Saturday scenes and scenery: Oregon road trip curiosities

When we arrived at Crater Lake on one of the most beautiful days I've ever seen, this group of young Amish women was getting a picture taken. They seemed to be on a kind of wanderjahr, a van trip around the country after which they'd presumably be better able to make the decision whether to return to their community as adult members. They were clearly having a wonderful time. It was a pleasure to be near them.


This very modest bear is a representative specimen of the decor at a Black Bear Diner, a handy small chain restaurant in that part of the world, a step up from Denny's.


This dive in coastal Langlois is definitely one of a kind. We ate breakfast there and appreciated the simple, no-nonsense food.


This ten-foot high gentleman dominates the north entrance to the town of Grants Pass. He turns out to be the totem of a city booster club. A sign explains:

The Cavemen, dressed in animal skins, wearing horsehair wigs, buck teeth and "big horns" run rampant in parades and gatherings of the public ... Their main purpose is to publicize Grants Pass ...

Whatever. We enjoyed the road; you never know what you'll come upon next.

I like juries

Until the world erupted in horror at her acquittal, I'd never heard of Casey Anthony. Once I did figure out what her case was about, I was glad I'd missed it.

But I'm glad I didn't miss this yesterday:

“I did not say she was innocent,” said Ms. Ford, who was juror No. 3. “I just said there was not enough evidence. If you cannot prove what the crime was, you cannot determine what the punishment should be.”

...“We were crying, and not just the women,” she added. “It was emotional, and we weren’t ready. We wanted to do it with integrity and not contribute to the sensationalism of the trial.”

I like juries for the same reason I applauded the New York City DA whose case against Mr. Strauss-Kahn has collapsed. It's really amazing how often, once pulled into their unfamiliar, ritualized task, jurors do a good job of making the law work the way it is supposed to.

These jurors sent an important reminder to prosecutors: sometimes you can't get away with just proving the accused is loathsome -- you have to prove commission of the charged crime.***
Meanwhile it looks as if the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission have forgotten what their job is. Starting under Bush and continuing merrily on under Obama, they apparently decided to give a "get out of jail free" card to those nice, cooperative Wall Street firms that 'fessed up to finagling the financial system. Why go through the bother of prosecuting?

From today's New York Times:

“If you do not punish crimes, there’s really no reason they won’t happen again,” said Mary Ramirez, a professor at Washburn University School of Law and a former assistant United States attorney. “I worry and so do a lot of economists that we have created no disincentives for committing fraud or white-collar crime, in particular in the financial space.”

I suspect juries might not have felt so kindly toward financial crooks if prosecutors bothered to bring a case.

Friday cat blogging

Five weeks ago I blogged that the vet had told us that our ancient cat was ready to go. When I asked how long, she said "days, not weeks." Lots of readers wrote condolences and offered good advice.

In particular, Rain offered this:

If they are suffering, then it's to the vet for the mercy shot. If they continue to eat and get around but are just shriveling, we let them go through the process until we see a sign of misery.

That seemed right and we decided to wait and see.

Evidently, the vet had neglected to consult Frisker about whether she intended to stick around a bit longer. The cat has shown no sign of pain or willingness to give up. She limps around, demands food, and still bites if you approach her wrong. If anything, she's more mobile and more herself than a month ago. Maybe cats do have nine lives and we just don't know where they are in working their way through them.


Here she is, being decorative in her sunbeam. Her friend Jane came to visit and took the picture at the head of this post. She didn't bite Jane.


She's never liked us to see her drinking, but since she sits down to do it now, she has a hard time avoiding us.

How long this can go, we can't know. But the cat doesn't seem ready to leave this plane, so we go on together.

Who was it that won the wars?

This graphic representation of what the U.S. enthusiasm for wars in the '00s cost in the federal budget reminded me of a passage from David Fromkin's Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914? Fromkin is describing the milieu of political and national antagonism that made space for a little band of student aspirant killers to fix on shooting an Austrian archduke and thus create a pretext for a world war.

