Another socialist blog

U.S. officials have finally admitted to a raid inside Pakistan that reportedly killed at least 15 civilians.  The official line in Washington is that Pakistan is “cooperating” with the U.S. in its expanded war along the Afghan border.

The Pakistanis are apparently not so fond of doublespeak.  They are calling the invasion, an invasion, and a massacre of civilians, a massacre.  Pakistani troops have been given orders to fire on U.S. soldiers the next time they invade.  If that happens, it will make it harder for the Bush administration to claim it respects the sovereignty of other nations. (What, us, imperialist?) Hope they’ve got plenty of smoke and mirrors in stock.

I’ve actually heard people referring to the 11th of September as Patriot Day.  It’s not a bad idea to think about patriotism, think about it hard, on September 11th.  But I think that hard, critical thought is antithetical to what those folks had in mind.  Branding the day “Patriot Day” suggests a particular sort of remembrance, with flags rather than protest signs.  The Bush administration is still selling their version of history, in which the world hates us not because of our foreign policy, but because of our freedom.

I’m no Libertarian, but the Cato Institute has a fine idea of what to do instead on September 11th:  let’s talk about whether we’ve become a police state in which police routinely kick down your door without knocking.  The featured speaker was Cheye Calvo, mayor of Berwyn Heights, MD.  Police on a drug raid kicked in his door, shot his dogs to death, held him and his family at gunpoint…and cleared him of any wrongdoing.  What could be more patriotic than talking and thinking about the relationship between the government and the people, and siding with the people?

Douglas Rushkoff wrote an excellent essay on the Republican National Convention, which may be why his site was under a denial of service attack for a while.

What is it they hate? Guiliani and Palin both made it pretty clear: community organizing. Community organizing is energized from below. From the periphery. It is the direction and facilitation of mass energy towards productive and cooperative ends. It is about replacing conflict with collaboration. It is the opposite of war; it is peace.

Last night, the Republican Convention made it clear they prefer war. They see the world as a dangerous and terrible place. Like the fascist leaders satirized in Starship Troopers, they say they believe it is better to be on the offensive, taking the war to the people who might wish us harm than playing defense. It is better to be an international aggressor - a bulldog with lipstick - than led by the misguided notion that attacking people itself makes the world a more dangerous place.

In their attack on community organizing - a word combination they pretended they didn’t know what it meant - Giuliani and Palin revealed their refusal to acknowledge the kinds of bottom-up processes through which our society was built, and through which local communities can begin to assert some authority over their schools, environments, and economies. Without organized communities, you don’t get the reduction in centralized government the Republicans pretend to be arguing for. In their view, community organizing as, at best, equivalent to disruptive and unpredictable Al Qaeda activity.

I recommend you read the whole piece. It’s not long, and it cuts through several years of Republican bullshit, to the core of what they believe.

By now you know that Sarah Palin is an anti-science, anti-abortion Buchananite. She denies that humans cause global warming, which makes her even more ignorant than George W. Bush. None of that should be surprising.  John McCain’s choice for Vice President is supposed to be red meat for the Religious Right, and Sarah Palin will serve that purpose nicely.

I don’t understand the feminists who are insulted by this choice.  Of course McCain thinks Clinton supporters are stupid enough to vote for him because he’s got a woman on the ticket.  Republicans think we’re all stupid enough to let a Republican administration start two illegal wars, fund them forever, and give away our constitutional rights, because we did.  And Hilary Clinton, who actively helped the Republicans do all that, not only didn’t get repudiated by most feminists, she damn near got elected President.  Apparently McCain’s strategists know how to keep their eyes open better than a lot of Democrats.

And while we’re on the subject, how does Nancy “Impeachment Is Off the Table” Pelosi get to keep identifying herself as a feminist, without being roundly denounced by actual feminists?  Were the last two years of Bush/Cheney not injurious to women?

If you’re a feminist, as I am, then the Republican Party is your enemy, and so are all the Bush collaborators inside the Democratic Party.  Maybe anti-woman woman Sarah Palin will make that suddenly clear for some people.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who famously was unaware of that New Orleans was flooding during hurricane Katrina, has gone to Louisiana to meet with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, as soon-to-be-hurricane Gustav considers where it will make landfall.  If you buy into the notion that God metes out hurricanes as punishment, you will probably want to stay away from anyone in the Bush Administration for the rest of the season.

I wondered how to title this entry. “Man tortured to death by DHS” seemed like one obvious choice. “Legal resident of the U.S. dies in Kafkaesque nightmare” would have been accurate too. You can decide for yourself.

A Hong Kong computer programmer who had legally resided in the US for 15 years (since he was 17) and fathered two American children went for his final green card interview and was locked up, detained until he was nearly dead of cancer that the DHS refused to treat him for. He had overstayed a visa (the DHS sent a key notice to the wrong address), and this prompted the DHS to lock him away and demand that he waive all right to immigration appeal and be immediately deported.

Oh, but there’s more. They refused to allow his wife and children to visit him as he lay dying. He got no pain medication. Apparently his jailers (private contractors, unsurprisingly) decided he was faking. Finally a court ordered him released, and he died five days later.

Does this make you feel any safer?

An Omaha police officer and his wife, charged with felony child abuse, have admitted in court to repeatedly handcuffing his son, for as long as 27 hours at a time.  Fredric James, 39, a police detective, and his wife, Susan R. James, faced up to five years in prison if convicted on each of four counts.  Today James admitted in court that he did it.

Now you might think that when a perp admits his crime, the result of that admission is that he is convicted and sentenced.  You might think that would be especially true if the perp happens to be a cop, who used police equipment in committing a felony.  Yeah, well, you’re obviously not from around here.  In Omaha it’s the victims of child abuse who are considered the criminal.  Because James admitted he committed the crime, charges were dropped.

Another in what will become a continuing series of posts about police who don’t make me feel safe or secure.

The first is hilarious:  a traffic enforcement camera snaps a picture of an allegedly speeding car, and after a careful review of the evidence a summons is issued.  If you look carefully you can see that the speeding car was being towed.

The second is not at all funny:  someone mailed some pot to the mayor of DC suburb Berwyn Heights.  So a SWAT team broke down his door, shot the family’s two dogs, and interrogated his family as the dogs bled to death.  The unopened package of marijuana was still outside, waiting perhaps for its real recipient.  The cops didn’t have a no-knock warrant.  Had they knocked, the dogs would be alive.  [Update 9/11/2008:  he was innocent.]

George Bush has condemned Russia’s invasion of Georgia.  Bush, who tramples on the sovereignty of three countries before breakfast, said “Russia has invaded a sovereign neighbouring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century.”  Unacceptable indeed.

Bush further criticized Russia’s actions as “disproportionate.”  If he was aware that last week marked the 63rd anniversary of the one-sided nuclear first strike against Japan, he didn’t give any sign of it.

It sure could be.