The Seattle P.I. Will Live On

This is excellent news:

On March 18, Seattle almost certainly will lose an institution nearly as old as the city itself. The illuminated globe atop the Seattle Post-Intelligencer building will go dark. But perhaps all is not lost. If the Hearst folks decide against funding an internet edition of the P-I, a group of seasoned reporters and columnists will form a subscriber-supported cooperative to provide local news and opinion online:

We are a group of P-I journalists. Our goal is to allow P-I reporters to continue serving Seattle as watchdogs and informing the public on such key issues as city politics, helping people navigate the current economic crisis, the environment, and education. Additionally, we intend to continue the work of recognizable writers as Robert Jamieson, Mike Lewis, Art Thiel, and many others.

[snip]

Should the Seattle Post-Intelligencer close, we intend to begin a news website to fill the void left in our community. We hope that the Hearst Corporation will start a online-only P-I that performs the important role the newspaper has played in this community, but we stand ready to continue our work for the public interest.

Right now, they’re trying to get a feel for how much support they can expect. They can count me in. I’d strongly encourage any other Seattle-area readers to pledge their support – the Seattle P.I. does outstanding work, and we need an experienced alternative to the Times.

Show them some love, even if it’s just a note of encouragement.

The Seattle P.I. Will Live On
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Folk Medicine We Can Believe In


You know me. You know how I feel about woo. You know that I feel like a fool every time I take goldenseal and echinacea, because while my doctor swears they help colds, scientific studies are, shall we say, inconsistent at this time. And who the fuck knows what’s actually in the capsules they sell at Target – other than the placebo effect, which is what I rely on when I start feeling sniffly.

I hear the words “folk medicine,” and my first reaction is disgust. Not because there haven’t been folk remedies that work – there’s been a few, like chicken soup, with proven benefits – but usually the people burbling about them are serving up nothing but a heaping helping of woo. And when they start talking like this:

One of my friends had some trouble today – a small thing for someone employed, but like me last year health issues have stripped him of his business and they could have killed him today. More below the fold, including a folk medicine cure you can help me make …

…I start shouting “Oh, come on!” at my computer. It’s one thing to rely on folk remedies to ease the misery of a cold. It’s quite another to rely on them to save a life. And this diary sounded like it was headed into “Hey, if you’ve lost your health insurance, it’s okay – you can cure your deadly diseases using common kitchen herbs!” territory.

So of course I read the diary to find out what the folk remedy was, just so I could have a good scream.

I learned about the friend with the serious heart condition, practially homeless in Florida, suffering this bit of outrage:

Some genius decided that cutting coverage for isosorbide would be a good way to conserve Broward County’s funds after a federal block grant ran out. I guess I’m not there so I don’t know, but nitro and heart troubles seem to me like something the county would want to keep in place – it’s probably cheaper to give it free to all homeless there than it is to patch up just one or two that show up at hospitals having heart attacks because they went without.

No fucking shit, huh? At least the diarist isn’t yapping about how groovy everything is still, cuz hey, guess what, you can mix up something just like isosorbide by boiling some herbs in a saucepan! But that threatened folk remedy looms… wait for it… wait for it…

We played a little phone tag with Walgreens, found a pharmacy tech who knew how to make it work when we’re 1,300 miles apart, and that’s that. So now I’m sitting here at work banging this out and he is on a city bus going to pick up his medication.

The hell? Bought his friend the meds… Since when does the folk-remedy woo-woo crowd promise us folk remedies and buy actual prescription drugs instead? Odd, that.

And we’re coming up on the cure…

My friend is in Broward County, and that means his Congresscritter is … Lincoln Diaz-Balart. I’ve got a folk medicine cure for what ails America, but the recipe calls for the head of a wingnut and the hide of a blue dog.

… Harf?