What distinguished terrorists from ordinary assassins was that they did not necessarily desire the immediate consequences of their violence. ... Their unique strategy -- the strategy of terrorism -- was to frighten society into doing something that the terrorists wanted society to do. An ordinary assassin shoots John Doe because he wants John Doe dead. A terrorist assassin shoots John Doe, whose life or death may be a matter of indifference to him, because he wants the authorities to react in a certain way to the killing.

Osama bin Laden is dead, but he and his little band sure knew how to goad dumb leadership in Washington into spilling blood and treasure on a grand scale. Neither the Eastern or the Western set of arrogant fanatics cared much about who died.

Steve Clemons, who thought up the graphic, pointed out:

The US has spent cumulatively $2.263 trillion more than the FY2011 baseline. ... The other interesting take-away is that $2.263 trillion [in unanticipated spending for war after 9/11] roughly equates to about 7 million sustained jobs in the private U.S. economy, sustained over these entire ten years.

Instead our rulers debate in Washington which poor people will pay for the war binge touched off by the embrace of retaliatory and gratuitous violence -- will it be the sick? the disabled? the elders? the students? all of these?

It seems pretty clear that bin Laden got what he wanted. Can we imagine how to get what most of us want -- a country that values peace over power, a political system that works for the non-rich majority, a better future for coming generations?

Voting suppression: different partisan styles

Republicans all over the country are stirring up fear of voting fraud in order to enact procedures that make it harder for the poor, the young and the marginalized to vote. That's what tougher voter ID requirements, more difficult registration hurdles, and reduced early voting periods accomplish. The Brennan Center tracks this effort. It's proceeding rapidly in Republican controlled states, rolling back many of the gains of the civil rights era.

Democrats, in particular the President, are also doing their best to depress the proportion of the population that votes. They do it by running as defenders of the poor, the young and the marginalized -- not mention as protectors of Social Security and Medicare for elders -- then adopting the policies of Republicans that crush these constituencies.

No wonder more and more people stop believing it makes much difference which set of our rulers gets to dicker in Washington. The trouble is, it probably does matter.

But choosing between the vicious and the vacuous is not hope inspiring.

Look who gets married ...

It's the women, naturally. The media is noting that when enough data begins to accumulate on who gets married once marriage is legalized for same sex couples, lesbians outnumber gay men by a lot.

In Connecticut, 3,252 lesbian couples have been married since 2008, compared to 2,053 male couples. In Massachusetts, 8,404 female couples, 4,911 male. In New Hampshire, 1,113 pairs of women, 411 pairs of men. In Iowa, 1,376 lesbian marriages, 772 gay male marriages. In Vermont, 1,157 to 597.

This doesn't surprise me at all. Women's first thought is often about coupling up; guys' ideas are more often about getting laid. I don't believe this is genetic, but it sure is what society teaches us from childhood. Actually, the stats are probably more equal than they would have been before contemporary feminism -- less women feel the need to marry right away and more guys have an inkling of the joys of reliable partnership than did 30 years ago.

What's interesting is that I don't think that it has been women who were the gay movement leaders who made marriage the central demand in the struggle for gay equality. That impetus came first from the lawyers because, better than most of us, they understood what material hits our partnerships were taking because we didn't enjoy the legal benefits of marriage -- all the 1138 federal benefits that we still lack, for example. Of course some of the lawyers were women; of the current crop, Kate Kendall from the National Center for Lesbian Rights comes to mind.

But some of the sharpest lawyers doing the strategic thinking about how to win gay equality were always gay men. I think of Matt Coles who wrote San Francisco's first Domestic Partnership law and who went on to be director of the national ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender and AIDS Project. Many of the leaders of the DC advocacy outfits, notably the oh-so-Beltway HRC, have been guys, as have the leaders of Equality California and Marriage Equality New York This is not to say that women didn't and don't work in these advocacy and ballot measure campaigns, but when it comes to political maneuvering, men often still push out front. Look at Congress: still only 16 percent of members are women. Women are still more likely to be doing grunt work than thinking up the strategies.

