Happy anniversary again

Sub-titled "And now back to your regularly-scheduled bleakness."

A public opinion poll for the Iraqi government and a Pentagon study, taken together, provide a good picture of where things are at in Iraq. (Both items via Juan Cole.)

The poll was a confidential, door-to-door survey of more than 4,000 residents of Baghdad Province done in mid-February.

- Just 3% of respondents said local security had improved over the past three months.
- Just 10% expected it to improve over the next three months.
- Only 32% considered their neighborhoods secure, down from 43% in September.
- Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's approval rating is in George Bush territory: only 34% percent, down from 45% in September - but up from the low of 25% approval he got in December.
- On a more positive note for Maliki and the US military, support for neighborhood militias has declined, with 32% saying in September that they make the city safer but only 23% now.

The Pentagon study (available here in .pdf format), released this week, concluded that the war

has clearly morphed from a Sunni-led insurgency fighting foreign occupation "to a struggle for the division of political and economic influence among sectarian groups and organized criminal activity."

In other words, "some elements of the situation in Iraq are properly descriptive of a civil war."

While nosing out some hopeful signs, such as a decline in violent incidents in Baghdad since the start of the escalation, the report can't hide the state of affairs in, for example, the judiciary.

According to the report, judges who don't succumb to the myriad threats against them often fear handing down guilty verdicts against defendants with ties to insurgent groups or militias. In the local courts, the report adds, "judges often decline to investigate or try cases related to the insurgency and terrorism." What's more, the Iraqi prison system remains overcrowded, and correctional services are "increasingly infiltrated by criminal organizations and militias."

And then there's the economy:

- Inflation in 2006 averaged 50%.
- Estimates of unemployment range from 13.4% to 60%.
- In a January survey by the US military, a mere 16% of city residents said that their income supplies basic needs - that's an 84% poverty rate.
- Electricity is available in Baghdad only about 6¹/₂ hours a day and peak generation is only about half of peak demand. (Nationally, it was somewhat better; electricity was available, on average, nearly 11 hours a day.)

No wonder

two thirds of Iraqis say that conditions for peace and stability are worsening,

over two million are living outside the country, and as many as 9,000 more leave the country every month - while those that remain are split on whether the government is doing the right things or the wrong things to make it better. (Unhappily, many of the million-plus expatriates and refugees now in Syria have found that while they did flee the war, their troubles are not over.)

Iraq is a political and economic disaster, one that we have caused, we have unleashed, and one that - and this is the important, the only important point now - our military presence is not helping. In fact, it's making it worse.

And the Iraqis know it. A poll of Iraqis in September (full results in .pdf format here) done by WorldPublicOpinion.org laid out some cold figures:

- 71% of Iraqis said they wanted US forces out within one year. More than half of those (37% of the total sample) would have it done in six months. Even 69% of Kurds supported a two-year limit.
- 78% said the presence of US troops provokes more conflict that it prevents.
- Majorities agreed that a US withdrawal in six months would strengthen the Iraqi government and result in a decline in "inter-ethnic violence" and an increase in "day to day security for ordinary Iraqis."

The meaning of all that can be boiled down to a simple expression: Out Now! Out Now! Out Now!

And encouragingly, people are saying just that. (You can consider this part an extension of the good news post.)

It began with

[t]housands of Christians pray[ing] for peace at an anti-war service Friday night at the Washington National Cathedral....

Afterward, participants marched with battery-operated faux candles through snow and wind toward the White House, where police began arresting protesters shortly before midnight.

Over 200 were arrested for their nonviolent civil disobedience in demonstrating on the White House sidewalk.

It continued with

[t]ens of thousands of protesters march[ing] to the Pentagon's doorstep Saturday demanding "US out of Iraq Now," ahead of the fourth anniversary of the US invasion.

Demonstrators from across the United States gathered in a cold winter day to descend on the US Defense Department offices and decry the conflict that has killed more than 3,200 US soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

Here, there, and everywhere.

In Los Angeles, several thousand demonstrators took to the streets. ...

In European cities, protest turnout ranged from 6,000 in Istanbul to several hundred in Copenhagen, Prague, Athens and Thessaloniki in Greece,

topped off by "tens of thousands" in Spanish cities. Other protests were seen in Australia, Britain, and Canada.

And it's not over. United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) has a list of over 1,000 events, big and small, to mark the fourth anniversary of the Iraqi insanity, many of them still to come over the course of the week, including Portland, Oregon, New York City, and San Francisco on Sunday (with a follow-up at Nancy Pelosi's office on Monday), Chicago on Tuesday, and Boston on Saturday.

Out Now!

How about some good news for a change

First some moderate good news. Following up on the possible peace deal in Ivory Coast I mentioned about two weeks ago, it seems that

Ivory Coast's President Laurent Gbagbo has signed a decree creating a military structure that includes rebel forces.

The new integrated command centre will include equal numbers of government troops and rebels, and will work to demobilise militias from both sides.

The initiative is one of the steps agreed in a recent peace deal aimed at ending years of civil war. ...

The joint army command structure is the first and relatively painless sign that the two leaders intend to keep their word this time round.

But the Ivorian peace process has floundered so often that Ivorians are not overly optimistic....

Still, some cause for optimism is better than none.

Next up, some pretty good news. It was announced on Saturday that

[f]ive of the poorest countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are to have their national debts cancelled by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

Bolivia, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua owe a total of more than $4bn (£2bn).

The debt relief initiative is part of the IDB's goal to cut poverty in half in Latin America by 2015. ...

Speaking in Guatemala City ahead of the bank's annual meeting, its president, Luis Alberto Moreno, described the move as an historic opportunity that will give these countries what he called a fresh start.

The question now is will the world financial institutions and the rich nations that back them go beyond giving those (and other) countries an opportunity to sink back into debt-driven poverty all over again or will they offer positive support that involves re-thinking their policies of pushing privatization even of basic commodities like water, encouraging big-ticket investments that overwhelm local ecosystems, and demanding export cropping that undermines local, sustainable food production.

Finally, some just plain old good news.

The first civil partnerships among same-sex couples in Mexico City have been celebrated under new legislation.

The law, which came into effect in the capital on Friday, gives gay couples similar social and inheritance rights as heterosexual couples.

Civil unions were approved by the city council in November despite opposition from the Roman Catholic Church. ...

Among the first Mexico City same-sex couples to tie the knot were journalist Antonio Medina, 38, and economist Jorge Cerpa, 31.

Mr Medina said: "With this law, a history of exclusion comes to an end. Today, the love that before did not dare speak its name has now entered the public spotlight."

The northern border state of Coahuila has similar legislation. While the laws do not give same-sex couples all of the legal rights available to straight couples, they are undeniably a real step forward. I'm beginning to think that the last places on Earth that will accept gay marriages will be the Vatican and the US.

RFID-ed off

In this post I mentioned the plans in the UK, leaked a couple of weeks ago, to establish a mass, secret database of children's fingerprints as part of the scheme for new biometric passports and ID cards. Somewhat belatedly, I offer this follow-up, to which I was alerted by Jonathan at Past Peak.

The day after the plans for the database were leaked, the Daily Mail (UK) arranged with a willing participant to check out one of the new passports, called the "safest ever" by the Blair government. Using "a simple gadget built from parts bought on the Internet,"

[i]n just four hours, the Mail hacked into a new biometric passport and stole the details a people trafficker or illegal migrant would need to set up a life in Britain.

And they did it without even opening the envelope in which it was delivered, meaning if such a document is diverted, scanned, and then delivered, the recipient is none the wiser because the envelope has not been tampered with.

By the end of the afternoon, we had stolen enough information from the passport’s electronic chip - including the woman’s photograph - to be able to clone an identical document if we had wished.

More significantly, we had the details which would allow a fraudster, people trafficker or illegal immigrant to set up a new life in Britain.

The criminal could open a bank account, claim state benefits and undertake a myriad financial and legal transactions in someone else’s name.

The wonders of technology. And the stupidity of over-reliance on it and in particular the stupidity of relying on technology in the hands of corporations and the government to protect our privacy.

It's the day

Almost missed this, tip o'the hat to James at Left End of the Dial:

Friday, March 16 is the anniversary of both the My Lai massacre and the murder of Rachael Corrie.