*reads again to ensure proper understanding*

I’ve got a folk medicine cure for what ails America, but the recipe calls for the head of a wingnut and the hide of a blue dog. If you guys can come across with some $$$ via this ActBlue link we’ll be taking a step towards bumping off Diaz-Balart in 2010.

That’s the folk remedy?

ROFLMAO.

Holy fucking shit, Batman! Folk medicine I can believe in! I’d so whip that shit up in my kitchen!

OK, I feel like I’ve done my part here. We’ve only got six hundred twenty more shopping days until we get to stomp the Republican again in 2010 and our candidates are going to need every dime, so dig out those debit cards and make it happen. We have to change the system … before it kills us all.

“Six hundred twenty more shopping days.” Priceless! Someone make me a countdown widget!

And Stranded Wind’s right. This is the recipe. This is the folk medicine we can believe in. The folk are going to the polls, and we’re going to give the Cons a dose of bitter medicine indeed.

They deserve it after all the bullshit they’ve made us swallow…

Folk Medicine We Can Believe In

Subsidizing the Rape Culture

So, abstinence-only programs. We know they don’t work for shit, but did you know they promote a culture of rape? Indeed they do:

The Ohio program is Abstinence ‘Till Marriage, which started receiving annual CBAE grants of $600,000 in 2006 (set to run until 2011). On their “Miss the Mess” website, you can enter the “Party Room“, where you learn the story of Rochelle, Jason, Monica and Tanner. Each person tells their perspective about what happens during and after a party one night.

Rochelle tells how she drove her drunken friend Jason home after the party, and then is raped by him. Jason denies that the rape happened, saying their sex was consensual. Monica and Tanner observe that Jason was being a drunken idiot the entire night, with Monica (Jason’s ex) adding her opinion that Rochelle has a reputation for “putting out” and being a “slut”.

The site then asks the question: “Based on all accounts, whose story sounds the least credible?”

Guess who is the “correct” answer? Rochelle.

Why, you ask? Because she “made several questionable decisions”, “she had a motive to lie” and, lest we forget, “she’s been pinned reputation (sic) for being ‘loose’”

It’s hard not to overemphasize the sickness in this “correct” answer. Rochelle is not be believed. After all, she drove in a car with a boy. And she’s actually had sex before, or at least people say that she has, which is apparently the same thing and equally worthy of disbelief after you’ve been raped.

[snip]

The site then goes a step further, adding a degree of sympathy for the actions of the rapist:

“Also, alcohol makes people less inhibitive. Jason was extremely vulnerable to his circumstances”.

Vulnerable? Less inhibitive? What exactly are they saying here, that rape is a “less inhibitive” behavior? That alcohol made poor Jason “vulnerable” to being a sick rapist asshole? Seriously, I’d like to know what the hell their point is on this one.

Perhaps the sickest aspect of this organization and their website is the fact that our tax dollars are funding it. To date, they have received $1.8 million dollars, and are set to receive another $1.8 million in the next three years. Yes, we are subsidizing rape culture. And this is just one example of the many ridiculous abstinence-only until marriage sex education programs that we have wasted $1.5 billion in federal money on in the last decade.

The blame-the-victim, excuse-the-rapist mentality both amuses and horrifies me. Amuses, because it’s precisely how the fucktards who believe in abstinence until marriage think, and it’s darkly funny to see that attitude enshrined in their Q & A. So much for their superior morals.

But it’s truly, truly sick and outrageous that kids who don’t yet know any better are being taught that if you’re drunk and the girl you’re with has a reputation as a slut, it’s perfectly fine to force yourself on her.

I can see I’m going to have to start talking. In order to get the attention of the fuckwits responsible for this criminal drivel, I’d like to begin by placing their balls in a vise and ensuring it’s very snug. Then I can explain to them that the anxiety, fear, humiliation and pain they feel is but a patch on what a rape victim feels while some asshole forces himself on her.