The strategy that came from these male lawyers has proved not only successful legally -- with lots more to come -- but also tremendously appealing to mainstream straight folks. A couple of decades of work now has yielded majorities believing something like "oh -- they want to live the way we claim to think is good. They love each other. They're really not so different from us after all. It's only fair ...."

This has the advantage of being true, always good in a campaign message. The lawyers have put us in a position to erase many of our differences from straight folks.

But I still find it incongruous and maybe a little sad that it is gay men and lawyers who are leading us beyond the multiple injuries of exclusion and social derision. It took gender-bending fags and uncompromising feminist dykes to break the closet. But once our existence was shoved out into the open, it was some of those who needed liberation least who set the direction for trying to get it -- and are winning something the masses of gay folks seldom dreamed of.

All very curious ...

Photo of Lorri L. Jean and Gina Calvelli demonstrating for marriage equality. REUTERS/Phil McCarten

Warming Wednesdays: a lot depends on how we frame it

Since Mike Hulme is Professor of Climate Change in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, he's had reason to think a lot about the politics of climate science. The British university was the place where climate change skeptics hacked scientists' emails and charged, inaccurately, that data was being hidden or fabricated. If you tend to believe in science and get your information from sources that also do, this story was just the usual wackdoodle background noise. This was a very big deal if you got your news from places like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal where Upton Sinclair's theorem holds sway:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Hulme has offered a thoughtful typology at the Australian online publication, The Conversation of six ways that climate change can be framed and their implications. I found this very much worth thinking about.

Framing climate change as market failure draws attention to a particular set of policy interventions: those which seek to “correct” the market by introducing pricing mechanisms for greenhouse gases.

Climate change when framed as a “manufactured risk” focuses on the inadvertent downsides of our ubiquitous fossil-energy based technologies. It lends itself to a policy agenda which promotes technology innovation as the solution to climate change.

Radically different, however, is the frame of global injustice. Here, climate change is presented as the result of historical and structural inequalities in access to wealth and power and hence unequal life chances. Climate change is all about the rich and privileged exploiting the poor and disadvantaged. Any solutions to climate change that fail to tackle that underlying “fact” are doomed to fail.

A related frame, but one with a different emphasis, is climate change as the result of overconsumption: too many (rich) people consuming too many (material) things. If this is the case then policy interventions need to be much more radical than simply putting a price on carbon or promoting new clean energy technologies. The focus should be on dematerialising economies or else on promoting fertility management.

A fifth frame would offer climate change as being mostly natural. Human influences on the global climate system can only be small relative to nature and so the emphasis should be less on carbon and energy policy and more about adaptation: enabling societies to cope with climate hazards irrespective of cause.

Last is the frame of planetary “tipping points” which has arisen since 2005. Climate change carries with it the attendant dangers of pushing the planetary system into radically different states. Such “tipping points” may be reached well before carbon markets, clean energy or economic de-growth will be attained and so new large-scale climate intervention technologies – a so-called Plan B – need to be developed and put on stand-by.

My emphasis added to pull out Hulme's bullet points.

As a person of leftist inclinations, I gravitate naturally to “manufactured risk” with a heavy dose of global injustice. I tend to think we humans shouldn't kick ourselves for striving to make life less brutish and short through our technological prowess, though we've done a damn poor job of ensuring that everyone gets their share of our improved well-being. I therefore conclude that we should use our very powerful brains to solve and mitigate the mess we're making of the planet, and spread the benefits more fairly. It's hard for me to take market failure seriously; tinkering at the edges of a rapacious capitalism isn't likely to help much. This perspective seems however to be the best our current political systems can accommodate; since I'm sure the dangers are serious, I'll take what I can get and push for more.

