Sept. 11 Unleashed American Barbarism

Creators Syndicate – What if eight years ago the World Trade Center had been leveled by a small nuclear bomb that took out most of lower Manhattan, as well? How many millions of innocent civilians would we have killed in retaliation? Would we still be a free society, or would Dick Cheney have attained the power of a demented king, having moved on from snooping on our phone calls and outing honest CIA agents to destroying the last vestiges of the rule of law?

As assaults on a society go, the Sept. 11 attacks, which left 3,000 dead and are sure to be described in this anniversary week as being among the greatest of historical outrages, were something less than that, given the world's experience with the ravages of war. The countless Russians and the 6 million Jews killed by those so finely educated Germans come to mind. The 3.4 million Vietnamese, mostly rice farmers, whom Robert McNamara admitted to having helped kill with his carpet-bombing of their country, are a forgotten footnote. Yet we who have never experienced such carnage on our home front all too easily poke out tens of thousands of eyes for each lost one of our own.

Surely two planes crashing into office buildings and another hitting the Pentagon doesn't compare to the leveling of every major city in Japan with conventional bombing, capped off by the mass murder of hundreds of thousands more at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Speaking of eyes lost, mark the words of Hiroshima's mayor two years ago: "That fateful summer, 8:15 a.m. The roar of a B-29 breaks the morning calm. A parachute opens in the blue sky. Then suddenly, a flash, an enormous blast — silence — hell on Earth. The eyes of young girls watching the parachute were melted."

We assumed that the Japanese people would readily forgive us, and having been raised in the spirit of total obedience to their emperor, they accommodated our occupation quite well, even injecting industrial-grade silicon into their women's breasts to satisfy the erotic appetites of our soldiers.

Americans who blithely claim the moral high ground with every pledge of allegiance to a flag that, because it is American, is assumed to have never been sullied by imperial greed or moral contradiction expect no less than instant and full forgiveness for our "mistakes." Only last month, four decades after he led the massacre of 500 villagers in My Lai, Vietnam, did former Army Lt. William Calley express "regret" for his crimes. He served no time in prison for the point-blank shooting of toddlers, thanks to the commutation of his sentence by Richard Nixon, who might have been anticipating his own need for a presidential pardon.

In blind and wrathful retaliation for Sept. 11, we wreaked havoc on Iraq, a nation that our then-president knew had not attacked us, and we continue to slaughter peasants in Afghanistan who aren't able to find Manhattan on a map.

We, a people whose nation has never suffered a long and widespread occupation, easily gave vent to our most barbaric impulses, assuming the absolute right to arrest and torture anyone anywhere in the world without revealing his identity, let alone respecting a single one of those God-given rights that we claim for ourselves alone. And even when we identify the few we hold responsible for the attacks on our soil, we refuse them public and fair trials even after years of torturing them.

But we do have a saving grace for our experiment in democracy — although unfortunately it did not exist in the Supreme Court or Congress as a barrier to an imperial vice presidency. It is the power of the lone whistle-blower of conscience, occasionally given voice in what remains of our free press and which can influence presidential elections, as happened quite dramatically this last time around.

There are those like Joe Wilson, who exposed presidential fraud masquerading as national security concern over bogus Iraqi purchases of uranium from Niger, and more recently the truth-telling of Ali H. Soufan, a former FBI agent and lead interrogator of terrorists.

In Sunday's New York Times, Soufan, who was involved in obtaining much reliable information from prisoners before they were tortured, observed that the recently released memos cited by Cheney to back his argument that torture was efficient actually "fail to show that the techniques stopped even a single imminent threat of terrorism."

So, Cheney is again proved wrong, but if there had been a larger attack on Sept. 11, I doubt whether many free souls would be around now to tell him so.

It took me awhile to finally figure out what was *wrong* with THE PRICE OF FREEDOM--so far--and last night I told my wife what it was:

"The reason why I keep having PROBLEMS with the storyline so *far* is because I keep trying to over *extend* it and thus--that's why I'm so saddled right now. I need to end it right where it was and move on to the next half of the book."

Easier said than done. I've looked at the last 20 pages--prior to page 1,864--and realized that I needed to cut it right then and there. But I also need to get the whole gang together and get the hell out of the outskirts surrounding the ruined township of Wynne, Arkansas, itself. (Keep in mind-this is the mid-23rd century; where the world we once knew does not *exist* anymore.)

So I'm going to review what's written and *try* to change the direction of the storyline itself. It's not easy because of what's been going on for the past year.

I've been dealing with lots of severe stress, depression, loss of the only place we knew for the past 8 years and a lack of solid income.

I found out last night that our state unemployment is now 9.2%--with Snohomish County's rate at an unchanged 9.6%.

While we lost 400 jobs in the past six months--in the aerospace industry--it doesn't *begin* to address the deeper issue--the more COMPLEX problem of the nation's battered unemployment rates: JOBS.

We've lost 6.9 million since last year's Great October Meltdown and there are few signs that any of those jobs are coming back.

To top things off--?

Health care costs have OUTSTRIPPED wages by a factor of three to one. (131% over the past ten years compared to the increase of wages at 38% during the same period.)

And what pisses me OFF, is that the Republican Party has yet to embrace ANY kind of health care reform--proposed either by Obama or the Democratic Party in its entirety.

