History Repeats Itself — Pope George W. Bush?

See if you recognize recent events in the U.S. in this passage talking about the history of the Catholic Church…

The Church turned to its own canon law to authenticate an agency which could enforce adherence to Church authority. In 1231 Pope Gregory IX established the Inquisition as a separate tribunal, independent of bishops and prelates. Its administrators, the inquisitors, were to be answerable only to the Pope. Its inquisitional law replaced the common law tradition of “innocent until proven guilty”with “guilty until proven innocent.” Despite an ostensible trial, inquisitional procedure left no possibility for the suspected to prove his or her innocence; the process resulted in the condemnation of anyone even suspected of heresy. The accused was denied the right of counsel. No particulars were given as to the time or place fo the suspected heresies, or to what kind of heresies were suspected. A suspected friendship with a convicted heretic was also a crime, yet no information was given as to which heretic the accused as to have “adored.” The names of the accusing witnesses were kept secret. One’s only recourse was an appeal to the Pope in Rome which was so futile as to be facical. The friar Bernard Delicieux declared:

…that if St. Peter and St. Paul were accused of ‘adoring’ heretics and were prosecuted after the fashion of the Inquisition, there would be no defense for them.

The inquisitor presided over inquisitional procedure as both prosecutor and judge. While he was technically to arrive at his decision after consulting with an assembly of experts of his choosing, this check to his power was soon abandoned. An inquisitor was selected primarily on the basis of of his zeal to prosecute heretics. He and his assistants, messengers and spies were allowed to carry arms. And in 1245, the Pope granted him the right to absolve these assistants for any acts of violence. This act rendered the Inquisition, which was already free from any secular jurisdiction, unaccountable to even ecclesiastical tribunals. [The Dark Side of Christian History, “Chapter 6: Controlling The Human Spirit”]

Take a moment to let that sink in and think about how many times in history that sort of thing seems to have repeated itself. Witch trials, Nazi Germany, McCarthyism, Kenneth Star ;)… Unchecked power using hate of some group or other to persecute and it’s all unquestioning, all unapologetic, all without regret. It’s all to get more power through fear.

Now think about what has happened in this country in the last five years. People both from this country and not have been taken from their homes, from airports, from their travels and spirited away in secret places, in American prisons, in Gitmo, who knows how many are innocent or how many are guilty. How do you prove you’re innocent when you are presumed guilty from the beginning? How do you prove you’re innocent when your only sin is that you look like you might be dangerous? How do you prove you’re innocent when you’ve been handed over to the Americans by foreign bounty hunters who insist you’re a terrorist? What do you say to prove you aren’t guilty when the American Inquisition doesn’t care really. It’s not about whether you’re innocent; it’s about gaining more power through fear and not even the fear of the arrested. It’s about gaining power through the fear of Americans like you and me, my dear Readers.

Tags: The Dark Side of Christian History, history repeats, George W. Bush, America

BBC America’s The Eleventh Hour

If you haven’t had a chance to catch Patrick Stewart’s new series on BBC America, The Eleventh Hour, you’re missing out. Stewart plays Ian Hood, a physics professor who’s a modern day Sherlock Holmes working for Britain’s Ministry of Science (I think) with a young blonde bodyguard as his Watson, Rachel Young, played by Ashley Jensen.

The show’s first season only had four 90-minute episodes (including commercials) with their third episode having aired this past Monday (9pm EST), but I’m sure BBC America will be re-airing them.

The show itself hits some pretty modern themes such as human cloning, viral plague-like outbreaks, and global warming, not to mention illegal immigration, MIBs, saving the world, and global conspiracy theories. Plus, some age-old viewer-satisfaction proven themes like love, lust, greed, and good old-fashioned murder.

Definitely worth seeking out. And if you don’t get BBC America, well, it’s already on DVD.

Tags: BBC America, The Eleventh Hour, Patrick Stewart, Ashley Jensen

Give Yourself

Want to volunteer this holiday season? These organizations allow you to punch in your zip code and find an opportunity close to home:

• The American Red Cross
• America’s Second Harvest
• Home Instead Senior Care
• VolunteerMatch.com

Source: Woman’s Day, December, 2006.