But I know mine is not the only way to look at climate change -- the overconsumption paradigm places the human animal in our rightful place, as a bumptious burden the rest of planet's life forms. The mostly natural frame seems too passive to me -- but I can imagine smart well-balanced people who can adopt it without despair. The planetary “tipping points” frame would require me to pretend to understand half-understood data that I know I don't master; so it can scare me, but it's not something that makes sense for me to dwell within. If we are hitting a terrible tipping point, we'll know when we crash across it. Meanwhile, we need to do what we can within the other paradigms -- doing what we can makes us the good human animals we are.

Any reader want to play? Which of Hulme's frames do you use to think about climate change? Or do you use something else? Can you bear to think about it at all?

64

Several friends have kindly reminded me on Facebook that I have a birthday today. That's what I get for sharing in a profile. I'll share some ancient history here: I first saw this film in 1968 -- on mescaline. Those were the days. Nowadays (and for the last 40 years or so) I can't imagine having the energy to trip in a theater.

The Yellow Submarine still sails in San Francisco in a mural on a public restroom near Ocean Beach.

French elites have it wrong this time

They were right about Iraq in 2003, but their current complaints are off target.

Joe Nocera admirably sums up what went right in the fizzling Strauss-Kahn rape case.

For the life of me, though, I can’t see what [District Attorney Cyrus R.] Vance did wrong. Quite the contrary. The woman alleged rape, for crying out loud, which was backed up by physical (and other) evidence. She had no criminal record. Her employer vouched for her. The quick decision to indict made a lot of sense, both for legal and practical reasons. Then, as the victim’s credibility crumbled, Vance didn’t try to pretend that he still had a slam dunk, something far too many prosecutors do. He acknowledged the problems.

[French intellectual blowhard Bernard-Henri] Lévy, himself a member of the French elite, seems particularly incensed that Vance wouldn’t automatically give Strauss-Kahn a pass, given his extraordinary social status. Especially since his accuser had no status at all.

But that is exactly why Vance should be applauded: a woman with no power made a credible accusation against a man with enormous power. He acted without fear or favor. To have done otherwise would have been to violate everything we believe in this country about no one being above the law.

The amazing thing about this case is that Vance apparently did what we expect a responsible prosecutor to do -- and that he will probably be punished for scrupulously following the law he is sworn to uphold. His job is elective. Doing his job embarrassed the kind of people that pay for campaigns and vote in elections. He's probably in trouble.

Was he supposed to ignore a credible accusation of rape? Was he supposed to help the woman make up stuff in order to save his own ass? Or to conceal information from the investigation?

Vance deserves credit, not blame. It wasn't his job to help a French political party win a presidential election. (This is certainly part of the French distress over the case, in addition to their racial and economic elitism.) It was Vance's job to follow up on a plausible suspicion that a crime had been committed. He did.

Maybe he's been watching too many TV dramatic heroes who end up doing the right thing after much soul searching, instead of caving to "reality." Maybe we all should be taking those values more to heart.

Signs of summer in San Francisco

It must be summer, because the San Francisco Mime Troupe launched its annual show in Dolores Park this weekend. Fortunately, it was the rare July weekend when sun won out over fog.

Best news first: 2012 - The Musical! is the most entertaining show I've seen by the company in years. It weaves together leftist disappointment with the Obama presidency, apocalyptic Mayan prophecies, the terror of ecological and social collapse and familiar political and social villains in a happy, nutty, potpourri. If you are in the Bay Area this summer, catch it. Free shows will continue in the parks through Labor Day and then the troupe goes on the road for theatre performances.


In deference to the troupe's request, I took no photos of the actual performance. I did however catch this shot of a couple of Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence offering an "invocation" before the play. They provided the only bad moment of the afternoon -- their brief appearance flunked drollery; instead we got self-centered, dumb and dull. I was surprised.


If I sometimes greet the arrival of Mime Troupe season with some dismay, it's because some years I've put in too many hours at the shows working the ready-made crowd in support of good causes. That's not something I'm doing this year, but lots of good people were on the job. This woman was registering voters and collecting signatures for a state level proposition to force corporate donors to disclose their political contributions. The idea is important. No company that spends a lot on advertising wants its brand undermined by revelations about which politicians it is buying. Let's hope we can win this one.