A panel of three Democrats and three Republicans spent WEEKS coming up with a suitable health care plan and only ONE Democrat has--thus far--come out to the front and voiced support for it.

WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE OTHER **3** REPUBLICANS WHOM SIGNED OFF ON THIS MEASURE???

WHY HAVEN'T THEY COME TO THE FOREFRONT TO OFFER SUPPORT OF THIS MEASURE???

I'll tell you WHY:

The GOP doesn't WANT health care reform--PERIOD--for anyone: be it for small business, working families, or seniors.

They would rather *stall* out the whole process and then CLAIM that they were "only looking out for the average American"--when it comes to the 2010 elections.

Or some coughed up political bullshit.

The next time you come across a Republican rep or senator from your state, ask them this:

"Why aren't you REPRESENTING me or my fellow Americans? Why aren't you *working* towards a suitable health care plan that will fix what has been *ailing* this nation for decades? Why are you still sticking your neck out for special interest groups tied to the health care and insurance industry?"

Betcha $100 dollars they won't have any answer. They are too stiff-lipped and prideful to *acknowledge* that our health care system needs a serious overhaul. But they are too damned arrogant to actually come to the forefront and *address* this problem.

Shocked, shocked to find socialism in America

East Otis, Mass. – The less some Americans know, the more strident and voluble they become. Take socialism. The wailing about it over healthcare reform proves my proposition.

Shrill critics menacingly brandish "socialism" to terrify the unthinking, forgetting – or willfully ignoring – that while the United States is capitalist, it's also hip deep in various modes of socialism.

Republicans apparently don't know that it was their beloved President Theodore Roosevelt who in 1912 proposed national health insurance for all.

Some American critics of socialized medicine cite nightmarish accounts of bungled medical treatment abroad, boasting that America has the best medical system in the world.

As a foreign correspondent, I lived in Britain, Germany, Israel, and the Soviet Union and did not discover any sapping of a nation's vital essences because the public enjoyed publicly funded national health insurance.

As a US citizen who lived more than two decades abroad, I found socialized national health insurance programs are often more compassionate and charitable than what I have seen with profit-driven, private insurance companies in the United States.

Some years ago my former wife took my sons on a driving tour of Britain and became involved in an accident. My elder son had a badly broken leg and was taken to a hospital for six weeks until his leg healed. Although I didn't live in Britain at the time, the British National Insurance system paid all his hospital and doctor bills. When I offered to reimburse the hospital, the British charitably declined and only charged me $35 for a crutch my son used to hobble aboard a plane home to America.

A decade ago, a federal report shocked the nation by suggesting that our modern medical system was one of the leading causes of death in America. It called for cutting the rates of medical mistakes in half within five years. But it's only gotten worse. Today, preventable medical injuries kill some 200,000 Americans each year.

Earlier this year, a friend entered a suburban Chicago hospital to have a gall bladder removed. The surgeon was scheduled to go on vacation immediately after finishing the operation. In the process of making a large incision, the doctor unknowingly nicked the lower intestine and punctured the aorta. My friend nearly bled to death before the surgeon discovered his error.

Where is the statistical evidence that private healthcare outperforms national health insurance programs? The United States ranks 37th on health outcomes, according to the World Health Organization, and it has one of the highest infant mortality rates among developed countries, suggesting that socialized medicine may afford better patient care in some situations.

Opponents of the White House healthcare plans deliberately distort the extent of government involvement in such programs, when the only thing to be "socialized" was the so-called public option health insurance plan – and that may be dropped. Doctors and hospitals would remain private. Critics appear to have deliberately polarized public opinion to scuttle President Obama's initiatives.

Meanwhile, members of Congress enjoy "cradle to grave" socialist medical and retirement benefits that outstrip those of the old Soviet Central Committee members.

Many thousands of the poorest Americans and illegal aliens already have access to taxpayer-funded socialized medicine and hospitals through existing Medicaid benefits. One physician tells me that Medicaid recipients get free hospital care plus stipends at taxpayers' expense. Yet tens of millions of working Americans whose taxes subsidize Medicaid have no access to any health insurance of their own.

Particularly lame are the complaints of healthcare critics in the southeastern US who benefit from the regional socialism of the Tennessee Valley Authority, a government-owned-and-operated supplier of electricity for tens of millions.

America's Social Security program is Bismarckian socialism. Medicare, especially with its prescription drug benefit program is socialistic. Government aid to parochial schools is sleight-of-hand socialism.

Socialism's most vocal critics are often beneficiaries of corporate welfare with all its perks: expense account meals, free NFL box seats, free corporate cellphone use. One firm for which I worked held foreign correspondent meetings in Rome, enabling the executives to visit tailors and shop for Christmas presents in Italy. Exploiting US tax codes, corporate America has long enjoyed its own brand of socialism subsidized by taxpayers.

Like most Americans, I am not overly keen on socialism. History shows that it can curb important personal freedoms and stultify entire economies. But it is not inherently evil. And by the way, if you enjoy your 40-hour workweek, with weekends off, you owe those to an earlier generation of socialist-leaning labor leaders who championed that and so much more that Americans now take for granted.