Tags: Volunteer, American Red Cross, America's Second Harvest, charity

Exercise Your Mind - 11/08/06

Election 2006

• You have your marching orders…. — Nicole Belle @ Crooks and Liars reminds us of the Republican’s “Contract with America” when they took control of Congress in 1994.
  

  This year’s election offers the chance, after four decades of one-party control, to bring to the House a new majority that will transform the way Congress works. That historic change would be the end of government that is too big, too intrusive, and too easy with the public’s money. It can be the beginning of a Congress that respects the values and shares the faith of the American family.

  Like Lincoln, our first Republican president, we intend to act “with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.” To restore accountability to Congress. To end its cycle of scandal and disgrace. To make us all proud again of the way free people govern themselves.
  

  Let’s hope that the Democrats learn from the Republicans’ mistakes.

• A Remedy for Negative Political Ads — Paul Silver @ Donklephant has a remedy for all of those negative, deceitful ads since there’s not likely to be any law regulating truth in political advertising anytime soon.
  

  Perhaps the solution lies in changing the geometry of the question. Instead of trying to regulate the content of ads, we use public funds (or funds from the Parties) to run a frequent public service message that corrects the inaccuracies of any recent ads - perhaps produced by the Factcheck.org folks. Since a candidate would not want to have the airwaves filled with objective criticism they would be inclined to stay as reasonable and civil as possible.

• A Remedy for Election Tampering– Paul Silver @ Donklephant also thinks there should be a reward for information leading to a conviction in crimes related to election tampering.

More

Tags: 2006 election, Republicans, Contract with America, Contress, ethics, scandal, Democrats, negative political ads, election tampering, politics, factcheck.org, DHS, TSA, passports, Hasan Elahi, FBI, mental illness, anxiety, depression

Work Your Brain — 11/1/06

Tales of the Detainee Kind

• The Case Of Bilal Hussein — Justin Gardner @ Donklephant reports on Bilal Hussein, an AP war photographer, accused by the U.S. military of helping some insurgents kidnap a couple journalists. Only those journalists have been rescued and they say Hussein is a hero. The AP wants to know why he’s been detained since April with no charges having been filed against him while right-wing bloggers call for his head.
  

  Six months is more than enough time to get some facts together and make a case against Hussein. The military hasn’t done that, and they should…or else they should release Hussein without charge.

  As Gardner points out, Hussein isn’t the first journalist to be treated as such.

  More

  Tags: detainees, Bilal Hussein, Abdul Rahim Al Ginco, Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo, al-Qaeda, Insurrection Act, FEMA, Lynne Cheney, Bill O'Reilly, liberals, rightwingers, patriotism, pragmatism, American soldiers, Republicans, Democrats, GOP, Georgia, Genital Cutting, abortion, pro-choice, pro-life, TSA, airport security, bomb-making materials, Christopher Soghoian, Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research, Indiana University, fake boarding passes, Ed Markey, FBI, Police State

  comments See also in Politics & Causes, In the News, Geekery, Blogging & Other Blogs, The World, 9-11 & Terrorism, Iraq & Afghanistan, Hurricane Katrina, Natural Disasters, Women's Rights, The Middle East

Work Your Brain — 10/03/06

On Terror-steria

mass hysteria
n. A socially contagious frenzy of irrational behavior in a group of people as a reaction to an event.

• The Suntan Menace — The Cunning Realist writes about another incident in our friendly skies where an innocent man is assumed by other passengers to be a terrorist because of “suspicious activities” like going to the toilet when he got on the plane and having an iPod. The most damning piece of evidence was the color of his skin, which was tanned due to the vacation the Jewish father of three was returning from. Mr. Stein was physically attacked by another passenger “claiming” to be a NY police officer and put in a head lock an hour into the flight while he was minding his own business reading a book and sipping his ginger ale. He sounds terribly dangerous. He’s suing the airline for failing to protect him since the cabin crew was aware of the passenger’s obsession with him. He should sue the passenger too.
  

  As someone who travels a lot, owns gadgets, is dark-complected, and even uses the restroom, I keep waiting — with anticipation, I must admit — for some overeager vigilante/Charles Bronson-wannabe to try this crap on me.