As he has been for years, Dan Bechler was on hand for Single Payer Now. If we ever get to a sensible "medicare for all" system in California, Dan will deserve big props. Our local reps already know what's good for them on these votes. Single payer has gotten through the legislature twice, but not past any governor yet. It is not as far away as we might sometimes think however.


This union member was collecting signatures for an initiative to tax oil production in the state. If it makes the ballot, oil companies will pour out money like water to try to drown it. Last time we voted on this, they prevailed.


Only two of San Francisco's dozens of mayoral candidates had a presence. The election is this fall. Perennial Green candidate Terry Baum had an active crew.


Meanwhile a supporter of contender Supervisor John Avalos patiently hunted for registered San Francisco voters who could sign her guy's petitions. Candidates save money and build support by collecting signatures instead of just paying a fee to get on the ballot. She reported that a high proportion of the crowd came from outside the city and consequently weren't her target.


As we left the performance, we came across this fellow who had been collecting signatures by going door to door for a measure to overturn a private development plan for the Park Merced housing complex. Tenants say the project is just a scam to evade rent controls and replace elderly tenants. He might have done better at the Mime Troupe, though he would have had to work to explain to most San Franciscans where the remote oceanside development is located.

Yup -- it's summer. The Mime Troupe is out and so are the folks who practice democratic action on the streets and in the parks. A good time was had by many.

The state of the nation on our 235th birthday

H/t Balloon Juice -- Anne Laurie credits "Tony Auth via GoComics.com."

Independence Day treats

Now there's a celebratory notion.


I can't remember where I was offered these mints, but I can guess in what month.

Hope everyone enjoys the holiday!

Patriotism

I'm not good at patriotism -- at least I don't think I am.

Partly it's the word; somehow I just don't warm to the -ism of the fathers. I mean, I liked my father, but I sure didn't idolize him. He was just a guy, doing his best. I don't turn instinctively to fathers for enlightenment.

Partly it's the equation of "patriotism" with "nationalism." I really love the land in the country I was born in. But I'm more a "Song of Peace" (set to Sibelius' Finlandia in the United Methodist hymn) sort of person:

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
and sunlight beams on clover leaf and pine.
But other lands have sunlight too and clover,
and skies are everywhere as blue as mine.

Here, I'll say it: I just can't get my mind around the notion that we're so exceptional.

Oh yes, maybe we were once. Reading 19th and early 20th century European history, as I'm doing a lot these days, I'm reminded we sloughed off the divine right of kings as a governing philosophy well in advance of a lot of people. At the turn of the last century, only one hundred years ago, in much of the developed world, kings still mattered. What a thought! I've written recently about how Eric Foner's book on Lincoln and slavery helped me understand what a radical innovation the idea of constitutional, democratic government under law once seemed. This country was founded in blood and theft, but it was once also new, exciting, innovative, maybe even exceptional.

Thanks to Ian Reifowitz at History Network News, I recently became aware that President Obama has a written children's book exploring patriotism: Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters. Reifowitz compares this volume to America: A Patriotic Primer published in 2002 by Lynne Cheney. (Yes -- that's the Dick's wife. She's also a conservative activist in her own right and a former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts.)

Reifowitz drew this conclusion:

Ultimately, Cheney wants to strengthen the bond between Americans and their country as an institution. Obama wants to do this as well, but he also seeks to strengthen the ties that bind Americans to one another. One emphasizes national greatness, the other national unity. This distinction reflects the essential difference between the conservative and liberal understanding of Americanness.

No surprise: I'm a liberal. What I like about this country is how many different people have, fractiously and imperfectly, struggled to make it better. Over time, we've advanced toward a more equal and more caring society that better balances individual fulfillment and collective well-being. The history of this country is mostly an "it gets better" story, at least so far.

