warning

Do not let your kids read this post.

I don’t think I’m alone in saying I never expected to read “Snuffleupagus” and “felching” in the same sentence.

All Good Soldiers (1993)

all good soldiers crack like boulders,
the sun climbs up to a razor,
violins, new boots, and numbers on a chain,
all good soldiers
all good soldiers fall in line,
when they march and shout
are a spectacle,
marching and singing
will go anywhere the president says,
because the president believes in god,
like all good soldiers should

all good soldiers wait like warheads,
when the fighting starts,
who will be accountable,
a cannibal, a cannonball,
six a.m. I can see my breath
and the clay dirt
is laughing at the weakling boy,
today is the day
that I'll write my friends
something I've been trying to remember,
I had a dream of a wall
that was twenty-one stories tall...

all good soldiers fall in line,
marching and singing,
will go anywhere the president says,
because the president believes in god,
like all good soldiers should

git ‘er dun!

Fourth frame of the Editors' latest comic installment. Effin’ el, I almost peed myself.

decline

While I was traveling (the always-useful “slacking and blaming it on work” defense), IOZ was busy writing:

Still, it isn't really the Third Reich on which the US is currently modeled, but the very USSR from whose titanic corpse Putin is reanimating a respectable giant. Doddering, unweildy, and self-deluded. Publicly grandiose, but rusty within. Bedevilled by dusty revolutionaries. Confounded by Islam.

There’s some truth to that, but I don’t believe the U.S. is quite as close to collapse as IOZ does. I think the situation the U.S. finds itself in at some point in the next 20 years may be more akin to Britain and France’s humiliation in Egypt in late 1956, in which the former great powers spectacularly misjudged the balance of power and world opinion at a crucial juncture, leading to a harsh devaluation of the national brand. (Perhaps we’re living through our Suez now, and will only realize it later.) But those societies didn’t then fold in upon themselves, rotten to the core, as did the USSR. They remained quite wealthy and still today retain influence disproportionate to their population and output. They even managed later, first in Algeria and then Iraq, to pick ill-advised fights with impoverished nations and get their asses handed to them. I see something similar in our future, but probably not wholesale disintegration.

cure worse than disease

There is an incredible story in the NY Times today. It seems that the combined corruption of the Chinese and Panamanian governments and business communities allowed 46 barrels of poison to work their way through the supply chain and end up in cough syrup manufactured and distributed to its citizens last year by the government of Panama. An estimated 365 people died as a result, possibly more.

In the early 1990s, thousands and possibly tens of thousands of people, most of them children, died from a similar poisoning in Bangladesh.

Beyond Panama and China, toxic syrup has caused mass poisonings in Haiti, Bangladesh, Argentina, Nigeria and twice in India.

In Bangladesh, investigators found poison in seven brands of fever medication in 1992, but only after countless children died. A Massachusetts laboratory detected the contamination after Dr. Michael L. Bennish, a pediatrician who works in developing countries, smuggled samples of the tainted syrup out of the country in a suitcase. Dr. Bennish, who investigated the Bangladesh epidemic and helped write a 1995 article about it for BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal, said that given the amount of medication distributed, deaths “must be in the thousands or tens of thousands.”

Why is this happening?

An examination of the two poisoning cases last year — in Panama and earlier in China — shows how China’s safety regulations have lagged behind its growing role as low-cost supplier to the world. It also demonstrates how a poorly policed chain of traders in country after country allows counterfeit medicine to contaminate the global market.

But why are we hearing about this story now? Why is it on the front page of today’s New York Times when the deaths occurred last year or 15 years ago? The answer is simple enough.

China is already being accused by United States authorities of exporting wheat gluten containing an industrial chemical, melamine, that ended up in pet food and livestock feed. The F.D.A. recently banned imports of Chinese-made wheat gluten after it was linked to pet deaths in the United States.

Evidently it takes the deaths of thousands of pets—tragic in its own right, no doubt—for the American public to take notice of the deaths of thousands of people in places where, after all, people die in large numbers all the time with barely a mention in the U.S. media.

Nevertheless, I think this story is a great piece of journalism, and I hope it leads to some pressure from the U.S. government and business community on China to look at how absence of rule of law in China could seriously impact the bottom line of businesses there and here, and hence, the viability of the Chinese government in its current form.

While primary responsibility for this particular cock-up rests with the counterfeiting poisoner himself, then with the Chinese government, the corrupt Panamanian traders, and the ineffective government of Panama, there’s more to this story than that.