Diversionary Tactics on Both Sides

Creators Syndicate – Instead of a debate on the merits of President Obama's health care proposals or congressional Democrats' failure to produce a bill that has any chance of bipartisan support, we've been diverted this week by a disgraceful sideshow. Thanks to pundits and bloggers and political opportunists of all stripes, Rep. Joe Wilson's (R-S.C.) cry "You lie" became the shot heard 'round the world. Now, we have the unpleasant spectacle of the president's most fawning supporters suggesting anyone who opposes his policies must be racist, while the president's opponents defend discourtesy as a badge of honor.

Let's take a deep breath and go back to what actually happened in the House chamber when the president addressed a joint session of Congress to promote health care reform. Ironically, President Obama had just finished declaring that critics were telling lies about his health care proposals. He referred to "bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any costs," and then said that the best example was "prominent politicians" who had accused the administration of planning to "set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens." He then went on to say that the claim was "a lie, plain and simple."

I can't remember the last president who called his opponents liars — at least to their faces. And if Joe Wilson hadn't forgotten he was on the floor of the House of Representatives, not a schoolyard or bar, we might actually have seen criticism of the president for his over-the-top rhetoric, not to mention a focus on the misstatements, exaggerations, and downright dishonesty of much of what the president said that night. Instead, we're all talking about Joe Wilson and whether he's a racist or a hero. In my book, he's neither.

Former President Jimmy Carter's assertion that "there's an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president," is a calumny of the first order. Americans are the least racist people in the world — that's not my judgment; it's born out by every cross-national assessment of racial attitudes taken in the last several decades. Does that mean there are no racists in America? Of course not — about one in 10 Americans holds some prejudicial views about people of other races, a figure that has remained relatively constant over the last few decades. But, bigotry comes in all colors. In a 2007 Pew Research Center poll, one of the few studies that measured interracial attitudes among minorities as well as whites, about 8 percent of whites harbored animus towards blacks, while 10 percent of blacks held similarly negative views of whites.

Calling somebody a racist has become the new McCarthyism — not much different than calling someone a communist, without any evidence, during the Cold War. It's a dangerous game — and one that should discredit those who hurl the epithet every bit as much as it harms the one at whom it's aimed. Just as McCarthyism undermined the legitimate fight against actual communists, calling everyone who doesn't agree with an African-American president a racist will make it harder to fight real racism if it occurs.

I'm still not willing to let Rep. Wilson totally off the hook, however. He behaved badly and there is no excuse for it. He owed an apology not just to the president — to whom he did apologize almost immediately — but to his colleagues as well. I learned long ago that the best way to get beyond a mistake — and name-calling during a presidential speech certainly qualifies — is to say you're sorry, without excuses, exceptions or justifications. He should have put the matter to rest with a one-minute speech on the floor of the House the morning after the outburst. Maybe he wouldn't have become a folk hero to those on the right who favor guerilla theater, but if he had apologized to his colleagues for his discourteous behavior, maybe we could have spent the week talking President Obama's misrepresentations instead of Joe Wilson's name-calling.

IT'S NOT ALL RACISM

LOS ANGELES -- Jimmy Carter once promised he would never lie to us. But he has been known to exaggerate a bit. I think he did that in proclaiming that opposition to President Obama and his agenda of change is "overwhelmingly" because of the president's race.

"Change" is the key word here. There are certainly people out there who cannot stand the idea of an African-American living in the White House. But there are a lot more, I believe, who really think this guy is going to ruin the country they love, or the country they imagine or remember.

Some of them are just nuts. But there is certainly nothing new about that. Populism and suspicion (or hatred) of real or perceived elites is as old as the Republic. If Obama were a white Harvard Law School graduate, there would be just as much anger and fear about change. The passion and paranoia might not be as deep, but it would be there. After all, Richard Hofstadter wrote "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life" and "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" in the early 1960s.

My own memories of the dark side of populism do not go back to angry farmers in the 19th century or Father Coughlin in the mid-20th century, but covering George Wallace's presidential campaigns was a pretty good primer. What I remember was my introduction to nutcake radio in the 1972 campaign.

As a New York Times reporter, I drove across the Florida panhandle, from Tallahassee to Pensacola, listening to the beginnings of talk radio. On WMEN, 1330 on the dial, I listened to "Call and Comment," billed as "Tallahassee's most listened-to show." A caller began: "I want to talk about all these candidates down here ... About this fellow Edmund Muskie. I heard his name is really Muskovich and he came from Russia."

The host replied: "Well, what if he is a Russian? Would that affect your vote?"

"Possibly," said the caller. "Possibly."

"There you have it, listeners. The question is whether Muskie's real name is Muskovich and did he come from Russia? The lines are open. ..."

Down the road, I switched to "What's on Your Mind?" on WFTW in Fort Walton Beach. There callers were debating whether a President John Lindsay would name Huey Newton of the Black Panthers as secretary of defense and Fidel Castro as ambassador to the United Nations.

Ah, freedom of speech! Between them, Muskie, a senator from Maine, and Lindsay, the mayor of New York, both white men, got 16 percent of the vote. Gov. George Wallace of Alabama carried every county in Florida. That was also the time that produced Jimmy Carter, who was then governor of Georgia, projecting himself as the anti-Wallace.