• Please step to the white courtesy phone [for a brain] — Mac @ peskyapostrophe reports that a man missed his flight after being detained in an airport in Seattle because he was speaking a foreign language into his cell phone. Hmmmmm… That does sound suspicious. Apparently he was discussing sports, which is really suspicious. The language was Tamil, which is a language largely used in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore and the person who called it in was an off-duty airline personnell. The passenger indicated that in the future, he wouldn’t be speaking Tamil into his cell phone in the airport. That’s just a shame.
• The TSA sucks - hey, better detain me — Mac @ peskyapostrophe also has a post about a Wisconsin man who wrote “Kip Hawley is an Idiot” on a plastic bag containing toiletries said he was detained at an airport security checkpoint for about 25 minutes before authorities concluded the statement was not a threat. You know, because Kip Hawley is the head of the Transportation Security Administration. “A TSA spokeswoman acknowledged a man was stopped, but likened the incident to cases in which people inappropriately joke about bombs.” *snort* Talk about going overboard.

On Torture

• Is The U.S. A Rogue State? — Matthew Yglesias (op-ed writer for The American Prospect) @ CBS News wrote a brilliant opinion piece about how in 2003 President George Bush gave a speech indicating that the U.S. was committed to “world-wide elimination of torture” and leading the fight by example. He said it was an inalienable human right to be free of torture. He also said, “The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control….Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit.” Based on that statement from Bush’s own claims, Yglesias wants to know if the United States is now a rogue state since we now legally torture. Have we now become what we set out to eliminate?
  

  Other countries, of course, practice torture in violation of international law. As has now been clear for a while, we have been in their company for some years. The latest twist, however, is that we now won’t show any shame about it. Rather than simply violating the laws to which we have agreed to adhere, we’re repudiating them, simply denying that the standard by which civilized nations operate apply to us.

  The problems here will be widespread. One of the strengths of democracies on the international scene is precisely that it’s much harder for liberal states to violate agreements. Dictatorships can say one thing and do another with ease. Democracies feature free presses, free speech, the rule of law, independent judiciaries, legislative oversight, and other measures to ensure that laws and treaties are followed. This is, to the conservative mind, a weakness. In their view, cheating is a good thing, and America’s historical difficulty in cheating constitutes a problem. They’re dead wrong. Cooperation is a good thing — the best ticket to prosperity, security, and international peace. Democracies can cooperate with other countries — and especially with other democracies — more credibly and effectively, and that’s one of the reasons the world’s democratic block is so much stronger and more prosperous than the rest of the world.

  But the rule of law is now off the table as far as Bush is concerned. What’s more, insofar as national-security policy is at issue, the United States increasingly doesn’t look like much of a democracy. As the congressional Republicans march in lockstep behind the White House’s torture agenda, they don’t even know what that agenda’s composed of. The Boston Globe reported Saturday that 90 percent of members of Congress don’t know “which interrogation techniques have been used in the past, and none of them know which ones would be permissible under proposed changes to the War Crimes Act.” Which is just to say that, in practice, absolutely everything would be permitted, since the only people capable of overseeing the interrogation program haven’t done it, won’t do it, and have no intention of doing it in the future.

  Consequently, the United States now presents itself as what amounts to the globe’s largest and most powerful rogue state — a nuclear-armed superpower capable of projecting military force to the furthest corners of the earth, acting utterly without legal or moral constraint whenever the president proclaims it necessary. The idea that striking such a posture on the world stage will serve our long-term interests is daft. American power has, for decades, rested crucially on the sense that the United States can be trusted and relied upon, on the belief that we use our power primarily to defend the community of liberal states and the liberal rules by which they conduct themselves rather than to undermine them.

  An America prepared to casually toss out the most fundamental principles of international humanitarian diplomacy, along with basic human decency and the rule of law as side helpings, is not a country others are going to want to cooperate with.

  Hat tip: Sean Aqui.

• How long till they come and take your favorite blogger away? — Punkass Mac @ PunkAssBlog.com expresses concern that the inclusion of the term “leftist terrorist” in the NIE report may eventually lead to serious problems for leftist bloggers once the new torture/detainee legislation passes. Pain-in-the-ass lefty bloggers can be labeled as having “leftist terrorist agendas” and disappear into some CIA black prison or Gitmo.

On Iraq

• Batiste — Gregory @ The Belgravia Dispatch wrote an excellent piece, quoting former Major General John Batiste’s testimony before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee which presented a rather scathing review of Rumsfeld’s competence as a wartime leader. Gregory’s analysis is dead on, suggesting that the Bush-Chenney Administration is all talk but no real muscle to back it up, meaning they haven’t or can’t put the resources in to match their own rhetoric.
  