If American businesses make loads of money from low-cost Chinese imports, and the low cost of those imports is based in part on the malleability or absence of a regulation or twenty, then American businesses and consumers are reaping the benefits of a system that kills an unknown number of people each year in parts of the world without effective rule of law or regulatory safeguards.

My guess is many readers of the Times piece will have the same reaction I did when I first read it: Dear lord, first pets and now people! When will this end? And: Watch out for cheap chemicals from China. Worry for your personal safety or that of your family is a natural first thought when presented with something like this. But hopefully a secondary reaction would be concern for the thousands (millions?) who’ve died or are at risk abroad from a global trading system built and run according to the specifications of the United States for the greater prosperity of its people.

an honest question

Matt Yglesias has a question for Rudy:

Giuliani said the only thing worse than an American-led military offensive against Iran would be Iran having nuclear weapons, which he called "the worst nightmare'' of the Cold War. The way to stop Iran, he said, was resolute American leadership facing down the Iranian president.

"He has to look at an American president, and he has to see Ronald Reagan,'' Giuliani said.

Is that the version of Ronald Reagan who sold the Iranians weapons, or it is the version that sought to check Iranian power by sending Don Rumsfeld to Baghdad to assure Saddam Hussein that the United States didn't really mind if he used poison gas to attack the Kurdish civilian population?

the regenerative property of scandal

Josh Marshall directs us to this article from McClatchy:

According to a congressional aide, McNulty said he attended a White House meeting with Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, and other officials on March 5, the day before McNulty's deputy William Moschella was to testify to Congress about the firings.

White House officials told the Justice Department group that they needed to agree on clear reasons why each prosecutor was fired and explain them to Congress, McNulty said, according to the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the transcript of McNulty's interview hasn't been made public.

McNulty said that White House officials never revealed during the meeting that they'd been discussing plans to replace some prosecutors with Gonzales aides, the congressional aide said.

McNulty recalled feeling disturbed and concerned when he found out days later that the White House had been involved, the congressional aide said. McNulty considered the extent of White House coordination to be "extremely problematic."

Government operatives do something bad. Then they cover it up. Then they lie about it. Then they lie about the coverup. Then they lie about lying about the coverup. Then they are investigated by Congress, providing fresh material to cover up and lie about later on, leading to further investigations. Restart cycle.

This could continue for quite some time.

more on The Mormons

A few more scattered thoughts about the PBS special earlier this week . . .

Journalist Ken Verdoia, whose voice was one of those heard most frequently in the film, implied at one point that contemporary Mormons are ashamed of the heritage of polygamy. That is untrue in my experience. Polygamy is generally tolerated in Utah, principally because most Utahns had polygamist ancestors. Sometimes at family gatherings where our ancestors were discussed, I heard relatives reflect on the hardship the sister wives dealt with and what a sacrifice it was that they made for their faith, but just about everyone in 19^th century Utah suffered hardship. Growing up in the church, I never got the sense that “the Principle” is something that is regretted by today’s membership. It is generally acknowledged as something that was appropriate in another time, a time which has passed. Most Jews or mainstream Christians aren’t ashamed of David or Solomon, if they even realize that those two kings had thousands of wives and concubines.

I appreciated how viewers heard more from the women commentators on the issue of Joseph Smith and polygamy. The official line is that Joseph Smith reinstituted the ancient practice to build up the population of the church at a crucial point in its history and so that women who would otherwise be single could partake of the blessings of the family. The less charitable view is that the prophet was a horny bugger who obscured his many infidelities with religious hoohaw and abused his position of power to bend the social norms of the day to suit his urges.

Given the church’s obsession with having/pretending-not-to-have sex and its stunted views on gender, this is a big issue for many women in the church that is seldom discussed in church settings. Not that I would necessarily know if it was—many church meetings and activities were gender-segregated. This is yet another controversial issue which has more or less been successfully pushed under the surface of official dialogue.

I gained a new appreciation of how actively Mormons were vilified in American public discourse throughout the second half of the 19^th century. Apparently it was entered into Senate testimony at one point that Mormons were practicing human sacrifice on the altars of the Salt Lake temple. (In case you're wondering, the claim was false.) One talking head on the show, I forget who, made the comparison to the treatment of Muslims in contemporary media. The dynamic seems similar in some ways—a poorly understood minority religious group clashes with the mainstream in some highly violent but rather limited engagements, fear and hyperbole are ramped up on both sides, and any hope for a common dialogue goes out the window. Except that the Utahns—maybe simply by virtue of being out of reach of military technology of the day—managed to fend off the invading troops long enough to assimilate. Iraqis and Afghanis haven’t been so lucky.

