion was not transformed by my magical words:
A couple of thoughts: You are pretty hard on the Bush I people for their supposed mistakes. I find this an interesting trope among the hawks. It amounts to, It's not that intervention was bad, we just haven't intervened enough. It's exactly like enthusiasts for socialism - when one market intervention fails to solve the original problem and creates a new one, they argue for new interventions to fix the new problems. Viz. The War on Drugs and the ever-expanding list of "crimes" it requires (paying cash for things, buying grow lights, owning property where someone uses or sells drugs etc.) I have no doubt that when conquering Iraq fails to bring the new millenium, the hawks will say that the problem is that we haven't conquered Iran; when we are still somehow not safe, it will be proof that we need also to conquer Saudi Arabia; when that still doesn't do the trick; Syria, Indonesia, and who knows who else. The order may, of course, change, but the "lesson" that the usual suspects draw will be the same: We haven't used enough force yet, but this next intervention will do the trick. Honest. It never seems to occur to the hawks that maybe, just maybe, the original Gulf War was fought as well and intelligently as possible and that what subsequent events show is that it was a bad idea in the first place. I apologize for not being more positive. Jim's argument would appear to be that of the slippery slope: that bad ideas inspire ever-expanding efforts to implement them, a task that can never be completed because the idea was flawed in the first place. He mentions such flawed notions as socialism, the War on Drugs, and the Gulf War as examples of flawed ideas alibied by their proponents as having "failed" due to lack of sufficient rigor in application. But this doesn't tell anything specific about whether or not forcible regime change in Iraq is a good idea or not. It just tells us that Jim doesn't like the Gulf War, socialism, or the War on Drugs. I reiterate that Saddam is dangerous to us and others, that he is only growing more so, that those who have to most to lose from an aggressive Iraq - namely Israel - are all for regime change NOW despite the fact that military action by us will almost certainly precipitate hostile acts toward THEM, and the fact that Saddam has illegally barred weapons inspectors from doing their job for five years makes military action on our part legal and warranted from an international standpoint. ANY possible fallout from a deposed Saddam can only be better than the fetid stability reigning now, including the breakup of Iraq. It is only gravy that removing Saddam, the most powerful of the Islamic dictators, will send a very strong signal to other Islamic dicatators that their end is nigh, that the caliphate is not returning, that it is time to join the rest of mankind in the 21st century, and that Allah does not support totalitarian theocracies, nor secular totalitarian regimes for that matter. Claiming that the Gulf War was conducted as well as it might have been, that it was a failure, and therefore the IDEA behind it must have been faulty is clever but itself a flawed concept. It seems rather self-evident that military action against Saddam's Iraq was necessary and inevitable under the circumstances of his military aggression and rhetoric, and that the job should have been completed with his ouster. It is historical fact that this final action was not pursued due to fears of "INSTABILITY" in the region (thanks to reader Tom). Stability as an inherent good is grossly overrated by diplomats, such as our State Department, whose perceived self-interest is served by stability regardless of the pathology of the status quo. Unfortunately, this kind of thinking ruled the day at the penultimate moment of the Gulf War, and we have been paying the penalty ever since. Setting the matter right, now, is called "learning from your mistakes," not perpetuating a bad idea. It's a matter of perspective. SATURDAY AFTERNOON
It said in a statement the planes struck civilian and public buildings in Dhi-Qar province, 375 km (250 miles) south of Baghdad. Iraqi air defenses fired at the attacking planes, forcing them to return to bases in Kuwait, it said. There was no immediate confirmation of the strike from Britain or the United States. U.S. and British planes had attacked targets in the south on Wednesday, wounding four civilians, the Iraqi air force said this week. Britain confirmed that raid, saying it was launched after a mobile tracking radar unit had locked onto the aircraft, but said it was not aware of any casualties. Saturday's raid was the 27th this year by U.S. and British warplanes in northern and southern "no-fly zones" of Iraq, set up after the 1991 Gulf War to protect Kurds in the north and Shi'ite Muslims in the south from attack by Baghdad's forces. The raids have increased in recent months amid mounting threats from President Bush to oust President Saddam Hussein. Washington accuses Baghdad of developing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Iraq denies the charge and Saddam has said any U.S. invasion of his country is doomed to fail.