  That is to say, the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld troika are only pretending to have the sang-froid and will and staying power and Churchillian courage to prevail in Iraq. But they are being dishonest with us. They are empty suits, presiding over a failing strategy, none of them with the energy or intellectual courage to own up and demand either that the nation sacrifice and devote adequate resources to the effort, or failing that pursue a convincing alternative strategy. Of course, it’s not all their fault, as they are bowing to some realities, one suspects. If Bush gave a speech calling for re-institution of the draft, or implemention of a war tax, or even less dramatic moves but nevertheless ones that demanded more sacrifice (sending another 50,000 troops in, with casualty rates inevitably increasing, especially if we adopted less conservative force postures in keeping with best counter-insurgency practice) one presumes the nation would turn on the war all the faster (though if such moves changed the tenor of the war for the better perhaps support would not drop as much as one might suspect, although one would need real leaders at the helm explicating the need persuasively, which we don’t). Worth noting too, Rove would allow none of it, with midterms looming in November.

  Regardless, what we have now is not quite ’stay the course’, or the comically desperate sounding ‘adapting to win’, or some such soundbite. What we are doing, really, is half-assing along as best we can without truly summoning all the national reservoirs of power (military, economic, diplomatic, humanitarian) to really have a real go at prevailing, assuming one believes there is still a shot at eking out a victory, an issue where intelligent people (as the previous thread indicated) can disagree. At some point, we either step up, talk to the Iranians and Syrians so as to get more intelligent about pursuing a regional strategy, make clear and signal to Iraqis we’re there to truly prevail by sending in more forces, and otherwise get more serious (more robust force posture to truly “clear”, not via endless rounds of whack-a-mole, but with a convincing footprint and level of sustained effort through entire areas of concern simultaneously, more funds for reconstruction and infrastructure to effectively “build”, increasing American embeds operating with both Iraqi Army and even Police units so as to help develop more of an indigenuous “hold” function, and so on)–or we need to think much more about pursuing an intelligent withdrawal strategy–if perhaps we don’t think the additional effort is worth it (perhaps presiding over a confederation, but holding out the prospects of a unitary state in the future, a la Dayton, is worthy of more thought). Either way, the rough status quo, with a couple soldiers dying a day, dishonors their sacrifice, because it is a sacrifice made in vain. And our leaders are not honest enough to come clean with us about this, or if they think they are being honest with us, it is only because they are living in a deluded fantasy land where fundamentalist-style verities reign, rather than the grim realities presented by the empirical evidence around them.

  Hat tip: John Cole.

Have an opinion on these topics to share or found a post you want to add? Add your opinion or the post link to the comments section. My inquiring mind wants to know!

Tags: John Batiste, Senate Democratic Policy Committee, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Iraq, War, stay the course, adapting to win, propaganda, American soldiers, Middle East, Seth Stein, American Airlines, mass hysteria, terrorism, rogue state, The American Prospect, CBS News, torture, War Crimes Act, Geneva Convention, Congress, Seattle, Tamil, TSA, Kip Hawley, leftist terrorist agenda, NIE report, Guantanamo Bay

9/11: Around The Blogosphere

Remembering the Day

• For Thou Art With Us — Sarah Bunting @ TomatoNation.com was there.
  

  We come up the rise to the corner where a crowd of people has gathered, all looking up, and the towers come into view — the south tower closer to us and to the left. “Ohhh, man,” we both say, and “Jeeeesus Christ,” and “This is not good. This is not good at all. This is fuckin’ bad.” So dumb. So dull. We sound like frat boys when the keg is dry, but there’s nothing else we can say about what we’ve got in front of us. In front of us, high above us, the south tower has a huge hole torn through it, a burning, screaming maw with thick black smoke pouring out. Occasionally, flames lick up one corner of the twisted mouth of the hole and then retreat, only to reappear on the other side. It doesn’t seem real. It doesn’t even seem that serious at first, actually, until I remember just how big the building is, how many stories high — and that the hole must therefore cover twelve stories, at least. “This isn’t the kind of history I want to be present at,” I say, lamely, to Bob. “Me neither,” he says.