I assume that there are still and will continue to be enough angry people to keep Rush Limbaugh living in the style to which he has become accustomed. The Rusty DePasses we will always have with us. DePass, in case you missed it, is a South Carolina Republican activist who used Facebook to comment on a gorilla escaping from a zoo, saying, "I'm sure it's just one of Michelle's ancestors, probably harmless."

I don't think he meant Michelle Pfeiffer.

The DePass quote was used in London's Financial Times, where writer Toby Harnden offered an opinion I agreed with: "Has America really turned around and stumbled back into the sulphurous swamps of racial hatred? The short answer is no."

The long answer is that we have come a long way out of the swamp. My students at the University of Southern California often look at me in disbelief when I talk about race in "the good old days." And now? Racists there still are, but there are many fewer of them and they are aging. Nuts there still are, and their numbers may be flaring at the moment. But if the economy continues to look better -- and more importantly, feel better to "ordinary" Americans -- if health care is settled as an American right, if Obama is clever enough to find a road out of Afghanistan, those numbers and the passions of the day will be seen as more of a blip than a growing movement.

THE IMPOTENT DICTATOR

NEW YORK--"For five years Mr. Karzai was my president," Ashraf Ghani, an opposition candidate, bemoaned after widespread reports that incumbent Hamid Karzai had used fraud on a massive scale to steal the election. "Now how many Afghans will consider him their president?"

Not many. In a country where civil war is the national pastime and five-year-old boys learn how to fire an AK-47, this is not good. But Ghani is asking the wrong question. The real question is, how many Americans will continue to see Karzai as viable--and be willing to continue to pay the price of propping him up?

California Senator Diane Feinstein used to support Karzai. "Afghanistan is our beachhead on our war on terror. We cannot lose it, or we lose our war on terror," she said in 2002. What a difference seven years makes! "I do not believe we can build a democratic state in Afghanistan," she finally admitted last week.

Americans are finally waking up. Afghanistan, most people finally understand, is not "the good war" but the stupid one. We can't win. Even worse, there's nothing to win. The historical parallels aren't perfect--they never are--but it's hard not to think of the cost of propping up the corrupt Diem regime and its successors in South Vietnam when you see Hamid Karzai prancing around in Kabul, never an arm's length away from U.S. Special Forces commandos. You see, Karzai's own troops can't be trusted not to kill him.

A July headline in The Christian Science Monitor asked an intentionally hilarious question: "Afghan Election: Can Karzai's Rivals Close the Gap?" Not with the way Karzai stuffs ballot boxes!

There were at least 800 fake polling sites on Afghanistan's election day--places that "existed only on paper," reported The New York Times. "We think that about 15 percent of the polling sites never opened on Election Day," the paper quoted a "senior Western diplomat." "But they still managed to report thousands of ballots for Karzai."

Also, "Mr. Karzai's supporters also took over approximately 800 [additional] legitimate polling centers and used them to fraudulently report tens of thousands of additional ballots for Mr. Karzai."

Actually, make that hundreds of thousands. In "Kandahar...preliminary results indicate that more than 350,000 ballots have been turned in to be counted. But Western officials estimated that only about 25,000 people actually voted there."

Overall "pro-Karzai ballots," reports the Times, "may exceed the people who actually voted by a factor of 10."

The truth is, there's nothing new here. Ashraf Ghani may have been the only Afghan to have ever considered Karzai legitimate. To most Afghans, Karzai has always been a curious "impotent dictator," propped up by U.S. military force but with insufficient funding to exert his power outside the capital Kabul. In the provinces, tribal warlords fight the Taliban for control.

Looking at Karzai's resume, it's hard to imagine what George W. Bush and his "pet Afghan" Zalmay Khalilzad were thinking when they appointed Karzai as the U.S. puppet "interim president" of occupied Afghanistan in late 2001. Granted, all three were oilmen--Karzai and Khalilzad had both worked as consultants for the energy corporation Unocal, which tried to build an oil-gas pipeline across Afghanistan in the mid-1990s.

But Karzai lacked both integrity--as a Taliban official in 1997, Karzai was caught embezzling government funds and forced to flee the country--and support. He was a Pashtun, and the new Northern Alliance government was predominantly Tajik. Always essential in a nation permanently at war, Karzai had no military bona fides, having rarely seen a shot fired in anger.

Karzai's drive to consolidate power since 2001 has been marked by trickery, intimidation, ballot stuffing and systemic corruption. One "election" has followed another. But none have been conducted legitimately.

Perhaps democracy was too much to hope for in a nation whose infrastructure had been degraded to the 14th century. There was no census, no house addresses, no mail service. How could a fair election be held?

Karzai didn't even try.

At a June 2002 loya jurga (grand assembly) to choose the new head of state, Karzai got his U.S. masters to lean on his main rival, former king, Mohammed Zahir Shah. Zahir Shah withdrew, as did 70 of his delegates. They did the same to ex-President Burhanuddin Rabbani, guaranteeing Karzai a phony mandate.

"Voting for the loya jirga has been plagued by violence and vote-buying," said UN envoy to Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi at the time. "There were attempts at manipulation, violence, unfortunately. Money was used, threats were used."

"This is not a democracy, it is a rubber stamp. Everything has already been decided by the powerful ones," added the Women's Affairs minister.