It's also my brother's birthday, so it's not all bad. Happy B-day, bro'.

Well, that didn't take long

Posted at CNN's website at 8:28 pm Eastern Time, March 14 (the earliest time stamp I found on Yahoo! News):

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks on the United States, has admitted responsibility for those and other major al Qaeda operations, according to the transcript of a hearing at Guantanamo Bay released on Wednesday.

"I was responsible for the 9/11 Operation, from A to Z," Mohammed, speaking through a personal representative, said, according to the transcript of the hearing on Saturday at the U.S. military prison camp in Cuba released by the Pentagon.

Later details said he claimed responsibility for 29 operations plus having had partial responsibility in a couple of others.

Posted at The Guardian's (UK) website at 1:46 am Eastern Time, March 16 (less than 30 hours later):

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's claims that he was responsible for dozens of successful, foiled and imagined attacks in the past 15 years relies on a loose definition of the word "responsible." Officials say the 9/11 mastermind was key to some plots but a bit player in others.

The 31 on his list range from the stunningly vicious suicide hijackings of Sept. 11, 2001, to others that current and former government officials say were more talk than concrete plans, such as a plot to kill Jimmy Carter and other former U.S. presidents. ...

"I have never known a criminal - either terrorist or otherwise - that didn't exaggerate," said Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers, a former FBI agent and the top Republican on the terrorism panel of the House Intelligence Committee. ...

One official cautioned that many of Mohammed's claims during interrogation were "white noise" - designed to send the U.S. on wild goose chases or to get him through the day's interrogation session.

Interrogation sessions which may well have involved torture. But here's even a third thought beyond puffery and white noise: They've got him, he's nailed, he knows it. But they can only execute him once, only imprison him for one lifetime. So as long as he's toast, why not confess to anything, everything, hoping thereby to take some heat of someone else who is still out there? Besides, if they catch him in a lie, what are they going to do to him that they could not and will not do already?

Footnote, Unintentional Humor Div.: In a follow-up AP article on the effect of Mohammed's capture four years ago on al-Qaeda operations, the reporters tell us that

[i]n his testimony to a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, released in redacted form by the Pentagon on Wednesday, Mohammed claimed involvement in 31 attacks and plots.

"Some are almost surely true," they say.

Footnote to the preceding

Haaretz's coverage of the Israeli reaction to the new Palestinian government also included this:

The platform also touches on one of the key sticking points in negotiations between the two sides - the issue of Palestinian refugees.

According to Hamas, the government "holds fast to the rights of Palestinian refugees, and the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their land and belongings."

But, said the Israeli official, "anyone who looks carefully at the document will see that there is a regression on a number of important issues."

He noted the platform's call for the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel and its affirmation of the Palestinian right of resistance against Israel.

As I mentioned just two posts down, Israelis fear the right of return would make them a minority in their own land. But while Israeli citizens may fear that, does the Israeli government truly share that fear? There is good reason to think not.

Back in November 2004 I wrote this post on the death of Yasser Arafat, during which the disastrous 2000 summit among Arafat, Bill Clinton, and then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak came up. At that meeting, Barak made a supposedly "generous offer" to Arafat, involving a Palestinian state in Gaza and something like 90% of the West Bank. Arafat refused, talks broke down, and he was denounced by Clinton as having proved he was uninterested in peace.

There is just one problem: The deal that Barak proposed was one that the Israelis knew in advance Arafat would not, could not, accept. It was nothing but a propaganda ploy designed to head off the possibility of a settlement. ...

What was wrong with the "generous" offer? Two things. One, the 10% of the West Bank not part of this Palestinian state would be occupied by Israeli "security corridors" connecting settlements and outposts, which would have effectively sliced the West Bank into a bunch of Bantustans, with Palestinians needing the permission of the Israeli military to get from one part of their country to another.

The other, perhaps even more important, issue was that the agreement would have required the Palestinians to completely relinquish any "right of return," the dream of the families of those who fled or were driven from their homes during the 1948 war to return to them someday. This is an intensely emotional issue among Palestinians: I remember one activist telling me some years ago "the Jews did not forget their homeland in 2,000 years but they expect us to forget ours in twenty-five." No Palestinian leader could have accepted that and survived politically - and perhaps physically. And the Israelis knew it. What's more, they also knew that

"[e]ven those who hold an 'extreme' position on the issue, among them Arafat, have adopted the position that if Israel recognizes the right of return in principle, its implementation can be partial and limited."

But the principle itself was simply not negotiable. The "generous offer" was bogus to its core.

What's more, the Israeli government knew at the time that Arafat would have been satisfied with a commitment to resettle some 20,000-30,000 Palestinian refugees in Israel rather than the 300,000-400,000 he was publicly accused of wanting.

It surely knows the same now: Refusing to even discuss a right of return is to deliberately and consciously reject the hope for peace.

So much for wisdom.

Both sides against the Middle East, part two

On Thursday,

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya ... unveiled a national unity cabinet after months of negotiations between his Hamas movement and Fatah[, the BBC reported]. ...

BBC Middle East analyst Roger Hardy says the unity deal has had a difficult birth and there is still deep mistrust between Hamas and Fatah, the two factions whose bitter rivalry brought the Palestinians to the brink of civil war. ...

Mr Haniya said if the Palestinian parliament approved the cabinet list, as it is expected to do, the ministers could go straight to [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas to be sworn in so the government could start work.

So after a long and difficult process, two sides that deeply distrust each other managed to come up with a compromise that enables them to work together. In principle, sounds like a model for what should be happening across the region.

Unhappily, even before the new government was sworn in, some were looking to put a bullet through its heart. Haaretz (Israel) brings the bad tidings:

The platform of the new Palestinian unity government, which according to Hamas advocates continued violence against occupation, is a step backward from the peace process and "flies in the face" of the international community's demands, the [Israeli] Prime Minister's Office said Thursday.

"Instead of recognizing Israel and renouncing terror the emerging Palestinian government has decided to spring backwards," said David Baker, spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office.

Note first that this is not based on what the platform says but on what one side says it says. They didn't even wait, it appears, to see the actual document. (That, of course, does not mean the Hamas summary is wrong. It does mean the Israelis should have waiting to see the actual document before responding.) The reason for the rejectionist stance is that the new government's platform, necessarily the result of a delicate balancing act, does not give Israel and the Big Boys everything they want.

The Quartet of Middle East peace brokers - the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia - has called for the new PA government to abide by three demands: recognition of Israel, renunciation of violence and agreement to honor previous accords.

According to Hamas, the new platform does indeed state that the new government "respects international resolutions and agreements signed by the PLO," which of necessity includes recognition of Israel, extended by the PLO in 1993. However, and this is the big complaint, it also "confirms that the resistance is a legitimate right for the Palestinian people."

In considering that complaint, it's important to recall that in recent years such a right of resistance among the Palestinians generally (albeit not exclusively) has been understood to refer to actions against Israeli targets within the occupied territories: There have been few attacks within Israel proper over that time. For Israel to demand as a pre-condition that that sort of resistance be halted is wrong, improper, and a hinderance to peace.

I want to make clear before I go on that I am neither advocating nor approving any sort of violence either by or against Israelis or Palestinians. I also want to make clear that I am a firm advocate of nonviolent resistance, yes, even in the face of armed violence. Contrary to the cliché, power does not grow out of the barrel of a gun. It grows out of courage. But leave all that aside. The point is that I am talking about that which is generally held to be "legitimate" violence - and resistance to occupation falls in that category.

What's more, making such a demand is irrational - assuming, as always, you really want a settlement. Consider how this would look to a Palestinian: Israel is demanding that you abide by all previous agreements - while making no such promise itself. It demands recognition - while treating the elected Palestinian government as an illegitimate outlaw that can with justice be overthrown. And it demands you cease all violence - that is, it demands you cease resisting the Israeli occupation. Does that look like "pre-conditions" to you? Or does it look like a demand for unconditional surrender?