And then, giving the vise a few more good turns, I’d explain what comes next. If the victim is strong enough to prosecute, she’s in for a hell worse for the rape. Because what happens is, you’re dragged into court, where you have to stare at the man who brutalized you while his attorney attempts to place all of the blame squarely on you. The rapist’s friends, who in a situation like the above were probably your friends as well, will spread rumors and lies and do everything they can to slander you because they can’t believe that their very own friend is a sexually violent son of a bitch. All of this gets added to your already heavy load of second-guessing, self-loathing, and terror.

The culture that these insane freaks are promoting makes that a thousand times worse. It justifies it all. It encourages the victim to shut the fuck up and put out, because everything that happens is her fault and hers alone. It lets the rapist strut around like a stud, because hey, it was the alcohol. Or the testosterone. Or it’s just what guys do. And the victim knows that in that culture, there’s nothing she can do to fight back.

This is the point at which, in order to demonstrate how it feels to be a woman in this scenario, I give the vise a final turn, with graphic results that shall not be described here but which I’m sure the male members of the audience will have no trouble imagining. And even then, I’m understating the case.

Women have fought a long, hard, bitter battle to get to a point where even a fraction of us feel that sexual violence against us is never justified, and that it’s okay to step forward, that if we cry for justice, it might just be given. I for one am not willing to return to the dark ages.

So please, with all due haste, send Obama this message today: ZERO OUT ABSTINENCE-ONLY SEX EDUCATION FUNDING.

Don’t make Dana come to your door with a vise and a story to tell.

Subsidizing the Rape Culture

Get Your Truth On


Time for some truth and reconciliation, with possible jail time to follow:

There’s a new poll out from Gallup and USA Today which one is headlining as showing there’s “no mandate for criminal prosecutions” and the other is headlining as showing that “most want an enquiry” into whether Bush’s anti-terror policies broke the law.

Those headlines aren’t mutually incompatible. There’s a hard core of around 30% of Americans who still cleave to Bush as a hero, an unsung genius who can do no wrong and think that a president can just declare actions legal and be done with it. There’s a slightly larger core of those who want America to return to the fold of the rule of law, presidential accountability and humanity. They’ve done some homework and realise that anti-terror tactics during the Bush Years were built upon the kind of deliberately twisted legal reasoning that got Nazi lawyers hanged at Nuremberg. And there’s a group – the undecideds – who want to know more before they make their minds up, and would understandably prefer the evidence to come from official governmental sources rather than liberal blogs and human rights groups. They want to trust their government and want that government to bring the facts out in the open. That’s just human nature and trying to spin the two different headlines about results of this poll as some liberal conspiracy is just being dishonest.

So give the people a Truth Commission. Let the evidence be made public in official hearings rather than tucked away in little-read reports from human rights groups about the Defense Department’s co-operation in running CIA secret prisons or in obscure blog posts citing studies showing the military have “disappeared over 24,000 video tapes of detainee interrogations. Let’s not rely on whether foreign officials and judges bow to blackmail in hoping to get details of why someone had his penis repeatedly sliced because he once read a satirical article online. Let’s get those Bush officials who have admitted their administration engaged in torture up on the witness stand, under oath.

When all of those nasty little details come out, the turnaround from “let’s put the past behind us” to “let’s put the bastards in jail!” could be fairly dramatic. Even if it doesn’t lead to a public outcry, however, it will at least serve as a sharp, humiliating reminder to certain individuals that there are consequences for war crimes.

Patrick Leahy’s all about that. He’s trying to deliver what 2/3 of the American public want: the truth. Head on over and show him some love. The more of us who sign on to the idea, the more likely it is the oblivious dimwits in Congress will realize we can’t just wave buh-bye to Bush and pretend it’s all over.

It won’t be over until the jailbird sings.

Get Your Truth On

Whip the Senate Into Shape

Time to pick up the whip.