Outside of that history of democratic struggle, I don't see much but an inflated military, mutilated mined hills, poisoned water, and too many strip malls and Walmarts. But heroic people have made that long struggle. I have to remember that.

The painting in the photo, "The Price of War," is hanging in a window on Valencia Street in San Francisco. Read artist Ruben Morancy's explanation here.

Some beers from Northern California and Oregon

This amber brew from the Dunsmuir Brewery Works was pretty good. Unfortunately, the accompanying food -- this seems more a restaurant than a true brewery -- was undistinguished and over-priced.


The Black Bear Diner in Klamath Falls wanted to serve me a Budweiser, so I settled for this from a large Portland brewer. Not bad for a blonde beer.


This Ninkasi IPA from Eugene Oregon was superb. Unexpectedly, the Spinner's Seafood, Steak and Chop House in Gold Beach where I encountered it is a high quality restaurant, serving fresh fish and even decent veggies.


This Shastafarian Porter from the Mt. Shasta Brewing Company in Weed, CA was uninteresting -- surprisingly tasteless. But you gotta love what they are doing with the bottle caps. Apparently the big manufacturers who supply these things didn't like their message; then the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms got into the disapproving act. But since the brewery rallied citizen support -- and they are after all located in the town of Weed -- WEED FOUGHT THE LAW AND WEED WON!

Cory Maye to be released from prison

In 2001, this man, Cory Maye of Prentiss, Mississippi, put his 18 month old daughter to bed and sat down to watch TV. When an armed SWAT team began to break down his door, he fired three bullets from the gun he kept for self-defense. The cop in the lead, the Chief of Police's son, fell dead. He was white; as you can see, Maye was not.

Neither Maye nor his girlfriend were the people the cops were looking for. They'd broken down the wrong door. But a white cop had died and Maye was charged with capital murder. Like a lot of poor people, he was not well served by the lawyer his family managed to hire and in 2004 was convicted and sentenced to die.

The blogger and journalist Radley Balko spread the story of the innocent man on death row for defending his home across the internet. Many of us wrote about the case. Legal maneuvers by pro-bono lawyers continued. Today Balko reports that Maye has been allowed to plead to the crime he did commit -- manslaughter -- and will be released after credit for the ten years he has served. Every so often, some justice is done. Balko deserves a lot of credit for creating the buzz that made this possible.

Andrew Cuomo, Gavin Newsom, and a local alternative to gesture politics

In the wake of the legalization of gay marriage in New York, we are having an Andrew Cuomo boomlet. Could the New York governor, whose deft leadership of that fight stands in such contrast to our pleasant but too-reserved President, be the great Democratic hope of 2016? Apparently not, if we are to believe Eric Alterman at the Nation. In his home state, Cuomo is known for tax breaks for the rich and cuts in vital services for the poor and middle class; he's just another governor in the current Republican mode, regardless of his nominal party affiliation.

National pundits should consult San Franciscans about this sort of political slight of hand. We've just survived seven years of a mayor, Gavin Newsom, whose sole achievement was grasping the symbolic torch for gay equality in 2004, allowing the city to issue marriage licenses while the state still banned same-sex marriage. This blowhard gesture was swept away by the courts and Californians remain in a long tough slog that will eventually overcome opposition to legal equality for LGBT people. But Newsom's gesture disarmed opposition to him from more gullible liberals and gave him a reputation that survived a subsequent administration that was

• mean -- grounded in beating up on homeless people;

• petulant -- the guy wouldn't talk to a critical Board of Supervisors, the city's legislative body;

• and disengaged -- Newsom was too busy bedding his political consultant's wife and going to alcohol rehab to attend to the city.

Naturally he thought this record of sterling accomplishment qualified him to be governor of the state until blown away by our growling but tough retread, Jerry Brown. Newsom has ended (and I do hope this is the end for this empty suit) in the meaningless Lt. Governor slot in Sacramento, pulled in by the Democratic sweep last November.

