"Iraq is not Viet Nam. It's drier and hotter"

Dave over at the Beaver has produced a chilling post about a painful topic: the rape of women by occupying soldiers. The specific reference is today's report on the accusation that five US soldiers raped an Iraqi woman and then killed her family.
Dave notes that the frequency of rape during the Vietnam war was also unreported, due to the myth that rape is the result of sexual desire. Dave describes the real dynamics:

. . . when soldiers start raping the female civilian population of a militarily occupied but politically unstable country it demonstrates a callous disregard for the indiginous population. Far from being there to help them and win them over, the occupied population has been reduced, in the minds of the occupiers, to sub-human, powerless and subject to intimidation.
In a situation where the "enemy" is no longer a clearly defined, uniformed combatant and has the ability to hide amongst the general population, the entire population becomes the enemy . . . This latest case in Beiji, Iraq, if the allegations are true, is a symptom of a greater condition. It is a sign that Iraq is lost . . . Gook? Hadji? What's the difference? The level of indifference to their survival is the same.

Curiouser and curiouser

Ah ha!
So this is how the Conservatives expected to get around the political contribution limits in their own Accountability Act -- they would just declare that their party wasn't making a profit, and keep on pulling the dollars in.
The more Harper insists he is right about the convention registration fee issue, the more it appears that this wasn't an accidental error:

The Conservative party's legal counsel, Paul Lepsoe, said that since "time immemorial" delegate fees have only been considered donations when a convention turns a profit. "If there is a portion that is a contribution, in other words that exceeds the cost of the event, that portion constitutes a political contribution for which a receipt should be issued," he told The Canadian Press earlier this week. "That's longstanding practice that everyone follows, including the Conservative party."

Well, first of all, he is just wrong. As CP points out:

it wasn't a longstanding practice for the NDP, Liberals or the predecessors of the Conservative party . . . the common practice they followed was to disclose convention fees paid by their members as political donations. "I'm absolutely positive we always gave out political receipts, minus the amount paid for meals, but everything else was always treated as a political donation," said Bruck Easton, former president of the Progressive Conservative party who later ran unsuccessfully as a Liberal. "That was quite frankly an important part of getting people to our convention."

And second, profitability has nothing to do with it -- or, at least, it never did before:

. . . the Conservative argument that they didn't need to disclose the fees because the convention didn't make a profit doesn't hold water. "If you carried that logic forward, you could argue that if you made a contribution to a political party and the party was in the hole for the year in question, it wouldn't necessarily need to report all the donations that were the difference from being in the hole and not in the hole," said Seidle. "The important thing is there is money in, and a service out . . . it's a kind of income and expense issue."

The ineptitude of the hastily-written, partisan-based Accountability Actis also coming into focus:

. . . University of Windsor Professor Heather MacIvor said she was stunned to hear the party's explanation on failing to disclose the fees. MacIvor recently wrote a critique of the government's new financing laws, part of its much vaunted Federal Accountability Act.
'Wait a minute folks, you're trying to say you're cleaning up politics and you brought in this seriously draconian tightening of the contribution rules, and now we find out you didn't disclose a few million dollars of contributions, which every other political party in this country has treated as a contribution for the purpose of the contribution rules?' MacIvor said. 'That's not on.'

Well, darn it -- so much for that plan, eh?

Baseball

This is why I love baseball.
The Indians were up 7-0 after seven innings, yet the Reds came back and won the game with a bottom-of-the-9th grand slam.

"That was a game we probably shouldn't have won," Dunn acknowledged. "We had no business winning that game, but everybody just kept grinding and grinding."

Is there any other sport that can turn around like baseball can?

The American Way

Glenn Greenwald is being sarcastic in this description:

The American way is to place blind faith in our political officials and let them operate in complete secrecy, especially when it comes to spying on American citizens on U.S. soil. Anyone who disagrees must want to help Al Qaeda commit terrorist acts against Americans. What other reason would anyone object?

Unfortunately, for millions and millions of Americans, this now describes their simple truth.
It is so sad to see this happening. America used to be a nation that was proud of its moral, legal and constitutional standards, a "shining city on the hill" whose people led the world in their respect for law, truth and justice, and who had an independent spirit which scorned obesiance to authority.
America was never totally consistent, of course -- they never totally achieved their ideal, but what nation ever does? In their hearts, Americans always thought of themselves as some combination of Cool Hand Luke, Tom Joad, Harry Callahan, Rooster Cogburn, Rocky Balboa.
Now they have Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld telling them all the time to be afraid, be very afraid. And millions of Americans believe them. Today we see the craven Wall Street Journal following orders to join the pile-on of the New York Times for publishing the story about government searching of bank acounts:

Would the Journal have published the story had we discovered it as the Times did, and had the Administration asked us not to? Speaking for the editorial columns, our answer is probably not . . . The obligation of the press is to take the government seriously when it makes a request not to publish. Is the motive mainly political? How important are the national security concerns? And how do those concerns balance against the public's right to know? The problem with the Times is that millions of Americans no longer believe that its editors would make those calculations in anything close to good faith. We certainly don't . . .