We’re shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs a month, and the fucking Senate’s quibbling over minutae. Con fucktards are driving the debate over the stimulus (which is something they desperately need to fail so they can hang on to what power they have left). And the Blue Dogs are trying to preach fiscal responsibility at a time when, without drastic action, there may not be enough fiscal left to worry about being responsible for.

This shit has got to stop. Call your Senators. Let them know in no uncertain terms that you’re expecting them to rescue the country before we end up with third-world unemployment rates.

Drown out the Limbaugh lobotomy victims. It’s getting intense out there.

Backed by a deluge of conservative grassroots phone calls (100 calls for every 1 progressive call!), Senate Republicans are moving rapidly to obstruct President Obama’s economic recovery bill. They’re pushing reforms that are designed essentially to make the plan fail — demanding that billions be cut from a plan that, if anything, is already too small, and that more be diverted to top-end tax cuts.

Since when are we letting these fucktards drive the debate? Their ideas got us into this mess to begin with. It’s like taking advice from the man who poured gasoline on your house and set it afire, then tells you that you need more gas to smother the flames. Is this country really that fucking stupid? Let’s prove that at least a few of us aren’t.

Especially in the midst of this meltdown, we cannot sit back for a moment while the forces conspiring to maintain the failed status quo push ever forward. Forget about campaigning, this is governing. And while different rules apply, one thing is constant – nobody ever won the battle of ideas without speaking up.

Call your Reps.

Do you know how many jobs our economy shed in December? 693,000. Over half a million jobs. If this shit continues, we will lose over 6,000,000 (that’s six million for anyone who is zero-challenged) jobs this year. That’s if things stayed the same. Anyone other than the delusional fools on the right care to bet that if we don’t take action, things won’t get worse?

We need to start screaming before we all end up fucked.

Take a few minutes and call your senators, even the liberals, and tell them that you want them to vote for the stimulus. I can’t believe we have to whip a Democratic senate with 58 goddamned votes, but apparently we do.

Whip your Senators into shape.

Whip the Senate Into Shape

Running With the Big Dogs

During a rare foray through Sitemeter to see Who’s Reading Dana Now, I discovered I’ve become a “local blogger” running alongside the likes of NBC and the Huffington Post:

(Clicky to avoid eyestrain)

Can my legs keep up?

I have to admit being both flattered and amused by this. And anything that puts me bang alongside a Colbert Report clip is awesome. But I think it’s symptomatic of something: Change Congress needs more news. So if you likee the idea of kicking the special interest donors out of our campaigns, show them some love.

Besides, we get a big enough pack of small dogs going, we can PWN the big ones. And I think that’s exactly what we need to do when it comes to campaigns. As much as I appreciate the corporation that gives me a job, I don’t want it buying influence in Washington. Little guys like us tend to get stomped when the big money boyz make their deals.

Who’s with me?

Running With the Big Dogs

Hey, Congress: We're On Strike!

I just pledged not to donate to my all-time favorite representative. Not one thin dime, at least, not until he throws his support to campaign finance reform. Which I’m reasonably sure he will.

Change Congress has a “donor strike” campaign going to give some impetus to legislation that will give corporate special interests a boot in the arse. It looks mighty fine:

The bipartisan Fair Elections Now Act was offered last Congress, and will be offered again this year by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Arlen Specter (R-PA), and Reps. John Larson (D-CT) and Walter Jones (R-NC).

Under this legislation, congressional candidates who raise a threshold number of small-dollar donations would qualify for a chunk of funding—several hundred thousand dollars. If they accept this funding, they can’t raise big-dollar donations. But they can raise contributions up to a certain amount (such as $100 or $250), which would be matched several times over by a central fund. This would create an incentive for politicians to opt into this system and run people-powered campaigns.

No new taxpayer dollars would be required. TV broadcasters, who currently get access to our public airwaves for free and make billions of dollars as a result, would pay a fee that would be the source of revenue for the central fund.

It’s a great bill. You can help pressure Congress to pass it by joining the donor strike today.