  More

  Tags: 9/11, World Trade Center, terrorism, New York, American flag, Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden, Conspiracy Theories, George W. Bush, Matt Lauer, Rudy Giuliani, ABC, tragedy, patriotism, Ground Zero, We Will Never Forget, al-Qaeda, CIA, Pakistan, Taliban, Joint Special Operations Command, NSA, National Counterterrorism Center, Tora Bora, al-Zawahiri, Paul Krugman, NATO, Bill Clinton, Rush Limbaugh, Pentagon, healthcare, Iraq

  comments See also in Politics & Causes, In the News, Geekery, Blogging & Other Blogs, The World, Featured, 9-11 & Terrorism, Iraq & Afghanistan, Conspiracy Theories, The Middle East

Work Your Brain — 09/09/06

A Little Fun First

• Thursday Thirteen #2 — ribbiticus @ Pond Perspective offers some gems of advice. Here are my favorites:
  

  5. It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

  10. Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.

  11. We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull. Some have weird names, and all are different colors, but they all have to live in the same box.

  12. A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.

  13. Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.

More

Tags: Thursday Thirteen, Crayons, terrorism, Logan Airport, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Congress, wiretapping, Osama bin Laden, Mother Jones, liberals, 9/11, religion, aetheists, women, virginity, Journal of Sex Research Western soceity, involuntary virgins, economy, America

Work Your Brain — 09/06/06

• We Know The Who And The What, But What About The Why? — The (liberal)Girl Next Door asks what I’ve been asking all along: “Why out Valerie Plame?” The media seems content to have the mystery of who did the outing solved without wondering as to the why. Now that new evidence has come to light that Plame was working on the task force to determine whether or not Iraq had WMD, why was it so important to get her out of the way?
• But Bush has nothing on at all! — lambert @ CorrenteWire theorizes as to why there haven’t been any more terror attacks on American soil since 9/11 since we’re told every other day that an attack is right around the corner. If the terrorists are so competent and dangerous, why aren’t we living in a war-torn country where things are being blown up on a weekly basis? It can’t be that our security is safer; we’ve prove it isn’t.
  

  A fully credible explanation for the fact that the United States has suffered no terrorist attacks since 9/11 is that the threat posed by homegrown or imported terrorists — like that presented by Japanese Americans during World War II or by American Communists after it — has been massively exaggerated. Is it possible that the haystack is essentially free of needles?

More

Tags: George W. Bush, terror attacks, 9/11, Terrorists, economy, irresponsible government, failed policy, Valerie Plame, WMD, Iraq, Conspiracy Theories, Matthew Fenton, National Naval Medical Center, Bathesda, Walter Reed, War, American soldiers, 101st Fighting Keyboarders

comments See also in Politics & Causes, Geekery, Blogging & Other Blogs, The World, 9-11 & Terrorism, Iraq & Afghanistan, Conspiracy Theories, The Middle East

How Many Lives Are Lives Worth?

Last month, while Israel was making war against Hezbollah, I kept wondering whether the death toll of Israelis and Lebonese was worth the lives of the two Israelis who were kidnapped at the beginning of the war. After all, it was their lives that started it all.

Is there a point where the cost of innocent civilians and the lives of patriotic soldiers outweighs the original loss? What I mean is, do the lives of the few outweigh the lives of many? What makes the lives of those two soldiers worth more than those Israel was willing to kill or send to die for them?

Closer to home, how many Americans lives need to be lost before we’ve spent more than it was worth to invade Iraq?

As The Martian Anthropologist reminded me today (not that I could forget), President Bush has repeatedly linked the tragedy of September 11th with the invasion of Iraq. According to him, the two are irreversibly intertwined in the War on Terror.

Whenever he invokes those emotional memories of the loss of lives on September 11th, he’s telling us that every American life he sends to die in Iraq is for those lives lost that day. He’s telling us that he’s sending more Americans to die, to kill innocent and not-so-innocent people in exchange for those lives already lost. Those are what the lives are worth.

I think it’s something to ponder today of all days consindering as of today more Americans have died in the War in Iraq than on September 11th.

(CNN) — As the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States approaches, another somber benchmark has just been passed.

The announcement Sunday of four more U.S. military deaths in Iraq raises the death toll to 2,974 for U.S. military service members in Iraq and in what the Bush administration calls the war on terror.