If - again, if - Israel wants a settlement, what it clearly should do is privately pass the word to the new government as to how it could finesse its platform to get past the political roadblock. By the general understanding of the right of resistance, the Palestinians can resist the occupation, including by violent means. (I'm not even going to attempt here to get into distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate targets of such violence. I'm just going to leave it at the fact that such a right of resistance exists.) Israel is obviously not going to acknowledge that. But if the Palestinians were to make clear that such resistance is limited to internal resistance against occupation - i.e., rule out attacks within Israel proper - then Israel, again assuming it wants to, could use such a loophole to accept the platform as responsive to the conditions laid down without looking like it was backing down.

As with the Saudi proposal, that would take some wisdom on both sides. And as there, I am pessimistic but refuse to despair.

Both sides against the Middle East, part one

Just about four years ago, in March 2003, at a summit in Beirut, the Arab League announced its endorsement of a Saudi Arabian peace plan for the Middle East.

The basic outline of the Saudi plan was known but the details were vague, said the BBC in 2005. But it summed the proposal up just a few days ago as

- Israel to withdraw from land seized in 1967
- Palestinian refugees "right of return" to Israel
- Relations between Arab states and Israel

Recently, Israeli officials have indicated that the government was now "ready to take [the plan] seriously." However, some "reservations" were expressed. Those apparently centered around the "right of return," enshrined in UN Resolution 194, which dates from 1948 and declares that

the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date....

Many Israelis regard such a right of return as a demographic time bomb, fearing that Jews would quickly become a distinct minority within Israel if the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians they're told would able to claim such a right either as actual refugees or descendents of refugees were to do so. As a result,

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni recently called for deleting that clause. She was reportedly ready to negotiate the extent of Israel's withdrawal but not discuss the refugees' return.

While it could seem reasonable from an Israeli perspective to resist an unlimited right of return (but see this post), the outright refusal to even discuss the entire issue could hardly be seen as wise if the intent was truly to encourage renewed negotiations for a lasting peace. The response was predictable:

Saudi Arabia has rejected calls by Israel for changes to be made to a Saudi-led plan for Middle East peace. ...

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal described preconditions raised by Israel as "ludicrous".

"We only hear conditions from Israel about everything, but no acceptance," Prince Saud told reporters during a visit to Riyadh by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

The Saudis want the Israelis to accept the proposals and then work out the details. Which it's certainly true the Israelis could do with just a little massaging. For one thing,

Jordan tried to ease Israel's objections by noting the text talks of an "agreed upon" solution [related to a right of return]. That means the solution requires Israel's consent, it argued.

Which, it would appear, means that what defines such a right of return would be decided by negotiations. Related to that is the fact that some experts have noted that the text of Resolution 194 says that refugees "should" be allowed to return, not "shall." That, they say, means that such a return is not mandated but only "recommended." I doubt that argument would be easily accepted by many Palestinians, but it should be possible for the sides to postulate that a right of return and an unlimited right of return are not the same thing and go from there.

The Arab League is to take up the plan again at a summit in Riyadh later this month. I hope that they can find the wisdom to jiggle the proposal a bit, perhaps by pointing out the word "should" in Resolution 194 or by modifying their text to something like "dealing with the concerns of those who wish to return to their homes from which they were refugeed must be part of any final settlement," giving Israel wiggle room to accept it without seeming to commit itself to an unlimited right of return - and then that Israel can find the wisdom to take advantage of the opportunity.

I admit to a great deal of pessimism on both points. But I refuse to despair.

Footnote: I know there is a question among some as to whether or not it is legitimate for Israel to exist as an explicitly Jewish state, especially when there are so many in the US and, interestingly enough, Israel that will condemn the notion of an Islamic state. Frankly, this is not the time to discuss it.

The geek stands

One of the deeper mysteries of astronomy is the exact way that galaxies formed and developed. While the overall idea - gas clouds in the early universe coalescing under gravity, with eddies and whirlpools collapsing to form stars - seemed to fit pretty well, there always seemed to be enough exceptions to raise questions about any attempt to get more specific. But now some astronomers at the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii think they have discovered something that could resolve at least some of the riddles: a mathematical principle that successfully unites

all galaxies for eight billion years, nearly half the age of the Universe.

All galaxies, they said, follow a consistent relationship between their mass, or weight, and the velocities of the stars and gas clouds that compose them. “We were truly surprised at how well” the pattern fits a dizzying array of galaxy types, said Sandra Faber of the University of California, Santa Cruz, co-author of the study. ...

Galaxies fall into three basic types: spiral or disk-like ones such as our own Milky Way; those shaped like roundish clouds, known as elliptical galaxies; and messy, bashed-up or odd­ball galaxies. These are usually thought to be remnants of galaxy collisions, and sometimes dubbed “train wrecks.”

For some time, astronomers have known that spiral galaxies displayed a specific relationship between their masses and the velocity of their stars. Elliptical galaxies also had such a relationship. What Faber and her colleagues claim to have discovered is that there is single, a deeper relationship that describes both types of galaxies - and what's more, that same relationship covers the "train wrecks," too.

Besides unifying the different galaxies under one principle, the discovery has another important aspect:

The findings probably reflect an even deeper property of the cosmos, said Faber.... “Both of these relations were imprinted by the nature of fluctuations [in the uni­verse] that made galaxies in the first place,” she said.

Which means they may well tell us something significant about how the universe evolved.

The geek rises

Okay, Robby the Robot was a robot. And no, that wasn't the one that kept going "Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!" long before Will Robinson became Minbari. But that one was also a robot, called, reasonably enough, The Robot. Adam Link was a robot. On the other hand, Data wasn't; he, well, I guess I should say it, no, wait, the "fully functional" Data could be called he - he was an android.

But all in all, robots were thought of as more or less anthropomorphic. Except, of course, we soon learned that the most common form of robot was the industrial robot, designed to perform some repetetive task with great accuracy and which looked nothing at all like a human. Ah, so that's a robot! Well, not quite.

A robot is being used by a Franco-Swiss team to investigate how the first land animals on Earth might have walked.

The bot looks a lot like a salamander; and the scientists can change the way it swims, slithers and crawls with commands sent wirelessly from a PC.

The group says it provides new insight into the nervous system changes aquatic lifeforms would have had to acquire to move to a terrestrial existence. ...

By mimicking the nervous system and the movements of the salamander, the team hoped "to decode perhaps some of what happened during evolution", Auke Jan Ijspeert, of Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, told BBC News.

While fossils give a pretty clear view of the development of vertebrates over time, just how they came to spread from the water where they originated onto the land is not clear. However,

the latest research indicates the transition would not have required a huge leap in brain power.

Mr Ijspeert and colleagues have shown how even the simple nervous system of a lamprey (a primitive eel-like fish) can, with a few modifications, drive walking motion in a creature that resembles a salamander.

Which is what their robot does, indicating the leap from swimming to walking is not nearly so great as some had thought. And once again showing that evolution is often cleverer than we give it credit for being.

The geek stirs

It's been known for a long time that light has force, that even though photons are regarded as having zero mass, their energy can interact with mass and produce an effect. An obvious example is the chemical reaction between light and silver halides that makes modern photography possible.

But light can also affect motion and not just in a Crookes radiometer. As photons strike a surface, they heat it very slightly. The surface then re-emits that heat, causing a tiny recoil. Ultimately, the constant stream of photons from the Sun can make the force large enough to affect the motion of celestial bodies such as asteroids. The Yarkovsky-O'Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack (or YORP) effect uses that to explain the spin of a cluster of objects in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. But while the mechanism has been conjectured for some time, it has never been directly observed - until now, as the BBC informed last week.

[S]eparate studies published in the journals Nature and Science have observed and measured the tiny stellar shoves on two spinning asteroids.

They reveal that both are gradually starting to spin faster and faster, which could eventually create new Solar System landmarks.

"If we can spin up an asteroid so fast, there's a really good chance that these objects will fly apart," said Dr Stephen Lowry, a planetary astronomer at Queen's University Belfast and lead author of one of two Science papers.

In this case, the fragments could form a binary asteroid where two objects orbit each other, he said.

Lowry noted that while the effect is tiny, "it's acting over millions of years."

A key result of this observation is proof that gravity is not the only force directing the past and future evolution of the solar system. So better understanding the impact of light on the motion of astronomical bodies opens the way for a new set of studies to better understand how the solar system came to be how it is.

A good sign

I've said a number of times, most recently just over a week ago, that ending the Iraq war ultimately can't be left to the Dummycrats but will instead require "tens of thousands of pissed-off Americans in the streets."