On the issue of blacks and the church, I learned something astonishing. Sometime in the middle of the last century, a Ghanaian man stumbled across a copy of the Book of Mormon and independently converted an entire local community to the LDS faith. This would be any missionary’s dream, except that at the time, the church had a worldwide stricture in place prohibiting blacks from receiving the priesthood. Receiving the priesthood for male Mormons is like being baptized or bar mitzvahed--it's a universal rite of passage. The Ghanaians petitioned the Church leadership to send missionaries to baptize them en masse—according to the film, this request was refused for some 20 years due to the priesthood ban. Incredible.

While I think there is still some lingering racism in Utah, which has historically been a very white community, the diffusion of the great majority of the church’s religiously active young men to every corner of the globe, combined with official multiracial/multicultural rhetoric I can only describe as Sesame Street-esque, the trajectory of the church on racial issues seems clear: the church will lumber along with the mainstream towards something better than before.

Perhaps I’ll have some final thoughts on these matters in the next couple days. In the meantime, IOZ enjoys some well-deserved snark at the expense of Mitt Romney, but in the process unwittingly reveals that he may have read Battlefield Earth. All the way through (dear God). Thankfully, whatever mindnumbing effects such an exercise may have inflicted seem to have worn off.

Mountain Meadows

One of the chapters of the first part of the recent PBS special on the Mormons dealt with the Mountain Meadows massacre of 1857, in which over 100 settlers from Arkansas were systematically killed by local residents as the settlers passed through southern Utah. In my 19 years growing up in the church, I never heard this subject dealt with in any meaningful fashion. Those who want to know more about it, and most people inside the church don’t, must search outside the faith.

This is Wikipedia’s description of the events that took place near Cedar City 150 years ago:

On Friday, September 11 two Mormon militiamen approached the Fancher party wagons with a white flag and were soon followed by Indian agent and militia officer John D. Lee.^[34] Lee told the battle-weary emigrants he had negotiated a truce with the Paiutes, whereby they could be escorted safely to Cedar City under Mormon protection in exchange for leaving all their livestock and supplies to the Native Americans.^[35] Accepting this, they were split into three groups. Seventeen of the youngest children along with a few mothers and the wounded were put into wagons, which were followed by all the women and older children walking in a second group. Bringing up the rear were the adult males of the Fancher party, each walking with an armed Mormon militiaman at his right. Making their way back northeast towards Cedar City, the three groups gradually became strung out and visually separated by shrubs and a shallow hill. After about 2 kilometers the prearranged order, "Do Your Duty!" was given.^[36] Each Mormon then turned and killed the man he was guarding. All of the men, women, older children and wounded were massacred by Mormon militia and Paiutes who had hidden nearby. A few who escaped the initial slaughter were quickly chased down and killed.

Judith Freeman, an author of Mormon ancestry whose comments were included in the documentary, said, “The Mormons in the 19^th Century really believed that the end was nigh.” They thought they stood on the brink of the apocalypse, and believed they would soon find themselves fighting for their lives in the battles preceding the Second Coming of Christ. They may have believed that their community’s very existence was threatened by hostile outsiders. Without Haun’s Mill, a massacre of 18 Mormons in Missouri in 1838, would there have been a Mountain Meadows? Perhaps not. Fear begets fear; violence produces more violence.

More importantly, Freeman commented, “If you can get men to believe they are doing God’s will, you can get them to do anything.” One of the LDS church’s foundational passages of scripture deals with Nephi’s murder of Laban. Nephi was a young prophet described in the Book of Mormon who led his family from Israel across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. While still in Israel, he came upon a man named Laban who has passed out blind drunk in an alley. Laban was a wealthy man who possessed the sacred scriptures, the brass plates, that would enable Nephi to carry the Lord’s work to the New World and plant the seeds of the gospel there, founding a new nation in the process. Nephi and his brothers had previously offered the riches of their family to Laban in exchange for the plates. Instead, Laban drove off Nephi and confiscated the family wealth. The Spirit of the Lord commanded Nephi to kill Laban in cold blood, issuing this rationale: “[T]he Lord slayeth the wicked to bring forth his righteous purposes. It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief.” 1 Nephi 4:13. Nephi at first resisted, but then obeyed the voice of the Spirit.