Interesting, isn't it, to see how the good Germans talked themselves into believing their government was right and their constitution was wrong.

Great line of the day

Did you see Al Gore on the Daily Show? Wasn't he terrific?
This is from his new interview in Rolling Stone:

Right now we are borrowing huge amounts of money from China to buy huge amounts of oil from the most unstable region of the world, and to bring it here and burn it in ways that destroy the habitability of the planet. That is nuts! We have to change every aspect of that.

The law is the law

Swish! Nothing but net! Slam dunk.
Finally, the US Supreme Court has said the law is the law. An expensive decision - the Guantanamo inmates have paid for this decision with four years of their lives:

. . . a provision of the Geneva Conventions known as Common Article 3 applies to the Guantánamo detainees and is enforceable in federal court for their protection. The provision requires humane treatment of captured combatants and prohibits trials except by "a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized people." The opinion made it clear that while this provision does not necessarily require the full range of protections of a civilian court or a military court-martial, it does require observance of protections for defendants that are missing from the rules the administration has issued for military commissions. The flaws the court cited were the failure to guarantee the defendant the right to attend the trial and the prosecution's ability under the rules to introduce hearsay evidence, unsworn testimony, and evidence obtained through coercion . . .
in finding that the federal courts still have jurisdiction to hear cases filed before this year by detainees at Guantánamo Bay, the justices put back on track for decision a dozen cases in the lower courts here that challenge basic rules and procedures governing life for the hundreds of people confined at the United States naval base there . . .
In ruling that the Congressional "authorization for the use of military force," passed in the days immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, cannot be interpreted to legitimize the military commissions, the ruling poses a direct challenge to the administration's legal justification for its secret wiretapping program . . .
in ruling that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applies to the Guantánamo detainees, the court rejected the administration's view that the article does not cover followers of Al Qaeda. The decision potentially opened the door to challenges, by those held by the United States anywhere in the world, to treatment that could be regarded under the provision as inhumane.
Justice Stevens said that because the charge against Mr. Hamdan, conspiracy, was not a violation of the law of war, it could not be the basis for a trial before a military panel.

Yes, I should think that charging someone in a military court with an offense that is not a military crime should be thrown out.

A Nelson Moment

Ha ha!

The Conservative party may have illegally accepted millions in unreported donations last year because it didn't understand political financing laws

Great line of the day

From Wolcott: Rush Corks His Bat

Put your money where your mouth is

OK, admittedly not everyone who supports the Iraq War is in a position to sign up and go fight it -- they may have other priorities, or babies, or maybe they can't afford the loss in pay, or something equally valid.
But do they have money? If so, here's a great idea.
In response to this AP article "Safer Iraq said needed for US investment", Juan Cole has a suggestion for all those right-wingnuts who say things are going better in Iraq than the media coverage shows:

I think we ought to hold their feet to the fire. Every time someone says that in reality things are just fine in Iraq, we should ask them how much of their own, personal money they have invested in a private business enterprise in Iraq. The Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce can help them with specific investment opportunities.
I think we should exclude buying real estate or investing in mercen . . . I mean US contracting. Also, it has to be an investment in Arab Iraq, not the Kurdistan Regional confederacy. But, if things are going so great, then surely this is the time to put $100,000 into, say, a textile factory in . . . I don't know, Baquba. Most of these politicians and bloggers on the Right could afford such an investment, and most wouldn't even be too badly off if they lost the whole wad.
So, Fox Cable News anchors, rightwing bloggers, smug pundits, etc., etc.-- Pony up. How much have you put on the line here to back up your Dr. Pangloss-style rose colored glasses? And, if you haven't put at least a few tens of thousands of dollars into a private Iraqi business, then you do not have a leg to stand on.

Do US politicians have to declare their investments? If so, it should be easy to find our whether the Republican politicians who say they support the war and the indefinite American occupation of Iraq are now buying shares on the Iraq stock exchange and investing in Iraq businesses and companies.

Oops, forgot to post this earlier

If thisis true -- "A study found that in a disturbing number of cases, embarrassing 'senior moments' such as forgetting a recent conversation or drawing a blank on someone's name may really be a sign of Alzheimer's after all" -- then I've had Alzheimers all my life.
And I'm sure some of my readers would agree...

Great photo of the day

^^^Blogging used to be exactly like this, but better.^^^

The Poorman picks the perfect illustration for his post about blogofascism. That's exactly what those blasted blogofascists look like, too -- except for the ones that look like kittens. . .

