Salt

Jonathan Rothchild on National Security

From Sightings:

Yet, deeper issues about political duties and religious liberties appear neglected in the current conversations. Two recent disclosures describing intrusion on civil liberties of religious groups raise further questions regarding the justification of the domestic spying program. In one example, reports indicate that the government infiltrated the Truth Project, a group that met in a Quaker House to discuss nonviolent ways of countering military recruiting in high schools. The formal religious character of the project is not the primary concern; what is at issue is the Truth Project's contrarian perspective, which challenges the status quo through nonviolent means -- thus resonating with the prophetic religious critiques of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Paul Tillich, two thinkers monitored by     government agencies. Moreover, reports reveal that the federal government identified the Los Angeles Catholic Worker as a group subject to surveillance— an unsurprising fact, given that the FBI meticulously tracked Catholic  Worker co-founder Dorothy Day.       

The exercise of religious freedom to interrogate, gainsay, and counter  government policies has been compromised by political mechanisms such as spying and the Patriot Act, which afford federal and local agencies various measures to investigate citizens. These means include planting agents in mosques, churches, and political action groups, and create the conditions for substantial abuses. Do such means contradict the Fourth Amendment, which ensures "the right of the people to be secure in  their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures"?...

      

Elephants Fight Back

I've been talking about this article with friends non-stop.  Elephant juvenile delinquents.  Anyone care to theologize this?  It is quite sad.  From New Scientist.

TWO years ago the people of Bunyaruguru in western Uganda would think nothing of cycling to the nearby township of Katwe to meet friends and do business. Then one day a herd of elephants paid them a visit. They came from the bush, knocked down huts and garden plots, then left with nothing to show but a trail of destruction. Now elephants regularly block the road to Katwe, and villagers are too afraid to cycle past.

                                                    

Across Africa, elephants seem to be turning on their human neighbours in ever increasing numbers. Although such attacks are nothing new, they have always been seen as a side effect of elephants competing for food and land, either as a result of population explosions or because people have encroached on elephant territory. But that may not be the whole story.

                                                    

"Elephant numbers have never been lower in Uganda. Food has never been so abundant," says Eve Abe, who studied elephant aggression in Uganda at the time of the Bunyaruguru attack in 2003 and now works as a wildlife and tourism consultant based in London. "There is no reason for this to be happening. In the 1960s elephant densities were very high and there were few reports of aggression. Now the elephants are just so wild."

                                                    

What has happened to everyone's favourite gentle giant? It may sound far-fetched, but a growing number of scientists are lending their support to the theory that elephants are taking revenge on humans for years of abuse. Last year a group of eminent elephant researchers described an "elephant breakdown" occurring all over Africa, with elephants suffering serious psychological problems after witnessing the death of family members or being orphaned by poaching or culls (Nature, vol 433, p 807).

                                                    

Elephants are well known for being intelligent, sociable and affectionate. Females and their young live in tight matriarchal groups, forging strong social bonds that last a lifetime. Calves learn the ways of the world from their mothers, aunts and cousins and, most importantly, the matriarch - the most experienced female in the herd. Sadly, the days when elephants were left to live in peace are long gone. Since the 1970s and 1980s, when the ivory trade decimated wild elephant populations in Africa, poaching, culls and translocation programmes have made their mark on generation after generation.

                                            

Bitch, Ph.D compares two lives

In this post, she narrates two almost alternate universes - one of privileged, one not.  One can afford a safety net to cushion failure; the other has none, and pays the consequences of their actions.  Fodder for moral reflection.

Gitanjali 2

When You command me to sing it seems that my heart would break with pride; and I look to your face, and tears come to my eyes.

All that is harsh and dissonant in my life melts into one sweet harmony - and my adoration spreads wings like a glad bird on its flight across the sea.

I know you take pleasure in my singing.  I know that only as a singer I come before your presence.

I touch by the edge of the far spreading wing of my song your feet which I could never aspire to reach.

Drunk with the joy of singing I forget myself and call you friend who is my Lord.

rabindranath tagore

Bishop John Chane: A Gospel of Intolerance

It's no secret that the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion are engaged in a bitter internal struggle over the role of gay and lesbian people within the church. But despite this struggle, the leaders of our global communion of 77 million members have consistently reiterated their pastoral concern for gays and lesbians. Meeting last February, the primates who lead our 38 member provinces issued a unanimous statement that said in part: "The victimization or diminishment of human beings whose affections happen to be ordered towards people of the same sex is anathema to us."