American diplomats, CIA officers and Pentagon officials more frequently slip into northern Iraq to consult groups there. A coalition of opposition groups is getting long-delayed money to run anti-Saddam newspaper and television campaigns inside Iraq. And a heavy schedule of meetings around the world is increasingly pulling together those who have long hoped for Saddam's demise. "The Bush administration has given the opposition more hope than they've had at any time in the past 10 years," said Phebe Marr of the Middle East Policy Council. "It has generated a lot of activity, there's no question about it." What will come of it is an open question. ....Much of what the administration and opposition groups are talking about and planning is secret. But officials have said Bush signed an order early this year directing the CIA to increase support to opposition groups. The CIA has declined to comment, but such aid could include money, weapons, intelligence, training and equipment. For example, Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdish Democratic Party in the north of Iraq, was brought in April to a CIA training ground in southern Virginia, where he was asked for permission to set up CIA stations in northern Iraq in exchange for a couple of armored vehicles and some militia training, according to an opposition source. He rejected the offer, reportedly because it came from CIA operatives rather than the president. But Americans from various government agencies have been quietly working for years in the Kurdish areas of Iraq, autonomous zones protected since 1992 by the U.S. and British-patrolled no-fly zones. The KDP and the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan each have militias as well as bases and airfields there that could be useful if U.S. forces attack Iraq. Outside Iraq, leaders of those two Kurdish parties met with U.S. officials for three days in April in Germany to talk about how to get rid of Saddam and what kind of government would follow, officials said. Five opposition groups came to meetings in Washington in June. Several dozen former Iraqi military officers who defected met in London in July. And six opposition groups visited the White House complex a week ago for a video conference with Vice President Dick Cheney and face-to-face meetings with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers. Meanwhile, the State Department said Thursday it will spend $8 million for various opposition activities, including resumption of broadcasts to viewers inside Iraq — a campaign suspended in early May because of disagreements between the State Department and the London-based Iraqi National Congress. Despite improved relations with the INC, its leader, Ahmed Chalabi, said there have been no talks this past week on something the group has long wanted — training for its fighters. So far 164 Iraqi dissidents have been trained by a contractor hired by the Pentagon. The INC is an umbrella group formed in 1992 to bring together a number of disparate groups, including Kurds, Shiites and exiles. It has received millions of dollars in aid — but since diplomats and intelligence officials have been wary about the group, it has gotten only a small percentage of the $97 million approved by Congress five years ago. Still, moving toward Bush's goal of regime change has "forced different points of view in the administration to be molded into one," said Charles Duelfer of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He said both sides — the administration and the opposition — are more unified than in previous years. Despite the progress, opposition figures still don't have a firm coalition "that could withstand the pressure of war and government," said former ambassador Edward Walker of the Middle East Institute. Much of the discussion in meetings with the opposition still is aimed at getting the fractious groups to pull together. "These people all have different constituencies, they have different interests," Walker said, questioning whether they would cooperate in a post-Saddam government. He said the thrust of the State Department effort has been in trying to turn their attention to how the country will be run and who will replace Saddam. "I would say there has been some progress," Walker said. "But there's still a long way to go." Thursday, August 15, 2002
Woodstock 33rd Fellow Blogcritic Sheila Lennon metaphorically went back to Woodstock for today's 33rd anniversary:
Twenty years later, I was lifestyles editor of The Providence Journal, and the task of doing the 20th anniversay package fell to me by default, since I'd been there. I interviewed 50 other Rhode Islanders who were also there, and published a 3-day series on the concert. ....1989, Bethel N.Y.: The paper sent me back to Woodstock for the 20th anniversary, but not much was going on. Nevertheless, I hitchhiked out Saturday night to file for Sunday's page one from a pay phone in a bar. It was next to a blaring jukebox, I was using acoustic couplers ("rubber duckies") and the low-battery light on the Radio Shack laptop was flashing. Amazingly, it worked. Over the course of the next week, I saw wire stories suggesting the real action in Bethel was still building. On a hunch, I drove back to Bethel the following weekend, and filed two more stories. Of "Evil" and "Jingoism" In last Sunday's NY Times, the Week In Review section did a "Word For Word" on 9/11-related songs:
To say that Mr. Young's call "You got to turn on evil/When it's coming after you/You've gotta face it down/And when it tries to hide/You've gotta go in after it/And never be denied" is jingoistic as reported in "Word for Word/September Songs" by Tom Zeller is beyond belief and defies logic. Had the martyrs of Sept. 11th not taken the steps that brought Flight 93 crashing down, we do not know how many more thousands more good people would have been killed. In "Let's Roll", the words that the wife of one of the passenger's heard him say during his cell-phone call home just before the crash, Young simply and starkly imagines the doubts, the fears and finally the determination that must have driven our brothers and sisters to action against the, yes, evil men determined to destroy innocent lives. The last line of his song is a prayer that every one of us has uttered in our hearts: "Let's not let our children/Grow up fearful in their youth/Time is runnin' out/Let's roll!" God help us and our children if we are not able to brand as evil those who would destroy us and work for their defeat anywhere and everywhere in the world. It would appear that the unnamed critic labeled the song "jingoistic" because Young used the word "evil" to describe the terrorists. Critics, good relativistic postmodernists in the main, are made deeply uncomfortable by moral judgments of any kind, and especially ones as stark and "simplistic" as "evil." I wish the song worked a little better myself, but I have nothing but respect for Young's willingness to take a stand and pass moral judgment, whether it was "cool" or not; and I have nothing but contempt for those who would denigrate him for doing so. Two More Years Our friend in Greece harbors grave doubts about the 2004 Athens Olympics:
After months of headlines questioning whether building and other deadlines would be met, the International Olympic Committee ( news - web sites) (IOC) switched gears to praise Athens for a new sense of momentum as the two-year countdown to the event started this week. "It was clear from the IOC's visit (to Athens) at the end of June that there is a heightened level of interest in the Games from the general public ...," IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies said in a statement to Reuters. "With two years to go before the start of the Games, momentum is very much gathering pace as ATHOC's organization moves from a planning to an operational phase." The statement signaled Greece had at last put behind it construction holdups and bureaucratic hurdles that at one stage had raised questions about whether the event should be moved. Western Roots of Militant Islam? John Gray surveys the roots of militant Islam in the Independent:
Islamic fundamentalism is not an indigenous growth. It is an exotic hybrid, bred from the encounter of sections of the Islamic intelligentsia with radical western ideologies. In A Fury for God, Malise Ruthven shows that Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian executed after imprisonment in 1966 and arguably the most influential ideologue of radical Islam, incorporated many elements derived from European ideology into his thinking. For example, the idea of a revolutionary vanguard of militant believers does not have an Islamic pedigree. It is "a concept imported from Europe, through a lineage that stretches back to the Jacobins, through the Bolsheviks and latter-day Marxist guerrillas such as the Baader-Meinhof gang". In a brilliantly illuminating and arrestingly readable analysis, Ruthven demonstrates the close affinities between radical Islamist thought and the vanguard of modernist and postmodern thinking in the West.
Political Islam emerged partly from an encounter with western thought, but also from revulsion against the regimes founded in Egypt and elsewhere in the aftermath of European colonialism. In Jihad, Gilles Keppel argues al-Qa'ida turned to global terrorism because, like fundamentalist groups in other countries, it has failed to achieve its revolutionary goals on home territory.
In their unshakeable faith that one way of living is best for all humankind, the chief protagonists in the dispute about political Islam belong to a way of thinking that is quintessentially western. As in Cold War times, we are led to believe we are locked in a clash of civilisations: "the West" against the rest. In truth, the ideologues of political Islam are western voices, no less than Marx or Hayek. The struggle with radical Islam is yet another western family quarrel. Much has been made of Islam's hegemonic tolerance, but this was an imperious tolerance, a tolerance grounded in a smug sense of superiority, not out of respect for other traditions or points of view, and certainly not out of a sense that other religions were worthy of respect in their own right. The germ of Islamist universalism was written in the Koran, not by "Marx or Hayek." Scott Johnson writes:
So it's important to note that unlike Western Europe, the cultures of Islam have fifty generations of being the paragon of western cultural achievement. This supremacy lasted so long it invaded every part of their culture, became part of the fabric of their existence. Islam ended up being all about looking to the past, because the past was where everything important was. In the space of just a little more than a hundred years, just two human lifetimes, this entire world order got stood on its head. Europe didn't just field bigger armies, or figure out better tactics. Europeans figured out how to build fighting machines which were literally undefeatable by anything the cultures of Islam could create. Napoleon humiliated the Mamaluks in Egypt at Shubra Khit and Imbabah in 1798, and the world would never be the same. Because Europe didn't just create new ways of fighting wars, they created new ways of living life, of thinking, of believing. Liberal democracy, capitalism, and material science didn't just make Europe supreme, it made Islam irrelevant. In a little more than a century fully one thousand years of history and achievement simply ceased to matter. The Trouser Returns I am so happy to see good bud and legendary rock journalist Ira Robbins' Trouser Press site back up and rocking. Even though there's nothing new since '96, I STILL use my Trouser Press Guide to 90s Rock ALMOST EVERY DAY to look some obscure band or record up, and his discography is still the best for modern rock to be found anywhere. Need to know everything about Cleveland's My Dad Is Dead? Head to the Trouser Press:
My Dad Is Dead ... and He's Not Gonna Take It Anymore (St. Valentine) 1985 (Ger. Houses in Motion) 1990 Peace, Love and Murder (Birth) 1987 (Ger. Houses in Motion) 1991 Let's Skip the Details (Homestead) 1988 The Best Defense (Homestead) 1988 The Taller You Are, the Shorter You Get (Homestead) 1989 Shine EP7 (Scat) 1990 Chopping Down the Family Tree (Scat) 1991 Out of Sight, Out of Mind (Scat) 1993 Hello EP (Hello Recording Club) 1995 For Richer, For Poorer (Emperor Jones/Trance Syndicate) 1995 Shine(r) (Emperor Jones/Trance Syndicate) 1996 Everyone Wants the Honey but Not the Sting (Emperor Jones) 1997 Actually the work of a person rather than a band, My Dad Is Dead's voluminous output has plainly explored the troubled waters of the soul, both personal and philosophical, for nearly a decade. Ohioan (but recent transplant to North Carolina) Mark Edwards writes, plays and sings his material with instrumental and vocal help from a floating gene pool of fellow Cleveland musicians (Prisonshake's Chris Burgess has also produced the bulk of his recordings). My Dad Is Dead, largely inspired by Edwards' paternal loss, is a compelling, hypnotic debut that ranges from thrashy aggression to supple melodicism to industrial gloom, all unified by the downbeat lyrics. The album's weak link is Edwards' flat singing (which has since improved). Peace, Love and Murder and Let's Skip the Details show considerable growth; The Best Defense, which assembles outtakes and 4-track home recordings, is unessential but contains some fine moments, including three surprisingly harmonious instrumentals. The Taller You Are, the Shorter You Get (a double LP) brings Edwards to a new plateau of ambition and accessibility. His lyrics have grown less morose and more philosophical, and he sings them with newfound expressiveness. Leaving the Homestead label, Edwards released an impressive eight-song double-7-inch, Shiner (later expanded by a dozen previously unreleased tracks from the same sessions and elsewhere and reissued as Shine(r) by Emperor Jones/Trance Syndicate), and then his first full-length on local indie Scat. Packaged in a magnificent die-cut sleeve (on both LP and CD issues), Chopping Down the Family Tree boasts its fair share of Edwards' familiar lyrics and dense, metallic instrumentation, but the fog hovering over his head has lifted a little further. The album's first half revels in gritty guitar sounds and biting lyrics (the title cut proclaims "The strength of the family can be an illusion when built on control and based on collusion"), while the second blooms under the first's dark waters, reaching a tentative cheerfulness, both lyrical and musical, on "Without a Doubt" and "Shine" (a song not featured on the EP of that name)..... Here's a bit on the history of TP online:
What happened to the first trouserpress.com? The site we created in partnership with SonicNet in 1997 was unceremoniously taken down at the end of 1999, after SonicNet was acquired by MTVi. They were very nice about sorting things out with us, and that enabled us to create the second TrouserPress.com, which took a frighteningly long time to do. This version is owned and operated independently, joining the content of the old site (but not the bulletin boards, which got lost on a server somewhere) with a second section of more modern reviews for your edification and irritation that has never been online before.
KIll It This is another reason to kill the death penalty in the U.S.:
"The president of the republic has made the decision to cancel his business trip that would have taken him through four cities of the state of Texas," Rodolfo Elizondo, the president's spokesman, told a late evening news conference. "This decision is an unequivocal sign of our rejection of the execution of the co-national Javier Suarez Medina." Texas executed Suarez, 33, a Mexican citizen, earlier on Wednesday for the 1988 murder of an undercover Dallas police officer despite pleas for his life from 12 Latin American nations and two in Europe -- Spain and Poland. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson joined the clemency appeals on Tuesday, urging in a letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell that the matter be reviewed. "All of these pleas were rejected by Texas state authorities," said Elizondo. He expressed Fox's regrets to the Mexican community in Texas for the cancellation of the trip but said it would have been "inappropriate under the circumstances" for the visit to have gone ahead. The fact that Suarez's citizenship status was unclear is immaterial:
But Texas officials said they weren't clear that Suarez, who spent most of his life in the United States, was Mexican. The U.S. Supreme Court turned down an appeal by Suarez, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry denied a reprieve. Wednesday night, authorities in Huntsville gave Suarez a lethal injection as he sang the hymn "Amazing Grace."