But Newsom's still a "liberal" in good standing for dummies, credited with support for gay rights. Let's make sure we don't give Andrew Cuomo this kind of pass. We need Democrats who use political power to level the playing field for the majority, not to pamper their rich backers. Gestures shouldn't cut it.

***


Meanwhile, Newsom's welcome departure to a dusty attic leaves San Francisco with an interesting mayor's race, as the New York Times has gotten around to noticing. Unfortunately, like most of the media, the newspaper is fixated on an incumbent acting mayor who is not going to run and on the big money ConservaDem candidates.

The article barely mention the real progressive in the race, Supervisor John Avalos, who goes into this wide open election with the strong support of most of the city's tenant and progressive base -- a solid 30 percent. How the race plays out will be interesting: it's genuinely hard to predict, we have good campaign finance provisions that help equalize the playing field, and we vote using a ranked choice system, so our lesser evil picks can matter. I'm doing all I can to help this tough progressive win; it would be a novel experience to have a mayor I could believe in.

Friday cat blogging: Portland

My friend Sandra introduced me to two fabulous cats this week in Portland. (All cats are fabulous of course, but I digress.)


She's visiting Sampson's home this week. She has a sore paw. Sampson is oblivious. Like all cats, he has his own agenda.


Stanton lives with Sandra and expects to be combed. He's a Maine Coon cat.


He can look fierce, but he's actually a sweetie.

Costs of US wars since 9/11: it's even worse than we think

The Eisenhower Research Project based at Brown University has created a new website devoted to exploring what the misguided United States wars since 9/11 have cost this country -- and the unfortunate countries and people in the way of the injured, but infantile, imperial colossus. Many of their findings reproduce what people seeking peace have attempted to highlight for a decade, but it seems worthwhile to reproduce the suggestive conclusions from the executive summary.

• While we know how many US soldiers have died in the wars (just over 6000), what is startling is what we don’t know about the levels of injury and illness in those who have returned from the wars. New disability claims continue to pour into the VA, with 550,000 just through last fall. Many deaths and injuries among US contractors have not been identified.

• At least 137,000 civilians have died and more will die in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan as a result of the fighting at the hands of all parties to the conflict.

• Putting together the conservative numbers of war dead, in uniform and out, brings the total to 225,000.

• Millions of people have been displaced indefinitely and are living in grossly inadequate conditions. The current number of war refugees and displaced persons -- 7,800,000 -- is equivalent to all of the people of Connecticut and Kentucky fleeing their homes.

• The wars have been accompanied by erosions in civil liberties at home and human rights violations abroad.

• The human and economic costs of these wars will continue for decades, some costs not peaking until mid-century. Many of the wars’ costs are invisible to Americans, buried in a variety of budgets, and so have not been counted or assessed. For example, while most people think the Pentagon war appropriations are equivalent to the wars’ budgetary costs, the true numbers are twice that, and the full economic cost of the wars much larger yet. Conservatively estimated, the war bills already paid and obligated to be paid are $3.2 trillion in constant dollars. A more reasonable estimate puts the number at nearly $4 trillion.

• As with former US wars, the costs of paying for veterans’ care into the future will be a sizable portion of the full costs of the war.

• The ripple effects on the U.S. economy have also been significant, including job loss and interest rate increases, and those effects have been under-appreciated.

• While it was promised that the US invasions would bring democracy to both countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, both continue to rank low in global rankings of political freedom, with warlords continuing to hold power in Afghanistan with US support, and Iraqi communities more segregated today than before by gender and ethnicity as a result of the war.

Two conclusions made me want to add further comments:

• The armed conflict in Pakistan, which the U.S. helps the Pakistani military fight by funding, equipping and training them, has taken as many lives as the conflict in neighboring Afghanistan.

I didn't know that. And since our war within Pakistan is barely admitted, does the apparent intent among our rulers to wind down Afghanistan and Iraq suggest they intend to also get out of Pakistan? Or is Pakistan the new central theater of the permanent imperial war? Wouldn't it be a good idea to let the citizens who pay for this stuff in on our government's intentions?