Well, it isn't "in the streets" but it's still a good sign that some of those who tied themselves to the donkey's tail and turned what was initially presented as an independent voice into little more than a shill for the party are showing clear evidence of pissed-off-edness. Greg Sargent at TPMCafe has the skinny:

MoveOn is privately demanding that House Dem leaders make key changes to their legislation on Iraq....

"We've communicated to the Speaker's office that we want tougher enforceability in the bill," [MoveOn's Washington director Tom] Matzzie tells me. "We want something that's got teeth."

Asked if the current bill doesn't have teeth, he said: "We want sharper teeth."

MoveOn apparently had much the same reaction I did to the decision to strip a funding cut-off from the bill, a decision that relies on the expectation that the Shrub gang would accept a declaration that the war becomes "illegal" after August 2008: That expectation, to the degree it is sincere, is to that same extent a touching but astonishingly naive - not to say brain dead - hope.

Fool me once...

...shame on you. Fool me twice, uh, you can't get fooled again. And fool me over and over again and I suspect the one you're fooling is yourself.

Greg Sargent at TPMCafe has gotten some excerpts from the House Dummycrat misleadership's bill related to Iraq.

[T]hough the bill mandates withdrawal by Fall 2008 at the latest, it's going to be at least partly a disappointment to some House liberals. That's because language that was in earlier drafts that would have clipped funding after the deadline - as opposed to merely declaring the war illegal - has been taken out.

House leaders will argue that the bill does do its job, because it declares the war illegal beyond a certain date. But liberal House sources say this removed language was critical in ending the war in practice, because it would enforce the war's end with the power of the purse rather than requiring a trip to court to force an end to the war should Bush insist on keeping it going in defiance of the legislation.

Exactly. What have the requirements of law meant to this administration so far? What requirements of the Constitution have they not felt free to ignore or subvert? What oath? What treaty? What solemn promise?

What the hell makes the Pelosi gang imagine for one second that come the end of August 2008 that Shrub will be unwilling to say that Congress can't override or limit his "authority as Commander-in-Chief to protect the lives and safety of American troops in the field" and "protect the nation from threats?" Dammit, I wish I had thought to save the link but I clearly recall reading not long ago of one member of the administration claiming that the original Iraq war resolution was actually unnecessary, that Bush could have gone ahead without one and that it was actually a political ploy to get Democrats to sign on to the war. We can certainly call bullshit on the argument but it still means that the White House is prepared to argue - in effect, already has argued - that Bush's CiC authority overrides any Congressional restriction.

They're not only gutless wonders, they're stupid gutless wonders. We are so screwed.

Footnote: Just to be clear, I have argued against the contention that the power of the purse is the only power Congress has, while agreeing it is the most effective and efficient. I maintain that Congress does indeed have the power to directly order the end to a conflict. What infuriates me here is the fanciful contention that Bush and the other acolytes of an imperial presidency would willingly acquiesce to such an order.

Take a guess

According to an AP story today,

[t]op House Democrats retreated Monday from an attempt to limit President Bush's authority for taking military action against Iran as the leadership concentrated on a looming confrontation with the White House over the Iraq war.

Officials said Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of the leadership had decided to strip from a major military spending bill a requirement for Bush to gain approval from Congress before moving against Iran.

Okay, take a guess as to why they did that. Go on, take a guess. I'll wait.

Nope. not that it was a distraction. Nope, not that it was divisive. Nope, not that it would be better dealt with in separate legislation. And nope, not - as some have urged - because Congress should present the idea of Bush needing authority to attack Iran as something to be taken for granted, thus requiring no legislation. Ready for the answer? Here it is:

Conservative Democrats as well as lawmakers concerned about the possible impact on Israel had argued for the change in strategy. ...

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said in an interview there is widespread fear in Israel about Iran, which is believed to be seeking nuclear weapons and has expressed unremitting hostility about the Jewish state.

"It would take away perhaps the most important negotiating tool that the U.S. has when it comes to Iran," she said of the now-abandoned provision.

"I didn't think it was a very wise idea to take things off the table if you're trying to get people to modify their behavior and normalize it in a civilized way," said Rep. Gary Ackerman of New York. [emphasis added]

But apparently, Ms. Berkley, Mr. Ackerman, it is "normal" and "civilized" practice to "modify" other nations' "behavior" through the threat of a massive military attack - even if that threat is exercised not for the benefit of the public, which is, at most, ambivalent about the supposed threat from Iran, and not even for the benefit of some supposed national security, but for the benefit of a third party whose interests many already argue are a controlling factor in our Middle East policy - an assertion I suspect the rest of us are finding increasingly difficult to doubt.

One last footnote

This from Juan Cole, quoting Iran-based Press TV for March 7.

Ma'ariv Daily has reported that an Israeli retired officer sells weapons to terrorist groups in Iraq.

Shmoel Avivi, an Israeli retired officer, had established a firm in Iraq 2 years ago, which secretly sold arms to terrorist groups in Iraq, Ma'ariv reported.

Amnesty International reported that Avivi was one of the biggest weapon dealers in the Middle East.

I don't care what anyone else says. He sold arms to "terrorists" in Iraq? He must be Iranian! He must be!

Another footnote: another way to become your enemy

Possibly few phrases in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been thrown against Palestinian politicians more often and with more force than "rejectionist front." That charge is not without truth when directed at some - but anyone who doubts that there is also a pro-Israel rejectionist front needs to check out the website of the reactionary gang at Think-Israel.org. (I don't normally provide links to right-wing sites; let them get their own hits. But in this case, the site is the topic and so the link is necessary.)

Just on the home page, it argues that "extremist Islam is the norm and normal Islam is extremely rare," cries "free Jonathan Pollard" (the convicted spy for Israel), and openly calls for rejection of peace agreements and for expulsion of Arabs: "To date the theme has been: give up the land and keep the Arabs. More Jews now see it would be better to keep the land - it is after all legally and by conquest Israel's - and give up the Arabs."

Articles in the current issue include ones
- accusing the US government and media of "covering up" for Palestinian terrorists.
- labeling Israeli advocates of negotiations for peace as "intellectually dishonest."
- calling for "America, acting alone and with overwhelming force, [to] destroy the Iranian Islamic State now."
- arguing that Israel must be bigger - maybe 5 times bigger - than the 1967 borders.
- claiming Gaza is a Palestinian state and, of course, a terrible one, thus proving the evil nature of Palestinians - assuming, that is, that there is such a thing as a Palestinian, which another article questions.
- advocating "blowing up the 'Al-Aksa mosque and then without hesitation rebuilding the Temple."

No, these people are not in places of power in the Israeli government. But as Professor Wahrman notes, such people have their friends and defenders in high places. And maybe the better statement is that they don't have places of power - yet.

Footnote to the preceding: the price of vengeance

It has been said by sager folks than me that those who deal in vengeance tend to become that which they say they oppose. Again, Israel has provided an object lesson. Last week, the BBC reported that

[a]n Israeli human rights group has accused Israel's army of using two young Palestinians as human shields during a recent raid in the West Bank.

The B'Tselem group said it had testimony from a 15-year-old boy, his 24-year-old cousin and also an 11-year-old boy.

They said soldiers had forced them at gunpoint to enter houses ahead of the troops during the raid in Nablus.

There is one error in the story: the 11-year old, whose name is Jihan Dadush, is a girl. The boy is named 'Amid 'Amirah.

The use of human shields is illegal under both Israeli and international law, not to mention deeply offensive to any civilized concept of morality. And it is something of which the Israelis have long accused Palestinians.

B'Tselem is The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. In its report, the group says that during the Nablus operation, which took place in late February, the 'Amirah family was forced from its house to another where other Palestinians were being held. Soldiers then forced 'Amid to accompany them in a search of three more houses.

According to 'Amid's testimony, the soldiers pushed him with the barrels of their rifles and forced him to enter rooms of the house in front of them, open cabinets and empty out the contents, and open windows. In one instance, according to the testimony, a soldier shot several shots into the room.

Three days later, soldiers seized the Dadush family house and locked the six members of the family in one room, where they were interrogated about the location of armed Palestinians who fired at soldiers in the area. That evening, soldiers forced Jihan Dadush

to lead them twice to one of the adjacent houses that she had mentioned to the soldiers in response to their questions. The second time, when they arrived at the house, the soldiers forced her to open the door and enter in front of them.