Now, I love my senators and my Congressman. I do. They’re good Dems, they work hard for us, and I’m proud of them. But they haven’t jumped on board with this legislation yet, so it’s time to prod buttock (thank you, Terry Pratchett) and get them moving on campaign finance reform.

Especially in light of this:

These people have no shame. The Huffington Post is reporting that the CEO’s who received billions of tax payer dollars to save their asses are using the money to organize a massive attempt to block the Employee Free Choice Act.

Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community’s top legislative priority.

[snip]

This is outrageous. It’s bad enough to see these Bozos still try and buy private jets and hand out massive bonuses with our money, but to actively attack labor with it should be a criminal offense.

It’s not, and alas not likely to ever be, but we can put a serious crimp in their power by reducing their ability to buy politicians. Time for a wee bit of a message to be sent.

Not only are some of the most non-trusted companies in America blatantly trying to buy off Congress, but they’re using our bailout money to do it. Enough!

If there was ever a time to join Change Congress’s political “donor strike” in support of fundamental campaign finance reform, this is it.

Click here to join the fight for reform.

We need a theme song. I have just the thing.

Simply pledging to withhold my donations may not be enough. Perhaps I should threaten to perm my hair, put on blue eye shadow, and lip-synch this song outside their offices whenever they’re back in town. That should lead to a near-instantaneous change in behavior, doncha think?

Hey, Congress: We're On Strike!

Some Things Must Neither Be Forgiven Nor Forgotten

It will take years, perhaps decades, before the full scope of the catastrophe Bush visited on this country is understood. But I already know what I will never forgive him for:

Of all the horrible things done by America over the last 8 years, nothing was more shameful than the formalization, the normalization, of torture.

It was the 2004 election which sealed the shame, for America knew, Americans knew, indeed all the world knew that torture had happened. Was happening. Would continue to happen if George Bush was reelected. I still don’t know what Americans thought that election was about, but to many of us from outside it was about whether Americans were the sort of people who would elect George Bush once he had shown them his soul.

America then showed its soul to the world, and it was hard not turn aside in contempt and disgust. Hard to look at what the shining city on the hill, the nation which stood against both Nazism and the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union, had become.

America before Bush had been far from perfect, but no matter what dumbass thing we did, no matter what stupid mistakes or unethical bullshit we engaged in, I could at least say we didn’t take pride in torturing people. We’d drawn a bright line and refused to step over it. Until Bush.

Everything else he did – destroying the economy, weakening the government to the point where it couldn’t respond to disasters like Katrina, raping the environment, ignoring global warming, warrantless wiretapping, even invading Iraq based on lies – all of that pales in comparison to the fact that he took us over that line. He made us into a nation of torturers.

Christopher Hitchens, who had to be waterboarded before he discovered what torture was, still thinks it wasn’t Bush’s fault. He blames the masses:

Continuing his discourse on torture policy, Hitchens then claimed that the Bush administration’s commitment to harsh interrogation techniques, which he considers torture, derived from a desire among Americans for a more “ruthless” government. “It has to be admitted by every American that in the majority after the 9/11 Commission, people wanted an administration that was much more ruthless than the one they’d had on September the 10th,” he said.

“I know something for a sure thing,” Hitchens continued. “The demand for torture and other methods I would describe as illegal, the demand to go outside the Geneva conventions — all this came from below. What everyone wants to say is this came from a small clique around the vice-president. It’s not educational. It doesn’t enlighten anyone to behave as if that were true. This is our society wanting and demanding harsh measures.”

Poor, pathetic President Bush. He was only doing what the unwashed masses told him to. The people were screaming for blood, and so he gave it to them.

Bull. Shit.

I know that Americans were hurt, scared, angry and looking to lash out after 9/11. But I didn’t hear a deafening demand for our government to start torturing people. Even if the people had demanded that, it’s why we have representative government. We choose leaders to lead. And a leader’s responsibility is to ensure cooler heads prevail.