The 9/11 attack killed 2,973 people, including Americans and foreign nationals but excluding the terrorists. The 9/11 death toll was calculated by CNN.

Tags: Israel, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Iraq, American soldiers, War on Terror, 9/11, George W. Bush

Work Your Brain — 09/02/06

First Some Fun

• Thursday Thirteen #3 — Baggage @ Baggage That Goes With Mine wrote thirteen reasons why the internet is better than real life. This is my favorite.
  

  11. On the internet, you can pop into a forum or a blog and tell a person that their beliefs are dumb, they should be breastfeeding, they should never co-sleep, they should divorce their husband, they should shave their legs, and they should stop wearing mom jeans. In real life, people would punch you in the face.

In Memory Of Katrina

• But you can keep them for the birds and bees — Mac @ PeskyApostrophe wonders about all of that Katrina aid money the U.S. asked for and got from other countries last year. She comes to the same conclusion I did.
  

  I’m appalled at a variety of things when it comes to the Katrina rebuilding effort and FEMA’s role in it all, but this is a whole new level of incompetence. As part of my new job, I am now involved in grant-writing. In a good portion of grants, the grantee expects a report as to how the money was used. While I’m sure these gifts did not come with any reporting requirements, if one of our grantees found out their money had been either wasted or didn’t got to the program for which it was intended that would pretty much guarantee they’d never give money to us again. And you have to wonder if, should another emergency situation arise, these countries would think twice about giving aid money to the U.S. if we’re not going to use it and use it wisely.

• First the Flood, Now the Fight — Spencer S. Hsu @ WashingtonPost.com wrote a special report on the butting of heads between FEMA and state and city officials in the rebuilding of the Gulf States and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. FEMA swears it’s not trying to be difficult but the process seems to be designed to wear down those requesting help until they just give up and either take what little they’ve been given, which isn’t much if anything.
  

  Through hundreds of such disputes large and small, the most costly disaster in U.S. history is fast becoming its most contentious, with appeals and disputes worth nearly a billion dollars bogging down repairs of critical public systems and delaying the return of residents.

  Current and former officials at all levels blame FEMA workers’ inexperience with eligibility rules, weaknesses in U.S. disaster laws and inconsistent treatment by Congress for much of the wrangling. The huge scale of the storm and honest disagreement over whether federal or local taxpayers should pay the tab add to the conflict.

  “Disasters should be difficult to declare. . . . But once you get them, FEMA should not worry about cutting costs,” said Daniel A. Craig, who stepped down in October as head of FEMA’s recovery division and is now consulting for New Orleans. “Public entities are eligible for everything they have lost due to the disaster. It is not up to FEMA to cut corners or makes sure money is saved.”

  Gil H. Jamieson, FEMA’s deputy director for Gulf Coast recovery, agreed that “we’re in this to rebuild the city” and added: “We are not in it to delay for the sake of delay. Are there folks who sometimes hose it up? Absolutely. But I think we’re doing a good job of helping it recover.”

  The disputes come as the costliest part of the recovery begins: restoring water, power, roads, bridges, schools and other public facilities along the Gulf Coast. Agency veterans said the spending will have more impact on the physical rebuilding of the Gulf area than anything else FEMA does over the next decade, possibly eclipsing its role in aiding individual victims of the storm.

  The Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans, for instance, sustained $446 million in storm losses, said Executive Director Marcia St. Martin. But FEMA has committed just $113 million so far.

  FEMA notes that New Orleans promised U.S. environmental regulators $640 million in repairs before Katrina, and that the antiquated system is too big for the Crescent City’s reduced population.

  “That’s what makes a city — if you don’t have water, sewer and drainage, you don’t have a city,” lamented Robert Jackson, spokesman for the sewer board. “The money so far only scratches the surface of the devastation.