On October 9, 2004, Karzai "won" his first "democratic election." As before, Karzai's goons stacked the deck. Unsympathetic elections officials were kidnapped. The UN concluded that "that fraud had occurred, particularly ballot-box stuffing" in the 2004 election. The UN "noted that some estimates have said that 10 percent to 15 percent of the 11.5 million registered voters, in Afghanistan and among Afghan refugees abroad, may be registered more than once," reported The New York Times at the time. The three-member committee that counted the ballots were all appointed by Karzai.

Those who can't win, cheat. Without the U.S., Karzai would never have won power in Afghanistan. He certainly wouldn't have kept it.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported May 18, 2009 that Zalmay Khalilzad "could assume a powerful, unelected position inside the Afghan government under a plan he is discussing with Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, according to senior American and Afghan officials."

Bush's corrupt oilmen are still having fun looting Afghanistan. The question for us Americans is: why should anyone die to help them?

WE HAVE MET THE NAZIS, AND THEY ARE US.

NEW YORK--Nazis. Americans are Nazis. We are Nazis.

Godwin's Law be damned--it's impossible to read the newly-released CIA report on the torture of Muslim prisoners without thinking of the Third Reich.

Sadism exists in every culture. A century ago, for example, Western adventurers who visited Tibet reported that the authorities in Lhasa, that supposed capital of pacifism, publicly gouged out criminals' eyes and yanked out their tongues. But Nazi atrocities were stylistically distinct from, say, the Turkish genocide of the Armenians or the Rwandan massacres of the early 1990s. German war crimes were characterized by methodical precision, the application of "rational" technology to increase efficiency, the veneer of legality and the perversion of medical science.

Nazi crimes were also marked by public indifference, which amounted to tacit support. Here and now, only 25 percent of Americans told the latest Pew Research poll that they believe torture is always wrong.

"The CIA's secret interrogation program operated under strict rules, and the rules were dictated from Washington with the painstaking, eye-glazing detail beloved by any bureaucracy," observed The New York Times. We have much in common with the Germans.

"In July 2002," the declassified report reveals, a CIA officer "reportedly used a 'pressure point' technique: with both of his hands on the detainee's neck, [he] manipulated his fingers to restrict the detainee's carotid artery." Another agent "watched his eyes to the point that the detainee would nod and start to pass out; then...shook the detainee to wake him. This process was repeated for a total of three applications on the detainee."

The CIA's rinse-lather-repeat approach to torture is reminiscent of Dr. Sigmund Rascher's experiments at Dachau and a parallel project conducted by the Japanese Imperial Army's infamous Unit 731 in occupied Manchuria in 1942-43. Rascher, who was tried for war crimes after World War II, froze or lashed detainees nearly to death, then revived them over and over. German and Japanese doctors developed detailed protocols governing the severity of exposure to which inmates could be subjected--protocols seized by U.S. occupation forces and turned over to the OSS, predecessor of the CIA.

(Or, to be more accurate, so it is. Bush publicly banned torture in 2006, but we know it was still going on as of 2007. Obama supposedly banned it again earlier this year, but then his CIA director Leon Panetta told Congress the agency reserves the right to keep doing it. Until the entire secret prison network is dismantled and every single prisoner released, it would be absurd to assume that torture is not continuing.)

Among the verbal treasures in the CIA papers is the "Water Dousing" section of the "Guidelines on Medical and Psychological Support to Detainee Rendition, Interrogation and Detention," which "allow for water to be applied using either a hose connected to tap water, or a bottle or similar container as the water source." Ah, the glorious war on terror. Detainees may be soaked in water as cold as 41 degrees Fahrenheit for as long as 20 minutes--no longer, no colder.

For the record, the CIA's medical expertise is about as reliable as its legal and moral sense. Forty-one degrees is bracingly cold; 41 was the temperature of the Hudson River was when US Airways Flight 1549 crashed into it earlier this year. (Remember the ice floes?) "Generally, a person can survive in 41-degree water for 10, 15 or 20 minutes," Dr. Christopher McStay, an emergency room physician at New York City's Bellevue Hospital told Scientific American magazine.

Like its Gestapo and SS antecedents, the CIA is highly bureaucratic. CIA employees were informed that "Advance Headquarters approval is required to use any physical pressures [against prisoners]." And those permissions came from the very top of the chain of command: the White House, which ordered the Office of Legal Counsel and other legal branches of the federal government to draft "CYA" memoranda. The memos, wrote Joshua L. Dratel in his introduction to "The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib," a compilation of memos authorizing torture of Muslim detainees reflect "a wholly result-oriented system in which policy makers start with an objective and work backward."

Also reminiscent of Nazism is the utter absence of firewalls that has come to characterize the behavior of top government officials. Totalitarian regimes like Nazi Germany corrupt the judiciary by using the courts to carry out political policy. Beginning under Bush and now under Obama, judicial independence has been eradicated.

On August 28th The New York Times reported: "In July, Leon E. Panetta, the CIA director, tried to head off the investigation [of the CIA's torture program], administration officials said. He sent the CIA's top lawyer, Stephen W. Preston, to [the Department of] Justice to persuade aides to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to abandon any plans for an inquiry." There's a term for this: Obstruction of Justice. You're not supposed to try to influence the outcome of an investigation. It was count six of the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon.