The story behind the story

My dad used to use the phrase "the story behind the story" -- often, when we were talking about the news of the day, he would ask "So what's the story behind the story?" -- meaning we had to look not only at the news story itself, but at why that particular story came to be cosidered as newsworthy.
This weekend, I wondered how come it took the traditional media weeks to cover the Downing Street memo and the Plame leak investigation, but both Newsweek and Time were all over a trivial column on The New Republic website in less than 24 hours.
Billmon writes a perceptive post explaining the swiftboating of Kos this weekend:

. . . I suspect the real objective here is to try to scare away the Democratic pols who have been cozying up to Kos and the liberal blogosphere. The sight of all those powerbrokers -- Harry Reid, etc. -- lining up to kiss Kos's ring in Vegas must have really set the klaxons wailing at DLC HQ . . . The Lieberman Dems don't hate and fear Kos and the Daily Kos "community" because they are too far to the left. They hate them because they represent an emerging power center within the Democratic Party that they don't control -- what's more, one that is now much closer to the public mainstream on the central issue of our time (the Iraq War) than they are.
The overriding concern for the neolibs, I think, is not that Kos and the netroot activists will lead the party off to the far-left fringes, but rather that they are willing, even eager, to form alliances with conservative nationalists like Jim Webb (the Va. Senate candidate) who've been forced out of the GOP because of their opposition to the neocons and their insane schemes. From Marty Peretz's point of view, this is very bad. Left unchecked, it could even pose a threat to the sacred alliance with Israel.
It's not that Kos (or Webb, for that matter) are outspoken critics of the special relationship. Far from it. But it is clear that the constituencies they represent, or hope to represent, are much more skeptical about U.S. intervention in the Middle East than the Democratic old guard -- which, let's face it, is practically welded to the Israel lobby. Even worse, this is all happening at a time when the Iraq quagmire is making the costs of our imperial role in the region painfully clear.
Add in the cheerful brutality with which Kos and Jerome have skewered the consultants and the DLC Dems, the primary defeat now looming over Joe Lieberman's head, and the rice bowls that could be broken if the old system of campaign graft is abandoned, and it's easy to understand why the long knives are out.
Whether the grown ups (Peretz, Lieberman, Hillary) actually set the Swiftboat in motion, or just watched approvingly ("Who shall rid us of this meddlesome blogger?") as their hatchet boys did what comes natural, is almost irrelevant. The important thing to understand is that we have reached the point where the Dinos and their media allies are willing to use Rovian tactics against anyone who challenges their entrenched position -- even someone like Kos, who is hardly the second coming of Henry Wallace or George McGovern.
Whether that's good or bad for the Kossaks I don't know -- I suppose it depends on how much credence you give to Gandhi's old saw: "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." In the real world -- and in imperial America, too -- the truth is that sometimes they ignore you, then ridicule you, then fight you and crush you like an overripe eggplant. We'll see if that's true this time. Either way, though, it looks like the battle between the netroots and dino Dems is going to get very down and dirty indeed.

This gives the whole fight a larger frame, and in an odd way, makes its very triviality more meaningful.

"We're here, we're queer"

We have participated in Gay Pride parades with our daughter, and they are amazingly energetic and joyful events, combining an incredible sense of individual freedom with the power of group solidarity -- there's no other event quite like it in the world, really.
I couldn't find many photos online yet of Toronto's gay pride parade today -- except for these small ones on CTV's site -- so here are some from the rest of the world.

Paris


Madrid


Mexico City


San Salvador


Panama City


Lisbon


New York


Kolkata, India


Atlanta


Seattle


San Francisco

Keep up the fair work

Well, finally -- here's some good news from Iraq.
Instead of killing 30 innocent people a month at checkpoints, American soldiers have adopted new procedures.
And so they were able to reduce the slaughter to 12 innocents a month by January this year.
And now its down to just four innocent civilians a month!
Hooray!
The Reuters story says:

Since the U.S. invasion three years ago, shootings by U.S. troops have been a source of complaint among Iraqis, despite repeated attempts to ensure both civilians and troops are aware of the procedures to follow and danger signs to monitor.
New efforts were being made to inform Iraqis of checkpoint and convoy procedures and to train troops, the briefing note said. Soldiers were also being given new equipment, including lasers, to attract drivers' attention without opening fire.
This year 12 percent of escalation of force incidents, not all of which involve opening fire, resulted in serious injury or death. It was not clear how many incidents there were last year.
One senior military intelligence source has said there were about 4,000 such incidents last year, but that could not be confirmed. Of those, the source said, less than 2 percent were later found to have involved an actual threat to the troops.

Forgive my snark, but how else can anyone respond? I am sure in the end there will not be a single family in Iraq unaffected by the horror and cruelty of this occupation.

Ave, Kos, morituri te salutamus

I, for one, welcome our new Internet overlord, The Keyboard Kingpin, aka Markos Moulitsas Zuniga.
The quicker he takes over everything, the better. He couldn't possibly do any worse than Bush and Cheney, and at least he's got military experience.