Tuesday, June 21, 2005
[posted by jaed at 9:49 PM]The Anchoress Speaks
And she saith:
Words mean things. “Torture” means more than rap music: "And if President Bush had a D after his name, instead of an R, the same people who vilify him would be calling him a great liberator and defender of human rights throughout the world. And Amnesty International would perhaps be looking at France’s treatment of people in the Ivory Coast, or China’s crackdown on Christians, or perhaps the whole world would be looking at the horrors of Dafur, and doing something to save the people who are living through daily torture. Daily. Torture.Tell it, sister.
You know, it's not hard to say that this or that incident or technique used in interrogations at Guantanamo Bay crosses the line, without going on to compare it to Auschwitz, for fuck's sake. It's not difficult to express discomfort with, or even to condemn, interrogation techniques that depend on causing physical discomfort, without going on to conflate "playing loud music" with torture. It's not an impossibility to defend the rights of terrorists without going on to exalt them as innocent victims like those of the Holocaust and the Gulag. You can debate the course and policies of war without uttering moral obscenities.
I have seldom been as disgusted with a good percentage of my countrymen as I am at this moment.
Saturday, June 11, 2005
[posted by jaed at 8:33 PM]Oil for palaces
A few weeks back, the Weekly Standard had a useful article on the ins and outs of the oil-for-food scandal. One thing it clarified for me was something I had never quite understood, which is what these "vouchers" were and how they could be used to bribe people who weren't in the oil industry:
Whatever the intentions of its planners, the Oil-for-Food program actually worked like this: Iraq designated certain individuals or entities as potential purchasers of Iraqi oil. It gave them oil 'allocations' or 'vouchers' (not foreseen in the program as designed by the U.N.), which they could either use to purchase oil themselves or sell to third parties. Because the regime severely limited the number of recipients of these allocations, the recipients were able to resell the oil after attaching a surcharge--usually between 3 and 30 cents a barrel. Sales were usually a minimum of 1 million barrels, so the profits from the surcharges were significant.(Yes, I am going through my overstuffed "to-be-read" folder today. Why do you ask? ;-)
Beginning in 1998, Hussein began to shift his allocations from oil companies to politicians, journalists, and terrorist groups. Mark Greenblatt, a lead investigator for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, described it this way. 'His plan was simple. Rather than giving allocations to traditional oil purchasers, he gave allocations to foreign officials, journalists, even hostile terrorist entities, who then flipped their oil allocations to traditional oil companies in return for a sizable commission. In doing so, Saddam could give a foreign official or a journalist hundreds of thousands of dollars without ever paying a dime.'
[posted by jaed at 4:26 PM]
The New York Review of Books has a thoughtful article on the case of Theresa Schiavo that's well worth reading for its attachment to cold fact - the author seems to have actually done research, something not in much evidence among pundits while Schiavo was dying - and for its careful consideration of difficult matters attached to the case and how those impacted the political reaction and, ultimately, the failure of the political process to help her.
A long excerpt:
That this was a situation offering space for legitimate philosophical differences seemed obvious. Yet there remained, on the 'rational' side of the argument, very little acknowledgment that there could be large numbers of people, not all of whom could be categorized as 'fundamentalists' or 'evangelicals,' who were genuinely troubled by the ramifications of viewing a life as inadequate and so deciding to end it. There remained little acknowledgment even that the case was being badly handled, rendered unnecessarily inflammatory. There was an insensitivity in the timing of the removal of the feeding tube, which took place on the Friday before Palm Sunday, meaning that the gradual process of dying coincided with a week that for Christians has specifically to do with sacrificial suffering and death. 'Oh come on,' someone said when this was mentioned on a cable show. There was a further insensitivity in the fact that the tube was removed at all. If the sole intention is to terminate feeding and hydration, there is no need to remove a gastric feeding tube. All anyone need do is stop plunging the formula into the tube. Hospitals routinely leave gastric tubes in place long after patients have progressed to oral feeding, because any later need to replace the tube (after the incision has begun to heal and scar tissue to form) can be difficult and require surgery. In this case, in the absence of some unusual circumstance that remained unreported, the sole purpose of actual removal would seem to have been to make any legally ordered resumption of feeding difficult to implement.RTWT.
These were symbolic points, messages only, but messages make things happen. It was the physical removal of the tube that led to the perceived inexorability of the countdown. It was the convergence of that countdown with the holiest week in the Christian calendar that exacerbated the 'circus,' the displays of theatrical martyrdom outside the hospice. It was the ability to dismiss the scene outside the hospice as a 'circus' that made the case so ready a vehicle for the expression of 'disgust.' Old polarizations took over. Differences became intolerances. Before the end of the first news cycle, those who believed the removal of the feeding tube to be a morally correct decision were being referred to as 'murderers,' and those troubled by the decision, even those of no perceptible religiosity, as 'fundamentalist freaks,' 'evangelical mullahs.'
Saturday, June 04, 2005
[posted by jaed at 2:02 PM]Quote of the day
Made me snicker, in a cruel, cynical sort of way:
The United States government and its leadership are a gang of criminals who should be isolated, sanctioned, arrested, and condemned as in principle no better than the undeniably criminal Sudanese government--but, by the way, it would be excellent if the Great Satan would also mount its noble charger, rattle its weapons, gird up its loins, and intervene to defend the people of Sudan."(via Watch)