The Israeli Defense Force says it's investigating the allegations, but as Professor Wahrman pointed out in the previous post, many reports of illegalities over the years have merely collected dust. Even so, there is the third case, that of 'Amid's cousin Samah, who was forced to enter every room in his house while soldiers followed him and fired a burst of shots into each room after he entered.

Part of this incident was recorded on by AP television cameras and broadcast both on Israeli television and abroad,

which at least should make this may be hard to bury easily, especially since, B'Tselem says, the behavior of the soldiers, including the firing into rooms, indicates they were knowingly and deliberately exposing all three to danger.

However, the fact that this, as B'Tselem also points out, is not the first time this has happened and, it now appears, it continues despite rulings by Israel's High Court of Justice that the practice is illegal, does not engender a great deal of confidence. One thing that the investigation has not deterred is the continuing string of provocative Israeli raids in the West Bank. At this point, it is safe - and fair - to say that with regard to its actions and practices on the West Bank and in Gaza, Israel has something it needs to prove to the world. But again, the question is if the Israeli government cares.

The price of victory

Headnote: I was tipped to the article linked to here by a post on one of the blogs I read regularly - but I'm not sure which one and now I can't find that post. If you happen to be the poster or know who is, please drop me a line: I'd like to give credit where it's due.

There is a nation in the Middle East today whose government is suffused with corruption.

In just the past few weeks, it's chief of police has been forced to resign over the fact that several of its highest police officers were found guilty of corruption and negligence.

This came[, writes Indiana University history professor Dror Wahrman at the History News Network on March 5], within a week of the forced resignation of [its] Chief of Staff from the military.... It was also some ten days after [its] minister of justice was convicted of sexual assault while on duty, and a couple of weeks after [its] president – who holds a largely symbolic position – resigned temporarily following charges of rape and sexual misconduct. It was also the same day that the head of [its] tax authority resigned because of possible corruption charges. In the meantime, several other investigations are still pending, not least two or three directed at the Prime Minister himself ... concerning corruption and favoritism.

Corruption charges have also emerged in a dispute over the minister of police's choice for a new police chief. It is all bad enough that some voices within the nation, including official ones, have raised the possibility that it's heading toward internal collapse.

That nation is Israel.

Suddenly the Palestinians and the Hizbullah, and even Iranian nukes, have taken a back seat: Israel does indeed seem in danger of imploding from within, at least as a viable democracy.

I hasten to say that I pass this on with no sense of joy or pleasure, but rather as an object lesson in where a preference for domination over dialogue and for the "security" of war over the "risks" of peace can, does, will lead.

Wahrman refers to

[t]he infinite variety of devices through which Israel has condoned and often actively encouraged the breaking of the rules in its drive to expropriate Palestinian occupied land against both Israeli and international law....

He cites one particularly galling example from the previous week's news:

[I]t was revealed that the Israeli government is withholding its formal recognition of the new leader of the Greek-Orthodox Church in the Holy Land, Patriarch Theophilus, because it wants him to sell prime real estate near Jaffa Gate to settlers as a condition for recognizing his official status.

That act and others, he writes, "brazenly ignore Israeli law," but based on past experience, "are likely to succeed." And it's not even that such incidents have gone undocumented; indeed, they even were

the subject of a thick government judicial document, known as the “Sasson Report,” which created something of a furore when it was handed to prime minister Ariel Sharon in March 2005. Within months, however, the Sasson Report joined the mounting pile of legal and normative documents that have been effortlessly side-stepped by the settlers and their supporters in multiple branches of the government. It was only a matter of time, inevitably, before the lawlessness of the occupied territories – and their support networks throughout the Israeli state apparatus – began infecting Israel proper. [emphasis added]

The ultimate question the professor wants to raise is, is Israeli democracy, which he describes as "young, evolving, and certainly not indestructible," in danger? He believes the threat is very real.

From my perspective, I believe that the outward form of democracy as practiced in Israel is under no threat - but the spirit of democracy, at least the grander aspects of that spirit, has long since been damaged by years of occupation, militarism, and oppression. During the time I have been blogging (and for a good number of years before) I have expressed hope for every bit of movement toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace - but have become increasingly doubtful that the Israelis, trapped by their own assumptions and frustrated by their inability to impose their will on the Palestinians, actually desire a settlement or even can conceive any longer of what peace would look like.

Wahrman concludes by saying

the friends of the Jewish state should be mobilizing post-haste to help Israeli citizens, jaded, disappointed and angry as they might be,

to make sure the injuries to Israeli democracy are not fatal. I'll conclude by saying that those of us who would like to consider ourselves friends of the Israelis and friends of the Palestinians and friends of the elusive peace should be mobilizing to help Israelis, jaded, disappointed and angry as they might be, understand that a dramatic change in policy is the only thing that will ultimately protect their democracy from the encroaching scourge of militarism.

Footnote, Sometimes Ya Just Gotta Laugh Div.: Israeli ambassador to El Salvador Tsuriel Raphael has been recalled two weeks after he was found in the yard of his official residence, naked, tied up, and drunk, with sex toys lying nearby. When found, he was unable to identify himself until the ball gag was removed from his mouth.

Wouldn't it be nice

This is refreshing: The BBC reports today that

Deputy leader of the Commons Nigel Griffiths has quit the government [of Tony Blair] in protest at plans to renew the UK's Trident nuclear weapons system. ...

Jim Devine, a parliamentary private secretary, has also indicated he will resign over the issue.

The UK relies on Trident submarines as its nuclear weapons platform. As the subs age, the question is if the fleet is to be replaced (at an estimated cost of £20 billion, or $36.8 billion) or simply to be gradually decommissioned in a course of nuclear disarmament. And two of Tony Blair's officials are prepared to quit in protest over the failure to disarm.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could actually imagine two US government officials resigning over such a matter? But oh, consider the problems.

A survey for BBC Radio 4's The World This Weekend programme found that out of the 101 Labour MPs who responded, 22 said they supported the renewal of Trident.

A total of 64 said they opposed it, and a further 15 remained undecided.

Despite the opposition, Blair has the support of the Tories on this and the plan to re-nuke is likely to pass when it comes up in the House of Commons on Wednesday. Which means, if you listen to the advice of some House Democrats speaking on Iraq, opponents shouldn't even try to stop the program for fear of being labeled soft on defense.

Footnote to the preceding, Now That You Know You Can Trust Us Div.

Updated In 2005 the "Real ID Act" was included in a bill covering military spending. In the name of security, efficiency, safety, protection from terrorists, a cure for the common cold, pudding for all, blah blah you know the routine, the law - passed with no review, no hearings, no debate - took us, the ACLU said at the time,

one step closer to a national ID, and a "show us your papers" society, by forcing states to link their databases - containing every licensed driver's personal information - with other states, with no guidelines as to who will have access to that information.

Such a claim may have seemed overly dramatic to some, but considering that when the law went fully into effect, that standardized ID would be required in order for a driver's license to be used for identification for any federal purpose, including obtaining federal benefits, getting on an airplane, and entering a federal courthouse, even then it should have been hard to consider that analysis anything less than reasonable. When the draft regulations were finally issued the beginning of this month, it should have become impossible. Wired magazine notes that among the regulations are these:

* Applicants must present a valid passport, certified birth certificate, green card or other valid visa documents to get a license and states must check all other states' databases to ensure the person doesn't have a license from another state.
* States must use a card stock that glows under ultraviolet light, and check digits, hologramlike images and secret markers.
* Identity documents must expire before eight years and must include legal name, date of birth, gender, digital photo, home address and a signature. ... There are no religious exemptions for veils or scarves for photos.
* States must keep copies of all documents, such as birth certificates, Social Security cards and utility bills, for seven to 10 years.

Wired, which accurately labeled the new cards "de facto internal passports," also mentioned that "many difficult questions," including how databases are to be linked and how homeless people can prove a home address, were unanswered.

But there's even more. Adding stupidity to this combination of aggrandizing bureaucracy and power-hunger, the New York Times noted that the newly mandated driver's licenses will contain a machine-readable strip with the holder's biographic data - and there is no requirement the information be encrypted! (Link for reference only; the article is now in a pay archive.) Which, as the ACLU pointed out, leaves people and the country less secure and serves only to multiply the risk of identity theft.