The execution — and the government's last-ditch efforts to stop it — dominated headlines across Mexico, where photographs of and interviews with the round-faced, innocuous-looking Suarez turned up in most newspapers and on major television stations. "His straight brow and mouth speak of a person who almost always acted in an upright manner," columnist Sergio Jaubert wrote in the newspaper Milenio on Wednesday. But a protest outside the U.S. Embassy as the execution was carried out drew only four people. "I don't understand how Americans can say, 'In God we trust,' and then in God's name kill somebody," said one of the protesters, 46-year-old Guillermo Marin Franco.
Is not a deterrent to crime Is unfair in its application Is irreversible Fosters barbarity in society by sanctioning killing I either don’t care about, or disagree with their other concerns that the death penalty: Is unjustified retribution Costs more than incarceration Is less popular than the alternatives Makes us look inhuman and anachronistic internationally My opposition to the death penalty turns on two central issues: 1) the system is human and thereby flawed, and death is irreversible. 2) the death penalty sanctions the taking of human life by our collective entity, the government, thereby both raising the absolute level of violence and lowering the acceptable moral threshold for violence in our society. If self defense (as in a just war) isn’t involved - and protection of society by incarceration without possibility of parole is virtually as secure as protection via death - then an eye for an eye is simple revenge, not justice. If the death penalty only marginally better-protects society from violent criminals than incarceration, and if it isn’t a deterrent, then there is no practical reason that can overcome that fact that innocent people have and will be irrevocably terminated. While you can’t give innocent people back the time they have erroneously spent in prison, at least you don’t have to dig them up to tell them they have been exonerated. It is this simple. I won’t bog you down with statistics, please refer to the above linked ACLU site for stats and lawyerly arguments. It also concerns me that the penalty is unfairly administered: the below from the ACLU report is more than enough to convince me of this.
The GAO concluded: "Our synthesis of the 28 studies shows a pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in the charging, sentencing, and imposition of the death penalty after the Furman [1972 Supreme Court decision that declared "the imposition and carrying out of the death penalty… constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments."] decision" and that "race of victim influence was found at all stages of the criminal justice system process...." These results cannot be explained away by relevant non-racial factors, such as prior criminal record or type of crime. Furthermore, they lead to a very unsavory conclusion: In the trial courts of this nation, even at the present time, the killing of a white person is treated much more severely than the killing of a black person. Of the 313 persons executed between January 1977 and the end of 1995, 36 had been convicted of killing a black person while 249 (80%) had killed a white person. Of the 178 white defendants executed, only three had been convicted of murdering people of color. Our criminal justice system essentially reserves the death penalty for murderers (regardless of their race) who kill white victims. The rest of the ACLU’s case I disregard. The “unjust retribution” argument means nothing to me. In many ways life without parole is a greater punishment than death. Facing years and decades of walls and guilt is certainly more of an ordeal than a quick and (more or less) painless death. Good. Nor do I care about the relative costs of imprisonment vs. execution: some things society does because it is right, not because it costs more or less; besides the figures are disputed and depend how you compute them. Execution itself isn’t nearly as expensive as the constitutionally required lengthy appeals system. I don’t care much about the public popularity of death vs incarceration, either. The majority of people are wrong about many of things much of the time (that’s why we need republicanism, not pure democracy where a mob mentality can be more easily fostered) and public opinion has varied much over the last half century on the death penalty depending upon the prevailing political winds. And I surely don’t care how our system makes us look to our “civilized” friends abroad - they didn’t want us to attack Afghanistan either and they were dead wrong about that (sometimes war is the road to peace - that’s just the way it is). So while I am firmly opposed to the death penalty because I don’t want to be responsible - through the actions of my government - for the killing of any innocent Americans, and because I believe it raises the overall level of acceptable violence in our society... |
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