To Holder's credit, he has appointed a special prosecutor. To his discredit, the focus of the investigation is narrow: he will only go after officials who went beyond the Bush Administration's over-the-top torture directives (which allow, as seen above, freezing people to death). He does not plan to go after the worst criminals, who are the Bush Administration lawyers and officials, including Bush and Cheney themselves, who ordered the war crimes--much less those like Obama who are currently covering them up.

He should change his mind. While he's at it, he should throw Leon Panetta in jail.

Holder's brief currently involves just 20 cases, which include detainees who were murdered by the CIA. But even those will be tough to prosecute, reports The New York Times: "Evidence, witnesses and even the bodies of the victims of alleged abuses have not been found in all cases."

Because, you see, the bodies were burned and dumped.

They--the CIA--are Nazis for committing the crimes.

And we are Nazis for not giving a damn. Only a third of Americans told the April 27th CBS News/New York Times poll that there ought to be an investigation of Bush-era war crimes--and they don't care enough to march in the streets, much less break a few windows. So few of my columns on torture have been reprinted by American newspapers or websites that I seriously contemplated not bothering to write this one.

We have met the Nazis, and they are us.

Edited by author 09-21-2009 07:01 PM
I'm cooling my heels for just a little bit longer--before I go jumping back on the writing horse. I still have to iron out what's wrong with THE PRICE OF FREEDOM and add a few more pages to my new AIRWOLF novel.

I'm also trying to break the "evening sleep" cycle; where I go to bed late in the morning and sleep till almost six or seven at night.

I know, I know, I know...IT SUCKS.

But part of the problem is the Seroquel I've been taking for nearly a year now and the other problem is that I'm a consummate NIGHT OWL.

Not to mention the 45-page LETTER I wrote to a pen-pal of mine in Alaska over the weekend. (On the PC.)

Now, I have to go to Kinko's next month to have it printed out.

:0)

Yes, it took me 5 hours to type it out and another 2 to edit.

What can I say? I LIKE TO WRITE.

Edited by author 09-28-2009 07:37 PM
Like on the 14th, I went another 31 hours without sleep and then slept 13 hours the next day.

This was so we could get 70% of my wife's stuff out of storage and into donations. (She has way more stuff than I ever did--and far more than I *initially* thought.)

Our apartment looks more like de-militarized zone now than a living room-bedroom.

I threw my back out last night and the night before--moving stuff. (Joy!)

I should be okay in a day or so. Good thing I have a *cane* as a support brace.

But I was rightly pissed at my MIL for not helping us out more this past Saturday. She said that she'd only be able to do ONE load and that she went on about her job and the 51 hours SHE worked, and on and on and on...

Like I said, MAD AS HELL. Because why?

I was HOPING for a couple of hours so that we could get everything IN our apartment and out of the storage! Would it kill her to drive us around--back and forth?

Nope...

I just love the long line of being disappointed time and again though. Either by my in-laws, by my friends, or by my own family.

Past and present. I lost count the NUMBER of times I was counting on people to help me out--through bad times and good--and been morbidly disappointed and left to fend for myself.

Outside of a few times in the past few years, my memories of those times weren't so pleasant. I never asked for the world, but some *support* would've been nice.

A "Thanks for a job well done, Sky."

SOMETHING.

However...

I think it stemmed from the fact that I was disabled and my behavior was more than anyone could handle from time to time. Or the fact that I didn't *deserve* such praise or accolades. Unfortunately, a lot of it was due me because some people I knew were too *selfish* to take some time out of their lives to help out.

I *knew* this.

Sometimes, though, I think it's been all my years as being too PASSIVE enough and not enough AGGRESSIVE and stand-offish--where I was both seen *and* heard.

No...

I decided early on to chose a path that led to little self-recognition and not enough peer accomplishments.

And those times I did...? Just didn't seem to carry on enough for people to visibly take *notice*.

Which is why I often work alone and in the dark. (Sometimes literally.)

I'm not that big enough to stay on people's radars these days and I fade out faster than a flare shot.

In the end, I sometimes got The Lecture, or some insulting comment regarding my limitations, my intelligence, or something else even more demeaning.

WHICH IS WHY I SOMETIMES CAN'T *TRUST* OTHER PEOPLE'S JUDGMENT.

I spent 5.5 HOURS moving everything out of the 10x10--on *zero* hours of sleep, at the cost of my severely depleted energy reserves, and THOUGHT...

Just thought...

That my MIL would come through and I could go to bed HAPPY knowing that I did good!

Y'know?

NOT LIKELY.

I was pissed enough to spit nails. I was *infuriated* by my MIL's dumpy explanation as to *why* she couldn't stay.

So I punched a box, threw up my hands and told my wife, "I'll be on the second floor for the next couple of hours--PUTTING THINGS *BACK*."

Then the LAST comment my MIL threw at me was on my AGE.

"You're 21 years *younger* than me--!"

NO I'M NOT.

I'm 40 years OLDER than you.

FORTY. Not 35. More like 75.

That's what I *felt* then.

I just don't have the strength, the energy, or anything of my past self--BEFORE I went on blood-thinners. What I *do* have left these days is will and determination.

Will because I have to this myself and no one else *will*.

And determination because my wife can't do it.

That's all I've got.

But in the end...? It took a lot out of me. I was pretty dehydrated despite the 9 cups of water I drank and the three bottles of water I had with me.

Even today, I'm still dehydrated. Though not as bad as the past couple of days.