In fact, staff attorney Sophia Cope of the centrist Center for Democracy and Technology, says the rules mention privacy exactly once.

"[T]here are no privacy regulations related to exchange of personal information between the states, none about skimming of the data on the magnetic stripe, and no limits on use of information by the feds," Cope said.

And then, of course, there's the cost of this invasive inanity.

[U]ntil now, the Department of Homeland Security had not ... estimated the costs - about $14.6 billion to states and about $7.8 billion to individuals - of setting up the system ... over the next decade.

One reason for the high cost also promises to create a bureaucratic nightmare: Yet another requirement of Real ID is that beginning in May 2008 anyone wanting to obtain or renew a driver's license would have to show up at their state's registry office in person with the required documents. Stateline.org says that

[b]y curbing renewals by mail and online, Real ID will force DMVs to handle 686 million customer transactions face-to-face over five years, instead of the 295 million they would handle anyway, a study by the National Governors Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures and the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators concluded.

"When lines at the DMV are snaking around the block and the cost of a driver's license has doubled or tripled, the politicians holding the bag won't stay in office very long," predicts Lee Tien, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco consumer advocacy group that opposes national ID standards.

Apparently so, because states had already been clamoring for more time and more money to deal with the problems the law causes. Grandly, Michael Chertoff, Herr Direktor of der Department for the Protection of the Fatherland, said the May 2008 start date could be pushed back to the end of 2009 (while maintaining the requirement that the new IDs all be issued by 2013) and offered $100 million in federal grants to help with costs. That was not only no more than 10% of the first-year costs with no guarantee of future assistance, but would be paid for by an equal reduction in other "antiterrorism" funds already promised to states.

That was not only too little, it may well have been too late, as the combination of concerns over privacy and cost have many states in open rebellion against the law. In fact, even before the release of the regs, on January 25, in fact, Maine rejected the plan outright.

In so doing, it became the first state to refuse to take part in the program but it's already not the only. This past Thursday, Idaho became the second. Taking note of that, the ACLU added that this could be the start of something big*.

"Idaho and Maine are just the beginnings of the pending tidal wave of rebellion against Real ID," said Charlie Mitchell, Director of the ACLU State Legislative Department. "Across the nation, local lawmakers from both parties are rejecting the federal government’s demand to undermine their constituents’ privacy and civil liberties with a massive unfunded mandate. Congress must revisit the Real ID Act and fix this real mess." ...

[L]egislation [opposing Real ID] has been passed by one chamber in the legislatures of Arizona, Georgia, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, Vermont, Washington and Wyoming. Bills rejecting Real ID have also been introduced in Hawaii, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina and West Virginia, with more expected in the coming weeks.

It's worth noting that this opposition, as you can likely tell from the list of states, does not come from just the left and often includes calls for Congress to repeal Real ID altogether. Personal privacy is an area where the left and the right often overlap, and the libertarian Cato Institute is also opposed to Real ID.

But give the last word to the ACLU in the person of attorney Tim Sparapani:

"Real ID creates the largest single database about U.S. people that has ever been created," Sparapani said. "This is the people who brought you long lines at the DMV marrying the people at DHS who brought us Katrina. It's a marriage we need to break up."

To coin a phrase, indeed.

*Footnote: I was going to include a link to the lyrics of "The Start of Something Big" by Steve Allen - but it appears they exist nowhere on the Web. Is my age showing that much?

Updated: My best friend found a link for me. :-) Here it is.

My how times have changed

A recent story has an unspoken sidebar that shows how the political fortunes of the once-soaring Shrub gang have come crashing back to Earth.

It's one you're surely aware of: the "damning" report by DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine that FBI agents

sometimes demanded personal data on people without official authorization, and in other cases improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances.

The audit also concluded that the FBI for three years underreported to Congress how often it used national security letters to ask businesses to turn over customer data.

In short, FBI agents repeatedly broke the law, illegally obtained personal information, and failed to keep Congress informed as required. Okay, that probably didn't surprise you. But the follow-up might have:

First, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller "apologized and vowed to prevent further illegal intrusions." They said such behavior would "not be tolerated" and is "unacceptable." And the next day, the Shrub-in-Chief himself "pledged to put an end" to the abuses.

And how long ago would it have been when this kind of thing would have been shrugged off? "Hey, we're fighting a War on Terror^{(c)(reg.)(pat.pend.)} here! Why are you taking the terrorists' side?" How long ago would it have been greeted with a few grumbles from the usual quarters like the ACLU, while such as Rep. Pete Hoekstra, senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, who said the audit shows "a major failure by Justice to uphold the law," maintained a discrete silence?

How long ago would it have seemed absurd to think of the New York Times editorially calling for Gonzales to be fired - and then being echoed by Sen. Chuck Schumer calling for his resignation? How long ago would it have been laughable for Josh Marshall to wonder who will be the first GOPper to say Mouthpiece Al should go?

Times have indeed changed. Maybe not a lot, but they have changed. Okay, yeah, the hope meter - possibly the irrational hope meter - is up couple of notches. Sue me.

Footnote Number Ein: Getting back to the report, despite the fact that the report concluded that

"[w]e believe the improper or illegal uses we found involve serious misuses of national security letter authorities,"

Fine still provided the usual cover in placing most of the blame on "shoddy record-keeping and human error." However, the report also said that an amazing, not to say disturbing,

22% of the cases it investigated contained one or more possible unreported or unidentified violations,

which seems to me to be a hell of a lot of "human error." For a comparison, what do you think the wingers would be saying if some survey found a 22% error rate in some program to provide aid to the poor? Despite that, the auditors

were careful to note they found no indication of criminal misconduct.

But just how was "criminal misconduct" defined here? How strictly (or broadly) was "lack of criminal intent" defined? What about an agent who kept themselves ignorant of the law's limitations? What about one who just didn't care, who had no intent to break the law but just didn't think about it one way or the other? What about an agent who knowingly broke the law but insists it was done because otherwise the "bad guys get away?" Would any of those constitute criminal misconduct in the auditors' collective mind?

Consider that the agency used so-called "exigent letters" which were only to be used in emergency situations and have little, if any justification in law.

In at least 700 cases, these letters were sent to three telephone companies to get billing records and subscriber information, the audit found.

Those letters claimed they were issued in connection with a subpoena request already submitted to the US Attorney, which would "process and serve them formally." But that, apparently, was a lie: In its survey, the auditors could not confirm

one instance in which a subpoena had been submitted to any United States Attorney’s Office before the exigent letter was sent to the telephone companies.

It's pretty damn hard to maintain there was nothing "intentional" here in light of information like that.

So yeah, some things have changed. Others have not.

If you want to read it, the unclassified Inspector General's report can be found at this link in .pdf format.

Footnote Number Zwei: Something else that hasn't changed is the "Me but Not Me" gambit.

"But the question should and must be asked: How could this happen? Who is accountable?" Mueller said. "And the answer to that is, I am to be held accountable."

Mueller said he had not been asked to resign, nor had he discussed doing so with other officials. He said employees would probably face disciplinary actions, not criminal charges, following an internal investigation of how the violations occurred.

So just like all the officials before him who bravely have taken the "responsibility" (but never the "blame"), he bravely says he is "accountable." But nothing is going to happen to him and it is others who will be punished. Such is "accountability" among the powerful.

Bang!

In a mind-boggling and dangerous decision that positively defines the dreaded "judicial activism" and "mind-reading," a federal court has ignored seven decades of law and precedent to strike down a local ban on handguns as

a violation of the Second Amendment's right to keep and bear arms.

In its 2-to-1 decision, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that the amendment's guarantee belongs to individuals and was not a collective right limited to members of militias....

"The amendment does not protect the right of militiamen to keep and bear arms, but rather the right of the people," the majority opinion said. "If the competent drafters of the Second Amendment had meant the right to be limited to the protection of state militias, it is hard to imagine that they would have chosen the language they did."