We now have reason to doubt those words....

Have we become so cowed by the periodic eruptions about the decadent West that Archbishop Akinola and his allies issue that we are no longer willing to name an injustice when we see one?

I also feel compelled to ask the archbishop's many high-profile supporters in this country why they have not publicly dissociated themselves from his attack on the human rights of a vulnerable population. Is it because they support this sort of legislation, or because the rights of gay men and women are not worth the risk of tangling with an important alliance?

Read it all.

Peter Singer: Will We Let Jill Carroll be Killed

Peter Singer Demolishes the Argument that negotiating with terrorists is always a bad idea.  In "Will we let Jill Carroll be killed" Singer lays out an argument that sometimes, it might be justified. 

Alas, the US seems to be deliberately holding some Iraqi women to prove a point.  At the cost of Jill Carroll's life. [via]  Heres the CSmonitor update....
 

Singer argues:  If one of President Bush's daughters were in a similar situation, do we believe he would not be thinking about whether to meet the demands? Indeed, wouldn't we think worse of him as a human being if he did not?

Admittedly, the duties of a president may override the duties of a father. The leader of a nation sometimes has to stand firm, and he may even be required to sacrifice his children for the good of the nation. But of course that would be a last resort and should not be done unless the stakes are truly momentous. Are the stakes that momentous in this case? They don't seem to be.

The kidnapper's demands, if indeed they are limited to the release of the five female prisoners being held by the military in Iraq, seem relatively modest, a small price to pay for saving the life of a young woman.

Friday Cat Blogging

Issac Albeniz - el_puerto

Krugman and The Ports

I think the Democrats are exploiting anti-Arab sentiment to make a point.  Alas.

The whole controversy about the ports is so clearly racist that I find myself inclined to side with Bush.  Bush, as a person, has close friends who are Arabs.  He was, after all, in the oil industry and grew up with a degree of closeness with the Saud family.   

I wonder if this PR mistake reveals the inefficacy of Bush's management style.  This is not the first time he hasn't warned lawmakers of important policy decisions.  He is proudly authoritarian [after all, we are, in a war, kind of].  The collective anti-muslim sympathies of the American public are the public face of the discomfort towards Bush's antagonistic leadership style. 

Noone wants to be caught disagreeing with Bush.  After all, the conventional wisdom is he's the only thing that prevents us from being nuked by small-time Islamic hicks.   Without Bush, our national security would be allowing hordes of anti-American terrorists into the country.  We thank God for Bush, at least publically.  Otherwise, we'd be pinkos who hate America.  But, since he himself has allowed those ay-rabs to control our ports, our collective anxiety now has a place to express its frustration at his perpetual mismanagement.  Our anger at the Arabs is a displaced frustration that Bush hasn't really made our country any safer.

After all, he might not have known - but he should have.  Someone should have warned him.  Why didn't anyone think this wasn't a PR disaster?  I can think of several easy reasons.  First, Bush doesn't care much about such details.  he's more of a rubber stamp president who goes on guts, relying on the information given him by people he trusts.  The criteria is not intelligence, comprehensiveness, or talent, but loyalty.

So we have a system in place where the president does not get relevant political information.  This is symptomatic, alas, of the administration.  The surface issue is the ports - ports which probably won't radically change in management:  the company was simply bought out by an Arab government.  The real issue is the management of the country.  Alas, the vehicle is racism.

Krugman writes:

Ray Barretto RIP

Ray Barretto, the world's greatest conga player

Here's a song you'll like [quicktime] Acid .   And another: Indestructible .

Last summer I missed an opportunity to go see him.  Very upsetting. 

George Bush's Friends

John J. DuLilio.     "There were no actual policy white papers on domestic issues."
Paul O'Neill. Bush wanted a war:  WMD or no.
Richard Clarke.Bush chose to ignore Osama until too late.
Michael Scheuer. Noone understands Bin Laden.
Bob Barr. Bush is threatening our liberty.
Bruce Bartlett.  Bush can't manage the economy.
George Will. Bush wants to be a monarch. 
Glenn Greenwald. Can conservatives criticize Bush?

All conservative. 
All with damning critiques of the administration.
Are Republicans turning into Authoritarian Cultists? 
And if not, what would prove to them that George Bush was incompetent?