  Hat Tip: Susie @ Suburban Guerrilla

More

Tags: Thursday Thirteen, Internet, Hurricane Katrina, FEMA, aid money, Gil H. Jamieson, Daniel A. Craig, Gulf Coast recovery, New Orleans, Islamofascism, George W. Bush, Muslims, women in the media, Support the Troops, defense appropriation bill, Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, Iraq, Afghanistan, Congress, Pentagon, Lower 9th Ward, National Hurricane Canter, 9/11, Max Mayfield, Osama bin Laden, Hezbollah, terrorism, Ann Jones, Taliban, NATO, Christians, American Dream, Martin Niemoller, Germany, Nazis, Rocky Anderson, Utah, Salt Lake Tribune, patriotism, lie, Walter Jones, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Caddam Hussein, Donald Rumsfeld

Recommended Reading - 08/28/06

• Moral relativity and the “war on terrorism” — Kevin @ Preemptive Karma wrote an excellent post about the double standard of the this administration and the expectations of the Right that expect Rep. Cynthia McKinney to apologize to the police officer she had an altercation with earlier this year but accepts the fact that the U.S. has imprisoned and tortured innocent people in Gitmo and elsewhere without apology or explanation and that is just fine.
  

  Apparently in the twisted world of rightwing freaks slapping someone requires an apology but busting out the teeth of a perfectly innocent Lebanese or torturing an innocent Turk, not to mention their imprisonment, is something that those particular victims ought to just suck it up over, be glad that they eventually regained their freedom and to hell with apologizing to them.

• Republicans: Making the world safe for bigots and racists — Jill @ Brilliant at Breakfast writes about recent incidents in the South where black children have been segregated to the back of the school bus and a church has voted not to accept black members and she wonders what has made this sort of thing acceptable as we approach the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, “leaving tens of thousands of black New Orleans residents stranded or dying, while the President of the United States was yukking it up with 2008 Presidential hopeful John McCain over birthday cake.”
  

  You can trot Condoleeza Rice out there till the cows come home, it doesn’t change the fact that when it comes to black Americans who do not serve the Republican party, as far as that party is concerned, they might as well drown.

• Have Some Foil — chicago dyke @ CorrenteWire has a nice piece up about two whistleblowers, who uncovered secret wiretapping in cell phones around the world. They’ve been murdered, of course. More

  Tags: terrorism, Cynthia McKinney, Guantanamo Bay, torture, detainees, rightwingers, Republicans, racism, George W. Bush, Condi Rice, John McCain, Hurricane Katrina, whistleblowers, wiretapping, American Society of Civil Engineers, JonBenet Ramsey, pedophiles, relationships

  1 comments See also in Politics & Causes, In the News, Geekery, Blogging & Other Blogs, The World, 9-11 & Terrorism, Hurricane Katrina, Conspiracy Theories, Natural Disasters, Women's Rights

Recommended Reading - 08/25/06

• ‘Liquid Bombers’ - The Impossible Bomb — A lot of websites have been linking to this explanation as to why the most recent terror plot from the UK could not have worked and why all of the fearmongering and passenger harrassment by the UK and American governments in the airports is unnecessary. I say, read it for yourself and decide for yourself.
• Homeland insecurity 2.0 — Pam @ Pam’s House Blend wrote one of the best reports of what travelling immediately after the latest terrorist plot scare was like that I’ve read.
  

  Again, the PA came on, this time it was for another flight — on Continental — that was boarding. This announcer, I’m not kidding you, went on for about 2-3 minutes warning people about taking on liquids and gels (”liquid” chapstick is a no-no, solid is OK), no coffee or soda will make it on board. Random checks at the gate would be performed. If they find contraband on you, you will be asked to give it up. If you don’t give it up, you’ll not be able to board, he boomed, and you would have to go on a later flight. “Not later today,” he warned, “maybe not even this week…maybe not for a couple of weeks.” OK, at this point, people are laughing, including the two of us. This is ludicrous.

  Our flight is finally called and we board. The plane is about to close up and a couple of late arrivals get on. This time we have a woman taking her sweet time, coming down the aisle with a steaming hot cup of Cinnabon coffee, which she proceeds to balance on an armrest as she casually loads her bag in the overhead bin, blocking the aisle as a couple of people wait behind her.

  Clearly, my friends, US Airways has let on the Cinnabomber.

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A Fear To Give

Humanitarian Aid Charities collecting for Lebanon have run into difficulties collecting in the United States. It’s not that there’s a lack of desire to give, but it turns out there’s a fear to give…apparently, Americans are a little afraid of what their government might have to say if they donate…because after all the NSA is watching and what if you accidently donate to the wrong charity and your name ends up in a database somewhere listing you as a supporter of terrorists? Remember, if you’re doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about.