The ruling, which overturns Washington, DC's 30-year old ban on keeping handguns in a home, was

the first time in American history that a Federal appeals court has struck down a gun law on Second Amendment grounds,

according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

The Court's logic was truly, well, I was initially thinking "odd" or "bizarre," but I think "ideologically-driven" is more accurate. The Second Amendment reads, in full, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The last time the Supreme Court directly addressed its meaning was in US v. Miller, in 1939. The Court said then that

[w]ith obvious purpose to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness of such forces the declaration and guarantee of the Second Amendment were made. It must be interpreted with that end in view. [emphasis added]

Thus, the purpose of the amendment was to insure the ability of states to maintain militias. It is, that is, a collective right, not an individual one, which is what Washington argued in this case. But it must have been "opposite day" in DC, because the majority held that

the first clause was an explanation of the major purpose of the second clause, not a limitation on it.

"We ... take it as an expression of the drafters' view that the people possessed a natural right to keep and bear arms, and that the preservation of the militia was the right's most salient political benefit - and thus the most appropriate to express in a political document," the ruling said.

This reaches so far beyond logic as to become self-parody. The purpose of the reference to a militia was to point out the benefit of the amendment? Excuse me? Can the - ahem - justices of the majority cite one other place in the Constitution where a provision was in essence footnoted to declare the benefit arising from it? (And don't "Preamble" me; that referred to the entire document, not some provision of it.) Even in those cases where there was a specific benefit consciously intended - for example, putting a civilian, the president, in charge of the military - no such reference is made. So why here? Why in this one case?

There is no reason, no reason to expect it, no reason to conclude it - no reason other than ideological claptrap masquerading as judicial sobriety.

Stay tuned for the next case, where the DC Court finds that Uzis, AK-47s, hand grenades, and cyanide bombs are "arms" under the meaning of the Second Amendment.

It was nice while it lasted

Okay, the hope level has dropped several notches.

The Christian Science Monitor for Friday published an article discussing House Democrats' attempts to "outline an endgame" for the Iraq war. While most of it was just a routine overview, it contained two very serious clangers.

The first was the note that

[t]he 44-member Blue Dog Coalition, which opposes any move that threatens to deprive US troops of funding, and other center-right Democrats have been urging leaders to give the president a waiver in any plan that tried to impose conditions on the spending of war funds. Pelosi confirmed that such waivers would be part of the plan but did not specify how they would affect the timetable for withdrawal. [emphasis of course added]

What the hell? I guess I should have - no, forget "guess," I should have - expected this but dammit, I got snookered again, again let myself get sucked in by the absurd hope, and yes it is absurd, that Pelosi and company were actually out to challenge Shrub. But instead it seems we're going to get a plan that will say to Bush "You must do this - unless, that is, you don't want to."

Such waivers, more properly called "Get Out of Jail Free" cards and which work if and only if the one handed them can be trusted to use them honestly, serve here the single, sole purpose of giving the White House a way to avoid any impact from the bill - that is, the Democratic leadership has agreed to eviscerate its own bill even before it is introduced.

Let's be real here. This plan isn't about opposing Bush. It's not about stopping the war. It's about saying you oppose the war while at the same time running away from any actual responsibility for doing anything about it. It's about, bottom line, positioning for the 2008 campaign and who gives a damn about the lives, American (and allied) and even more Iraqi, ruined in the meantime.

Which provides the logic behind the second clanger: Pelosi

said that she didn't know what purpose it would serve to allow a vote on the Lee amendment,

that being the one the Progressive Caucus wants to introduce which would require a withdrawal of all US troops by December 31. (The text of the amendment can be found at this link.)

Well, of course there isn't a purpose, not if your goal is to avoid making any actually enforceable move to ending the war. If you wanted to take a stand, a clear stand, you would at least embrace voting on the amendment, even if you thought it was impractical, even if you thought it was too fast, even if for what you honestly deemed good and proper reasons you were going to vote against it, you could have the debate and the vote as a measure of how strong current sentiment in the House is for such a move. You could recognize it as the course desired by a significant portion* of the American public and say it deserves expression.

But no, it's quite possible none of that will happen. Not because there's "no purpose" to it, but because some people are afraid of it. Not the GOPpers, they would vote against it, possibly unanimously. Not the Democrats of the Blue Dog Coalition, who also would vote against it. And obviously not the members of the Progressive Caucus, who would vote for it. So who?

Go for the obvious: the Pelosi gang, who are terrified of the amendment because they figure they can't vote for it (thus appearing to oppose their own plan as inadequate) but also figure they can't vote against it (thus appearing to needlessly extend the war). Better, then, to try to keep the amendment from coming up at all.

Will they succeed in that? I don't know. I do know attempts will be made to tell the Progressive Caucus to shut up and get in line. I'm fully aware that the Lee amendment would not pass, but it would, I say as I've said before, stake out the territory. And, I note, I'm also aware of the stench of putting party politics above human life.

Just yesterday, I said it was "music" to hear Nancy Pelosi tell her colleagues not to confine their works to what George Bush will sign. Sadly, she seems unaware that those who confine their works to what will immediately pass the House are no more than a half-step better.

*Footnote: The only recent poll I found that specifically asked about withdrawal timetable options was a USA Today/Gallup Poll conducted March 2-4. It found that 20% favored "immediate" withdrawal and another 38% wanted out by March 2008, i.e., within one year. No intermediate option (i.e., "in six months" or "by the end of 2007") was offered. (Full results here; you might have to scroll down if newer polls have been posted.)

Why we are where we're at

In a major journalistic coup, the Boston Globe reported on Thursday that

Barack Obama is no longer a scofflaw, at least in Cambridge and Somerville.

Two weeks before the US senator from Illinois launched his presidential campaign, he paid parking tickets he received while attending Harvard Law School, officials said yesterday.

Apparently, he had some 15 outstanding tickets dating back to the period 1988-1990. It came to light because

[i]n January, about when the Globe began asking local officials about Obama's time at Harvard, including any violations of local laws, someone representing the senator called the parking office to inquire about the decades-old tickets.

It turns out that he owed, and paid, some $375 in fines and fees. Far from being upset, one city official said it was "fabulous he finally paid them" and called his record of unpaid tickets "actually pretty run of the mill." That's something anyone who is experienced with the area, where residents often regard the cost of parking tickets as a routine budget expense, could confirm.

So a nothing, pointless story, right? Not exactly. However, it's importance lay not in anything it revealed about Obama but in what it accidentally revealed about the present-day news business: By its own admission, even before Obama formally announced his candidacy the Boston Globe was actively looking for some "violation of local law" he may have committed nearly 20 years earlier. Note well: This is not a matter of pursuing something brought to their attention, as piddly at it would have been even in that case. No, this was, again, an active search for something embarrassing, something sneaky, in his background; an active search, that is, for some dirty laundry.

It's thus a prime example of the kind of cheap, uninformative, issue-suppressing, personality-pushing, gotcha journalism that has turned the political and social issues of a nation into just another giggling game of "I gotta scoop" being played by the entertainment editor wannabes populating what passes for far too many newsrooms. Which makes it also a prime example of a good part of the reason why we are where we're at.

It is not a good place.

Speaking of Iraq

You've undoubtedly heard about how

[a]n elite team of officers advising the US commander, General David Petraeus, in Baghdad has concluded that they have six months to win the war in Iraq - or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat.

The Guardian (UK) reported that a week ago and it's been running around the blogs, so I don't expect I have to repeat the story.

But I was just having a little fun with it, since the source was "a former senior administration official familiar with [the teams's] deliberations." Just who might that be, I wondered?

Well, let's see what evidence the article provides.

"The scene is very tense," the former official said. "They are working round the clock. Endless cups of tea with the Iraqis. But they're still trying to figure out what's the plan. The president is expecting progress. But they're thinking, what does he mean? The plan is changing every minute, as all plans do." ...

"It's amazing how well morale has held up so far," the former official said. "But the guys know what's being said back home. There is no question morale is gradually being sapped by political debates."

The article goes on to say that the team's biggest fear is that "political will in Washington may collapse just as the military is on the point of making a counter-insurgency breakthrough."

So let's see. Who could be a "former senior administration official" who could have been around the administration recently enough to be familiar with this deal, frets that troops' "morale is being sapped" by opposition to the war, and uses phrases like "endless cups of tea with Iraqis?"

My bets are on former Defense Secretary Donald Rumpelstiltskin.