Jake helped us move the stuff from storage last night, but I couldn't *believe* my MIL's comments before hand. (As she sometimes says the WRONG thing at the wrong time.)

She said, "You could've used this $20 I'm giving you for GROCERIES instead of *gas*..."

Does she think that I am THAT vain over a little bit of money?

It could be $100, a $1000, or $100,000...and I couldn't care less!

MY LIFE ISN'T RUN BY MONEY!!!

Sheesh!

I wish people would understand this! I wish she would! Stop harping me over it!

Money to ME is not a weapon to be used by others *against* others, but a TOOL, people.

Once it's gone, IT IS GONE.

Kaput. Finite! Done for!

Why should I worry how it's used or how it is spent? Why should you?

What's done is *done*. There is no use complaining about it afterwards.

But I think Jake used it for Wendy's--which I don't blame him. The guy said he was hungry and needed some time to rest up.

I did some more work this morning on one of my other books: "Poverty and Hopelessness: America's 2nd Nation."

Added another 8 pages on top of the ten I did Friday.

I also started STARCHILD CROSSFIRE--on the PC--and got close to 35 pages done.

I did have some trouble figuring out what to use for Chapter 1, but I tossed caution to the wind and just thought, "hell with it. Let's use this." :0)

Why doesn't THIS not surprise me?

US income gap widens as poor take hit in recession

WASHINGTON – The recession has hit middle-income and poor families hardest, widening the economic gap between the richest and poorest Americans as rippling job layoffs ravaged household budgets.

The wealthiest 10 percent of Americans — those making more than $138,000 each year — earned 11.4 times the roughly $12,000 made by those living near or below the poverty line in 2008, according to newly released census figures. That ratio was an increase from 11.2 in 2007 and the previous high of 11.22 in 2003.

Household income declined across all groups, but at sharper percentage levels for middle-income and poor Americans. Median income fell last year from $52,163 to $50,303, wiping out a decade's worth of gains to hit the lowest level since 1997.

Poverty jumped sharply to 13.2 percent, an 11-year high.

"No one should be surprised at the increased disparity," said Richard Freeman, an economist at Harvard University. "Unemployment hurts normal workers who do not have the golden parachutes the folks at the top have."

Analysts attributed the widening gap to the wave of layoffs in the economic downturn that have devastated household budgets. They said while the richest Americans may be seeing reductions in executive pay, those at the bottom of the income ladder are often unemployed and struggling to get by.

Large cities such as Atlanta, Washington, New York, San Francisco, Miami and Chicago had the most inequality, due largely to years of middle-class flight to the suburbs. Declining industrial cities with pockets of well-off neighborhoods, such as Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Buffalo, also had sharp disparities.

Up-and-coming cities with growing middle-class populations, such as Mesa, Ariz., Riverside, Calif., Arlington, Texas, and Henderson, Nev., were among the areas showing the least income differences between rich and poor.

It's unclear whether income inequality will continue to worsen in major cities, said William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. Many Americans are staying put for now in traditional cities to look for jobs and because of frozen lines of credit.

"During the years of the housing bubble, there was middle-class movement from unaffordable metros with high-income inequality," Frey said. "Now that the bubble burst, more of the population may be headed back to the high-inequality areas, stemming their middle-class losses."

Among other findings:

_Income at the top 5 percent of households — those making $180,000 or more — was 3.58 times the median income, the highest since 2006.

_Between 2007 and 2008, income at the 50th percentile (median) and the 10th percentile fell by 3.6 percent and 3.7 percent, respectively, compared with a 2.1 percent decline at the 90th percentile. Between 1999 and 2008, income at the 50th and 10th percentiles decreased 4.3 percent and 9.0 percent, respectively, while income at the 90th percentile was statistically unchanged.

_Plano, Texas, a Dallas suburb, had the highest median income among larger cities, earning $85,003. Cleveland ranked at the bottom, at $26,731.

The findings come as the federal government considers new regulations to rein in executive pay at companies in which it has invested. President Barack Obama also typically cites the need for higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for health care overhaul and other measures, arguing that the wealthy have disproportionately benefited from tax cuts during the Bush administration.

The 2008 figures come from the Current Population Survey and the American Community Survey, which gathers information from 3 million households. The government first began tracking household income in 1967.

Pardon my long absence from my Quick Topic page, but these past couple of weeks opened up a LONG and arduous task of fast-discovering that--YES--I've got kidney stones again.

But this round doesn't *seem* to be as painful as the last round--early March, April of this year--but I know that it's all going to end the same as the last: I'll be spending another session in the hospital undergoing laser lithotripsy again.

It'll probably be in the coming month, I dunno.

During my last stint at the storage unit, the next day I was peeing a lot of blood out, but oddly enough, the PAIN wasn't as bad as last bouts.

A recent CT/dye scan revealed that the *same* stone which the docs couldn't get to has finally moved downwards.

So, I am feeling a little pressure from the inside and some pain, but it won't be long before I'm crippled from excruciating pain once again.

While that's been going on, I've also been hard at work on my novel, Poverty and Hopelessness: America's 2nd Nation. I've gotten 181 pages done so far and added 10 pages to The Price of Freedom, and 6 pages to my Airwolf novel.