Some people want to get around that by donating goods, but this complicates matters because it’s expensive to the charities — goods have to be sorted by people which takes time and shipped which also takes time …and also costs the charity money…

Charities prefer that people send money rather than food, medicine or other goods, because in-kind donations force the charities to pay for shipping, delay the arrival of the aid, and saddle relief workers with the task of sorting and distributing items that may not be needed.

The problem, according to relief groups, is that many people who are inclined to write checks for emergency aid and reconstruction in Lebanon are afraid of ending up in some government database of suspected supporters of terrorism.

Arab American leaders say this is one of the unintended consequences of the U.S. government’s crackdown on charities run by Muslims. Though aimed at cutting off illicit funding for terrorist groups, the crackdown has complicated legitimate humanitarian relief efforts in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank.

“Dozens of people have approached me. They want to help, they want to send money to buy medicine, and they’re afraid of the government reaction to their contribution,” said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. “Some do it anyway. They can’t sit idly. But they worry that one day they’ll hear a knock on the door.”

CAIR, which is one of the country’s largest Muslim organizations, reluctantly is encouraging donations of goods, on the grounds that they are better than nothing. Its Web site, http://www.cair-net.org , lists needed items, such as rice, sugar and cooking oil, along with detailed instructions on how to pack and send them.

“We’re forced to go the least effective route, which is sending actual relief supplies, because of the restrictions on, and the problems associated with, sending financial relief to the Middle East,” CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said. “If you send lentils, at least no one can accuse you of supporting terrorism.”

Some other groups, such as the Arab American Institute, are taking the opposite tack, recommending against in-kind donations.

“We’ve been encouraged not to do that by the Lebanese Embassy and others — not to send goods, because it’s inefficient and it takes money to sort it out and decide what to do with it. What’s needed is cash so people on the ground can buy what they need, when they need it,” said James J. Zogby, president of the institute, a Washington-based advocacy group.

[…]

“In the context of the NSA monitoring everything under the sun, people are afraid,” he said, referring to the National Security Agency’s monitoring of international phone calls and e-mails. He added that he has repeatedly urged U.S. officials to publish a list of legitimate charities, to no avail.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. government has shut down three major U.S.-based charities for allegedly funneling support to terrorists, and it has designated more than 40 charities internationally as terrorist financiers. Last week, the Treasury Department barred U.S. citizens from contributing to two more groups: the Philippine and Indonesian branches of the Saudi Arabia-based International Islamic Relief Organization.

Treasury Department spokeswoman Molly Millerwise said that the department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control maintains a “one-stop shopping” list of banned entities, known as the Specially Designated Nationals List, on its Web site, http://www.treasury.gov/ofac .

But she said the department has declined to produce a list of approved charities in the Middle East “for two reasons: No. 1, any charity that we deemed clean, we could not guarantee that it would always remain so. And No. 2, it would put the government in the position of playing favorites.”

[…]

” United Jewish Communities, an umbrella organization for 155 Jewish charities across the country, announced last week that it will raise at least $300 million in emergency aid for Israel. The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington alone intends to raise $10 million toward that goal.

By comparison, the flow of private U.S. donations for humanitarian aid in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories is a mere trickle, estimated by relief groups at a few million dollars. Donors who fear giving to Muslim charities can contribute to the International Committee of the Red Cross or groups such as CARE and Mercy Corps — large, international relief groups that are the major conduit of such aid.

Laila Al-Qatami, a spokeswoman for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said the organization has decided to funnel its Lebanon relief contributions through Mercy Corps, an Oregon-based group that she pointedly noted “is not an Islamic charity.”

But some Muslim groups are intent on proving that they, too, can collect money and distribute it without problems.

Ziad J. Asali, a retired physician in Illinois who heads the American Task Force on Palestine, said his group is giving $20,000 each to Makassed Hospital in Jerusalem and St. Luke’s Hospital in the West Bank city of Nablus. After consulting with the State Department, he said, the task force decided to pay the bills for medical supplies that the hospitals order from their regular suppliers. [“Muslim Charities Say Fear Is Damming Flow of Money” (WashingtonPost.com)]

How free do you feel now? Free to feel as compassionate as you want to whomever you want? You can’t even write a check to help someone without worrying that you might wind up on the wrong side of an interrogation table one day under the current Administration’s game plan…

Tags: Humanitarian Aid, Lebanon, Arab, charity,