Okay, as long as I'm feeling hopeful...

...why the heck not throw this in.

There are signs, preliminary and vague, but still signs, of some spine-starch appearing among Congressional Democrats, as no fewer than three plans setting a timetable for withdrawal of most troops from Iraq were presented at press conferences on Thursday.

The toughest of the three, not surprisingly, was that of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which, as I noted a few posts down it was expected to,

proposed legislation that would require Congress fully to fund the safe and secure withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by December 31, 2007.

"Four and half years ago the president asked to give war a chance, and despite our objections he got that chance and he blew it," said Rep. Janice Schakowsky, D-Illinois.

"No more chances. No more waivers. No phony certifications. No more spending billions of dollars to send our children into the meat grinder that is Iraq. It is time to spend the money to keep them safe and bring them home."

The deadline is three or more months longer than I would have allowed, but it is, as the Caucus said, a clear, simple, measure with as few ifs, ands, and buts as possible. A firm deadline. On the other hand, soon after, the House leadership came out with its plan, with a longer timetable and more loopholes - but still, at least, with an outside limit. It

would have U.S. combat troops out of Iraq by August 2008 - or sooner if certain benchmarks of progress aren't met. ...

If Congress finds those conditions have not been met, a 180-day withdrawal of U.S. troops would begin, possibly as early as July. [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi said the barometer of progress would be "a subjective call."

"No matter what, by March 2008, the redeployment begins," she said.

Note the important word, though: "begins." At its maximum effect, the plan would have combat troops out by roughly year's end - a time when the Progressive Caucus plan would have all troops out. More likely, lacking a positive Congressional finding that the "benchmarks" haven't been met, withdrawal doesn't even begin for a year and then takes, if I understand the news reports correctly not having read the actual measure, six more months to complete, bringing it to August 2008. And even at that, as again I noted a few posts down, it allows for the continued presence of perhaps tens of thousands of troops for an unknown length of time.

That hardly endeared the effort to the Progressive Caucus.

"[The leadership's] plan would require us to believe whatever the president would tell us about progress that was being made," said Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California.

"This is same president that led us into a war with false information, [said there were] weapons of mass destruction, said we would be [welcome] with open arms, said that the mission had been accomplished. Now we expect him to give us a progress report in their plan by July?"

But I will take my hope in that, as flawed as it is, it does set some kind of limit; it breaks the stranglehold the word "timetable" has had on the Democratic leadership.

Meanwhile, over in the Senate, the leadership - joined, significantly, by Russ Feingold (significant because he opposed the earlier nonbinding resolution on the esca- er, wait, "surg-," no, dammit, "augmentation," I keep getting that wrong) - announced its own plan, saying that

the current conflict in Iraq requires a political solution, Iraq must take responsibility for its own future, and our troops should not be policing a civil war.

The resolution would require the "phased redeployment" of combat troops to begin within 120 days of passage and to be completed by March 31, 2008. Like the House leaders' plan, it would allow for a "limited number" of troops to remain for training and "counter-terror options."

Unhappily, that also means, like the House leaders' plan and yet again as I said the other day, it endorses the war, endorses the original invasion and occupation, urging withdrawal only because of the fact that it's become a civil war "and that's not what we bargained for." And it accepts the idea that Iraq is a "front" in the War on Terror^{copyright/reg./pat.pend.}. It embraces many of the White House's concepts.

But I'm feeling good tonight, feeling a little hopeful from the fact that all three of these bills actually do set outside limits, with one having all troops out by the end of the year and the others having at least all combat troops out by the end of March 2008 in one case and the end of August 2008 in the other. A psychological wall has been breached. That opening can only get wider - provided, that is, we keep poking at it.

Footnote: Actually, you know what really put a bit of hope in my head today? It was the news that was not expected.

According to Raw Story, after the White House stunned absolutely no one by issuing a veto threat against the plan proposed by the House Democratic leadership, Nancy Pelosi's office responded to questions about it by referring to what she had said at that morning's press conference:

"I say to my colleagues never confine your best work, your hopes, your dreams, the aspiration of the American people to what will be signed by George W. Bush because that is too limiting a factor," the Speaker said....

In simpler terms, the Shrub gang threatened a veto and Pelosi said "So what?"

I've been waiting six years to hear a Congressional Democrat say that. Music.

Grudging admiration

Yeah, it's grudging. But it is admiration.

On March 7, 1965, in the event that became known as "Bloody Sunday," a group of black nonviolent marchers heading out of Selma, Alabama, on their way to Montgomery in support of voting rights was attacked by heavily armed state troopers. Reporting of the event galvanized the nation, which helped move the adoption of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

That was the event being commemorated amid the media coverage of Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton at competing church rallies in Selma this weekend.

And I have to admit it struck me: Just 42 years - and no, that is not a long time in the run of history - just 42 years after blacks were viciously beaten simply for wanting to vote by police who assumed they still could get away with it - just 42 years later, the leading candidates for the Democratic Party nomination for president are a black man and a woman.

Yes, he speaks in platitudes and yes, they're both more conservative than people think. That's not the point right now.

I'm having a burst of hope. Don't ruin it; it'll fade fast enough on its own.

Footnote to the preceding

Who said this:

Iraq is a nasty place to fight. But there are no neat and tidy battlefields in the struggle for freedom; there is no "good" place to die. And it is far better to fight in Iraq - over there - than fight some years hence within our own frontiers.

Nope, you're wrong. I guarantee it. Because as much as it sounds like some things we hear now justifying the Iraq war, it actually was an adaptation of this real quote:

Vietnam is a nasty place to fight. But there are no neat and tidy battlefields in the struggle for freedom; there is no "good" place to die. And it is far better to fight in Vietnam - on China's doorstep - than fight some years hence in Hawaii, on our own frontiers.

That was H. W. Baldwin, writing in the New York Times Magazine, February 21, 1965, discovered while looking for a link on the domino theory.

Even the bullshit is a retread.

Ohh Noooo!

Doing my best Mr. Bill imitation.

I wanted to do some kind of sarcasm with this but it's just beyond that. Or satire. It's from the Washington Post and it's just - well, I really don't know how to describe it so I won't except to say the domino theory ain't got nothin' on this.

Vice President Dick Cheney said Thursday night that a too-soon withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq could send victorious militants spreading out, with some flocking to Afghanistan to fight alongside a regrouping Taliban. ...

"If our coalition withdrew before Iraqis could defend themselves, radical factions would battle for dominance. The violence would likely spread throughout the country and be very difficult to contain. Having tasted victory in Iraq, the (militants) would look for new missions. Many would head for Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban," Cheney said.

He said others would head for capitals across the Middle East and work to undermine moderate governments. "Still others would find their targets and victims in other countries on other continents..," Cheney said.

Yes, "tasting victory" in an insurrection against a foreign occupation or a bloody civil war is like eating a potato chip: You just crave more and more.

Damn, if this whole thing doesn't sound like a promo clip for some grade B horror flick.

(Pounding background music builds.)
(Deep, ominous voice speaks) "Militants - spreading, multiplying, breeding. Nowhere is safe! No one is safe! Look out! They're coming for YOU!"
(Cheap musical score hits resounding crescendo.)

Footnote to the preceding, Some Hope Div.

Raw Story reports that the soggy waffle imitation being enacted by the House Democratic leadership has sufficiently angered members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus that they plan to push for an amendment to Iraq war funding to require withdrawal on a timetable.

A month ago, the Caucus made clear what such an amendment would say:

We believe all appropriations for U.S. military involvement in Iraq must be for the protection of our troops until and during their withdrawal within six months of the date of enactment of this limitation and accelerating the training and equipping of additional Iraqi security forces during that six-month time frame. ...

Finally, we are opposed to establishing any permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq, support rescinding the President’s Iraq war authority, and support greater diplomatic and political engagement in the region, while ensuring that the Iraqi people have control over their own petroleum resources.

If Raw Story is right, what has changed in the last month is that the members of the Caucus have gotten so fed up with the leadership that they intend to offer the amendment from the floor whether Pelosi, et. al., like it or not. That would be a good thing. No, it wouldn't pass but it would establish the legitimacy of making the call.

Important historical note: The first proposed amendments to get out of Vietnam were handily defeated, as well.