Instead, Bush took the opportunity to turn us into a nation of torturers.

He and his apologists are doing their level-best to convince us that the past is best left in the past, that Bush’s torture regime kept us safe, that without torture we’re all going to be murdered by terrorists. It’s Jack Bauer thinking. They can’t separate fantasy from reality:

We are supposed to feel bad for Jack Bauer, the lead character on FOX’s hit show “24.” Only he and a handful of his colleagues, it seems, have the moral strength necessary to do what has to be done. While Senators whine and his superiors wring their hands about what is “right,” Bauer acts and saves the nation.

What this means – and has meant for more than six seasons of “24” – is that Bauer is a not-so reluctant torturer. He beats up the bad guys because, as he has said so many times, “there is no other way.”

The reality is that there are more reliable and effective ways. Resorting to torture isn’t heroic, it’s stupid. Reliance on it has resulted in strategic mistakes and has made the nation less safe. The torture chorus has yet to document a single instance of a “but for” success, and that refusal looks more and more like a criminal cover-up.

I taught interrogation and the law of war for 18 years to U.S. Army, Air Force, and Marine interrogators. The truth is that torture is just as likely to lead to false information or no information, not solid intelligence. History is replete with victims who have refused to talk or lied or died under torture. American torture has killed or addled suspects who might have provided vital intelligence if interrogated humanely. One problem with TV fiction is that viewers assume that if Jack Bauer can break some fingers and crack the case in an hour, anyone could.

Unfortunately that is exactly the message that some have gleaned from this program. After watching torture work over and over again, some junior soldiers (and, sadly, some very senior policy makers who ought to know better) have copied the tactics they have seen on “24” and other action programs, according to evidence gathered by journalists and Human Rights First. Military educators have also reported that “24” is “one of the biggest problems” they have in their classrooms.

How fucking pathetic is it that any teenager in the country (well, aside from the budding Republicons) will, when asked, explain very calmly and rationally that there’s a clear difference between what works in Hollywood and what works in the real world, yet the fucktards who were in charge of our government and the delusional fools in our armed forces think 24 is an instructional video?

This is what Bush and his cronies wrought. The fact they decided torture was necessary and efficient led a lot of people to believe the same, because they’re our leaders and people trust their leaders to do what is right.

Of course, it seems Cons have a hard time distinguishing between right and wrong:

From the new WaPo/ABC poll:

A majority of Americans in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll oppose the use of torture in terrorism investigations, backing Barack Obama’s pledge that “under my administration, the United States does not torture.”

Overall, 58 percent support the prohibition Obama declared before taking office, but there’s a wide gap across party lines: 71 percent of Democrats and 56 percent of independents in the poll said torture should never be used, but most Republicans, 55 percent, said there
are cases in which the U.S. should consider using torture against terrorism suspects.

Funny how that “right and wrong/black and white” world conservatives love so much turns gray when it comes to torture.

And on Gitmo:

In a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, 53 percent of Americans said the United States should shutter the controversial facility, finding another way to deal with the prisoners under custody there. But a sizable proportion of all adults polled, 42 percent, and a broad majority of Republicans, 69 percent, said terrorism suspects should remain at Gitmo. Most Democrats, 68 percent, and independents, 55 percent, said they’d prefer another way.

Apparently, when Hitchens and the rest of the Villagers talk about “what Americans want,” they’re only talking to Cons. It presents a rather warped view of what the majority of the country knows to be right.

And the majority of us know that there will be no going forward, that our moral authority cannot be restored, until there is an accounting for the war crimes Bush and his regime committed:

Even more surprisingly for spouters of conventional wisdom, a majority of Americans (50-47%) believe that the Obama administration should investigate whether the Bush administration’s treatment of detainees was illegal. When asked: “Do you think the Obama administration should or should not investigate whether any laws were broken in the way terrorism suspects were treated under the Bush administration?,” Democrats overwhelmingly favor such investigations (69%), while Republicans oppose them by the same margin, and independents are slightly against.