Another bullet point seems both encouraging and problematic:

• Serious and compelling alternatives to war were scarcely considered in the aftermath of 9/11 or in the discussion about war against Iraq. Some of those alternatives are still available to the U.S.

After 9/11, a baffled and frightened US people wanted vengeance on someone, barely caring who. Collectively, we were suckers for mis-leaders who treated war as if it were an easy, sanitary, cost-free activity and dispatched our military where they had pre-existing grievances -- into Iraq. People who had other ideas about how to respond to the atrocity in New York and Washington -- think for example about 9/11 Families for a Peaceful Tomorrow -- were ignored, as was a massive worldwide peace movement. It would be a very good idea to recognize that the antiwar movement was right and our rulers were very, very wrong and have left the country broke, diminished and without good options.

In fact, the freedom of movement of both the administration (which seems to have some glimpses of this) and the entire political system are profoundly constrained by the destruction wrought by the wars of the '00s. Too many good options available in 2001 -- for example effective, cooperative international police work against terrorists -- are gone, undermined by the jack-booted rendition and torture policies adopted by the Bush administration. Terrorism suspects captured in Europe can fight extradition to the United States because we are considered a torture-practicing country with an impoverished grasp of basic human rights.

The costs of these wars are even greater than the Eisenhower Research Project study -- we have only begun to appreciate them.

H/t Washington Note for pointing to this study.

California state parks that will be history ...

California is about to lose nearly one quarter of our state parks. In order to help balance the budget, the Department of Parks and Recreation has released a list of 70 (out of 278) that will be shut down beginning in September. Naturally this also means that park staff will lose their jobs and nearby businesses will lose their customers.

How could this nightmare be happening in the midst of high unemployment and our economic doldrums? The state has been driven to this because many Californians refuse to pay taxes for government services, even the ones we like. Starting in the late 70's we passed a series of measures that make it impossible for even quite large majorities of legislators to pass budgets. It takes a 2/3s vote to pass a budget or raise revenue. Consequently, no-taxes-ever-but-give-me-mine Republicans can block everything. Unless we restore majority rule in Sacramento, we can kiss our quality of life in California goodbye. Other states: be warned.

Probably losing the parks isn't the most important damage currently being done by greedy obstructionists: we need roads, bridges, state universities and local schools even more. But shutting down parks is a very visible sign of California's decline. Since I enjoy the parks, I am going to try to chronicle this madness a bit.***

Come September, this stuffed mountain lion will no longer greet visitors at the Castle Crags State Park entrance kiosk. Castle Crags is just off I-5 in the far north of the state, on the way to Oregon.


It's a big place, offering camping, fishing in the Sacramento River, and views of Mt. Shasta and surroundings.


There's northern California's dominating mountain.

And the park provides trail access to its signature feature: the dominating granite crags.

These rock formations are unusual for being so rugged at a relatively low altitude. And, thanks to the park, a short trail enables a moderately ambitious hiker to scramble about among them only a little more than 2.4 miles from a trail head.


I was able to take them in early in the morning after a brisk uphill run.

Of course the crags will survive the park closure. But getting to them will be a lot harder. Ambitious hikers will have to start several miles further away and use unmaintained trails.


The area is close by the Pacific Crest Trail -- but shouldn't the state be able to make it just a little easier for us to appreciate such magnificence without requiring us to be marathon hikers?

The California State Parks Foundation is leading the charge against park closures. Nobody knows whether citizens will be able to block or modify the closure plan. Every California institution is scrambling for its bit of a too-small pie. Updates will follow.

On the road: ring around the sun

For several hours on Sunday over Eugene Oregon, this halo surrounded the sun. It exceeded my photographic skills to capture the entire ring, so I shaded out the light from under a tree and caught this half.

Apparently the phenomenon occurs when tiny hexagonal ice crystals hang in the air at over 30000 feet, reflecting the sun's light in this pattern. Some people claim it means impending rain, but that has not played out here.