My sleep schedules all messed up--as usual. I stayed up another 33 hours this past week and slept 13 hours.

I'm up another 24 hours right now and looking at an easy 30 at least.

I spent my time writing and weight-training, plus some games.

Next month, we're getting CLEARWIRE, so I'll finally be able to keep up on the internet and start plugging my books again. :0)

Outside of that, the strong winter storms are starting to make their presence KNOWN here in the Pacific Northwest.

Rain and wind is starting up, but forecasts are calling for gusts and heavy rain all WEEK. (Yuck!)

I got to the library just in time to turn my books in. I found out that I had a couple new additions, but I don't think April got any calls on the phone from the library.

She's on a three-bus tour to Bellevue and back--doing a neuro-psyche. So I hope that she's doing okay.

We ran out of food stamps again, but what else is new? This time, I bought PLENTY of juice and sparkling cider. I don't know what possessed me to do so, but I think it has something to do with the kidney stones. (lol)

TTFN

Mark your calenders, boys and girls: This dedicated (and aspiring) author is undergoing a SECOND round of laser lithotripsy. (November 20th).

Rather than *risk* damage to my right kidney--by not undergoing the procedure--I've decided to suck it up and (pray) go through with it.

Yes, this means that I am going to have them 'thread the needle' again, insert another 12" stent up inside me, and make me scream like a little girl for the next six weeks--just in time for the holidays at the in-laws.

Won't that be *fun*? (lol)

Outside of that, things have been quiet--if not RAINY.

The Public Option Lives! Big Victory for Progressives

The Nation -- Harry Reid just announced that he'll include a public option (with a provision that allows individual states to opt out of it) in the version of the health care bill he brings to the floor of the senate. This is a huge (though still partial) victory for progressives. Over the weekend there was a flurry of reporting over whether Reid would include the opt-out provision, or the "trigger" provision favored by Olympia Snowe, which would not create a public option unless and until some time in the future when health insurance costs had not diminished. The fact of the matter is, as David Sirota wrote here, the trigger is simply a way to kill the public option. Had Reid included it in the floor bill, progressives would have had to muster 60 votes to pass an amendment to strip the trigger out and replace it with the opt-out language. There's no way they would have been able to do that.

But with the opt-out public option included in the unamended floor-bill, opponents of the public option will now have to get 60 votes to pass their own amendment killing it, and they don't have those votes either. This means that the opt-out public option will almost certainly be in the final bill that comes up for a vote in the full senate. That's huge, since the house will also have a public option (an even stronger one, without the opt-out provision).

Reid is essentially calling the bluff of recalcitrant senators like Nelson, Lincoln and Landrieu, because the only way they can defeat the public option now is to join a Republican filibuster, something that I think Reid is gambling they won't do.

As I said on Maddow on Friday night, if you can't get members of your own party not to filibuster your single most important domestic policy priority, it's hard to understand why you even have a party to begin with.

Edited by author 10-29-2009 06:06 PM
It's raining like crazy today. I put away another ten pages to my Zombie Nation: Outbreak Zero last night and another 15 pages to my Vampiress Hunter book as well.

I've also added some more pages to my other book, Poverty and Hopelessness: America's 2nd Nation.

Our portion of the rent is going up to $136 in December--because April got her GAU.

But since our complex gave us a year's free rent, our portion will only be $101.

April's a little peeved over the amount, but I had to remind her that *I* had to suck it up when it came to paying our portion of the rent for the past SEVEN YEARS on my SSI disability income.

Especially when I was paying nearly $250 a month for the past 4 years.

I complained often too, but I did it anyways--because it was *important*.

I've also started on a new drug last night--for blood pressure--so this makes *9* I'm taking.

It surprised me, but what can I do? People often have heart attacks and strokes--related to high BP--but mine has always fluctuated between 130 and 140 monthly; despite all the exercising I've gotten and the weights too.

Note to self: I still have it out for those stupid hospital scales!

Edited by author 11-02-2009 06:05 PM
We mangaged to get everything done for *this* month. Tomorrow, I plan on sending Tara a package to Alaska.

I just hope that I have enough money in which to do it in.

She's going to get a few DVDs I found in the $5 bin at Wal-Mart, some deoderant, shampoo and conditioner, a box of candy bars, 2 containers of candy corns and a few other things.

This has to be sent *now*--as opposed to LATER--because I don't want anything to dry out or expire.

Her other package has the writers' mags, some of my how-to books (which I'm loaning to her for the next couple of years) and a few more DVDs I've acquired over the past couple of years.

That and the STAR TREK model won't be sent until February.

I send her something every few years or so--these last ten years that we've been pen-pals--and don't expect anything in return.

It's just something that I do--so I can spread a little happiness around and lift my spirits up a bit. :0)

The weekend was a bit nuts--especially since its the first of the month. I found what I wanted in DVDs and a CD, and we also stocked up on TP for the next 2 months.

December's going to be chaotic and so is January. (Since our portion of the rent will be $101 a month.)

This week--crossing fingers--we should finally be able to get CLEARWIRE.

But if it costs more than $50 to activate, we're going to have to wait till February to try again. (When we're both free up from getting the things we want: April wants a flatscreen for Christmas, and I elected to push the PS3 to January--for my upcoming 36th birthday. (I've been skipping my birthdays for the better part of the last 15 years now.) )