This number was obtained despite the 24/7 yawping of pundits, gassbags, opinion-makers, and other self-important fools telling us all how vital it is that Obama move on, forget the past, and incidentally hang on to the torture option because you never know when you’re going to need to break a few fingers to stop a ticking time bomb. A hair-thin majority, but still a majority, hasn’t fallen for the lies. They know it’s important to prosecute those who broke countless laws and destroyed our country’s moral standing.

We have to set things right, but not just for us. The world is watching. So are our adversaries:

One hesitates to say this will amount to anything, but Marc Lynch notes that Mohammed Essam Derbala, a leader of Ayman Zawahiri’s Egyptian terrorist group that merged with Al Qaeda in 1998, today urged his former confederates to declare a unilateral ceasefire to “test Barack Obama’s pledges to establish a new relationship with the Islamic world and to close Guantanamo.”

[snip]

Let’s be clear about a few things. Derbala has no power to call for or enforce any Al Qaeda ceasefire. But consider how overwhelmingly significant it is that a former terrorist of such obvious credibility would say something like this. And why’d he say it? Because Barack Obama just renounced torture. He put the United States on a clear path to repudiating the detentions, interrogations and, as important, humiliations that Muslims consider the U.S. to have inflicted not just on terrorists, but the entire Muslim world. Part of Al Qaeda’s entire propagandistic message is that the U.S. is an unchanging brutish entity determined to subjugate the Muslim world. What Obama did today severely complicates that narrative. But it’s not enough for us to consider the narrative to be complicated — it takes Muslim figures of credibility to say so. That’s what Derbala just did.

Imagine that. In the real world, not torturing people makes you safer and more secure. We should ask the producers of 24 to break the news to Jack Bauer – otherwise, the Cons will never understand the truth.

And the truth is this:

We must wipe the grime and filth from the walls of that shining city on a hill. We must relight the beacons. If we are to do any good in this world, we must go forward with prosecutions, hold our own war criminals accountable just as we have those in countless other countries.

We can’t forgive, and we can’t forget. Not this. We have to love our country enough to hold those who broke her most fundamental laws to account, or there will be nothing left of that shining city but ruins.

Some Things Must Neither Be Forgiven Nor Forgotten

A Bloody, Horrible Mess

I’ve wanted to blog on Gaza, but it’s impossible to know where to begin. I have sympathies on both sides: I don’t expect Israel to just absorb missiles without responding, but I don’t expect Palestinians to blithely accept being starved, either. It’s one of those tragedies with no clear right or wrong, no spotless heroes, no irredeemable villains.

I’m going to let Phoenix Woman take over from here:

As we hear that the IDF is bombing universities and killing United Nations personnel in addition to the hundreds of Gazans already dead in the three days of the Israeli attack on Gaza, we will hear the inevitable cry “but Hamas has been lobbing rockets at Israelis for years from Gaza!”

Juan Cole tells us about these rockets, and provides some perspective:

Israel blames Hamas for primitive homemade rocket attacks on the nearby Israeli city of Sederot. In 2001-2008, these rockets killed about 15 Israelis and injured 433, and they have damaged property. In the same period, Gazan mortar attacks on Israel have killed 8 Israelis.

Since the Second Intifada broke out in 2000, Israelis have killed nearly 5000 Palestinians, nearly a thousand of them minors. Since fall of 2007, Israel has kept the 1.5 million Gazans under a blockade, interdicting food, fuel and medical supplies to one degree or another. Wreaking collective punishment on civilian populations such as hospital patients denied needed electricity is a crime of war.

The Israelis on Saturday killed 5% of all the Palestinians they have killed since the beginning of 2001! 230 people were slaughtered in a day, over 70 of them innocent civilians. In contrast, from the ceasefire Hamas announced in June, 2008 until Saturday, no Israelis had been killed by Hamas. The infliction of this sort of death toll is known in the law of war as a disproportionate response, and it is a war crime.

But of course you won’t see this on your evening news, not unless you live outside of the US. You’re more likely to know about this if you live in Tel Aviv than if you live in Milwaukee.

There’s more in that article that might be helpful in conversations with those who love to proclaim that Israel can do no wrong.

It’s hard to find good in so many people dead. But it seems that Israel has taken things just one step too far. The carte blanche is being written on a rapidly-emptying bank account. And we can finally talk about Israel in more than simple black-and-white terms.

This was never that simple. It’s a good thing we’re no longer pretending it is.

J-Street has a petition ready to go (h/t):

At this moment of extreme crisis, J Street wants to demonstrate that, among those who care about Israel and its security, there is a constituency for sanity and moderation. There are many who recognize elements of truth on both sides of this gaping divide and who know that closing it requires strong American engagement and leadership. Click Here

I support immediate and strong U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to urgently reinstate a meaningful ceasefire that ends all military operations, stops the rockets aimed at Israel and lifts the blockade of Gaza. This is in the best interests of Israel, the Palestinian people and the United States.

I’m going to leave you with what Hilzoy said yesterday, because she sums up my feelings on this rather better than I can:

One of the many things that makes the Israeli/Palestinian conflict so utterly dispiriting is that it’s impossible to think of anything good coming of any of this. Worse than that, it’s hard to imagine that even the people involved think anything good will come of it.

What, exactly, do the Palestinians lobbing rockets into Sderot think they will accomplish? That the Israelis will look about them and say: Holy Moly, I had no idea this place was so dangerous!, and leave? Do the Israelis think: even though we’ve bombed the Palestinians a whole lot, and it’s never done much good before, maybe this time it will be different! Maybe Hamas will say: heavens, this is a pretty serious round of attacks; maybe we should just sue for peace — ? Or what?

I imagine what people on both sides are thinking is something more like: do you expect us to just sit here and take it? Do you expect us to do nothing? To which my answer is: no, I expect you to try to figure out what has some prospect of actually making things better. Killing people out of anger, frustration, and the sense that you have to do something is just wrong. For both sides.

Exactly.

A Bloody, Horrible Mess

"Please Don't Divorce Us" – Show of Solidarity

The Courage Campaign is putting together a heart-tugging slideshow filled with same-sex couples, family and friends, all making one simple request: “Please Don’t Divorce Us:”

Infamous prosecutor Ken Starr has filed a legal brief — on behalf of the “Yes on 8” campaign — to nullify the 18,000 same-sex marriages performed in California between May and November of 2008.

Yes, they really did go there after promising repeatedly not to do this.

It’s time to put a face to Ken Starr’s shameful legal proceedings. To put a face to the 18,000 couples facing forcible divorce. To put a face to marriage equality. Because, gay or straight, YOU are the face of the Marriage Equality Movement.

The Courage Campaign just launched “Please Don’t Divorce” a community photo project. They will break your heart and have made me cry on more than one occasion.

Please click through the photos in the slideshow below and then submit your own photo, as an individual, a couple or in a group (perhaps with your family over the holidays). Take a picture holding a piece of paper that says “Please don’t divorce us,” “Please don’t divorce my moms,””Please don’t divorce my friends, Dawn and Audrey,” “Please don’t divorce Californians” or whatever you want after “Please don’t divorce…” and send it to: [email protected].

As soon as I’ve gotten myself put into somewhat photogenic shape, I shall be sending in a photo. I’ll post it here for you all to peruse as well.

Time for a show of solidarity. The bigots who want to destroy thousands of marriages and deny marriage to thousands more need to see exactly who they’re harming, and that these couples aren’t alone.

(Tip o’ the shot glass to Crooks and Liars, first among others I’ve found this on.)

"Please Don't Divorce Us" – Show of Solidarity