This scripture is still taught today to children to show that the Lord at times requires mysterious things of his followers, and that when faith is tested, one must simply obey.

The men of Cedar City lured out the settlers with the promise of safe passage, then slaughtered between 100 and 140 of them. I would be surprised if Nephi’s slaying of Laban was not specifically discussed in the community meetings held before the massacre. As Nephi was absolved by the Lord of all guilt in his murder of Laban, so the killers likely believed they would be absolved of guilt for their actions.

The killers spared 17 children under the age of eight. To me this shows that the massacre was carefully planned and executed and that every action taken had a specific religious justification. According to Mormon doctrine, a child is not accountable for her sins until the age of eight, when she is old enough to be baptized.

A vow of silence was taken so that no one outside the community would learn the truth. There is some dispute over how high up the church leadership the decision to kill off the wagon party went. In my view, it matters less who ordered the executions than the ease with which the entire community carried them out. We know who pulled the triggers—it was the faithful men of Cedar City and the surrounding communities.

I don’t remember ever hearing about the massacre until after high school. Even after I left the church, it was not something I ever felt compelled to think about or deal with or become better informed about. The events were shrouded in “controversy” and I knew that they made people uncomfortable, to the extent that anyone talked about them at all. My mother’s ancestors lived in that area. Some of them may have been involved in the massacre for all I know. It is one of several sensitive topics of church history that the general membership has yet to really address or acknowledge.

I suppose alarms should be raised when people in a community come to a consensus that an outside group poses such a threat that they must be exterminated. I tend to be especially skeptical when we’re meant to believe that God is directing his followers to smite a foreign population, but no more so than if the smiters believe it’s their neighbor’s black Labrador issuing the orders. Killing because the voices in your head told you to do it is never ok.

a blanket of grey

In the two-part PBS special on Mormonism that ran last night and tonight, Harold Bloom said something along these lines: All religion depends upon revelation; all revelation is supernatural. If you wish to be a hard rock empiricist, you should not entertain any religious doctrine whatsoever.

This makes sense to me. But as Bloom implies, the matter of religious belief is not quite as simple as many would have you believe. Religion cannot be easily separated from the community in which it finds expression. I watched the special initially with some trepidation, expecting to be aggravated or, at best, simply annoyed. I’ve been told that there’s literally nothing one can say to me about the LDS church that will not cause me to get my panties in a twist. If someone defends the church, I will attack it. If someone attacks the church, I will defend it.

So I wasn’t expecting to be as profoundly moved as I was. Part of it must be the narcissist's gratification of seeing one’s community on display for the world to see and discuss. Look how much controversy and thoughtful discussion this topic induces among even the most learned people! This must be something important; consequently, I must be somehow important.

But the special was utterly fascinating just the same. I have some thoughts swirling about on church-sanctioned violence, blacks and the priesthood, gays in the church, family, and polygamy that I'd like to post here in the next few days. For those who missed the documentary and are interested, it’s available on the PBS website.

a bitter cup

An especially gullible NY Times reviewer discusses a PBS special on the LDS church:

There is a split personality at work here: Mormonism has clearly evolved — denouncing the polygamy it once sanctioned, for instance — but today seems determined to stand fast on issues like homosexuality. Marlin K. Jensen, a historian of the church, provides one of the program’s most compelling moments when he speaks to that subject head-on.

“If you’re going to live your life within the framework of the gospel and within the framework of our doctrine,” he says, “then you’ve got to choose to marry someone of the opposite sex, and if you can’t do that honestly, then your choice has to be to live a celibate life. And that is a very difficult choice.” Of those who have to make it, he says, “My heart goes out to them.” And you believe him.

If you believe him, then you’re a fool. Brother Jensen, unless he is gay himself, doesn’t know anything about what that choice entails. Words are cheap. Bigotry is real. Again, if you believe this man has seriously grappled with the issues a gay person growing up in the Church deals with without being gay himself, you are deluding yourself. Members of the Church should get no credit for being especially steadfast in their prejudice.

And as the reviewer alludes, the Church’s seeming resolution on this issue is as superficial as the intractability with which it fought pressure to concede on polygamy and granting blacks the priesthood. Once the costs of stigmatizing gay people outweigh the benefits, the Church will change its position, as it has so often before. To the rank and file who take direction from the Church leadership, these abrupt about-faces on what were previously matters of core doctrine are as inscrutable as the mind of God, and ultimately serve as simply another test of faith. There's nothing like the certainty and comfort that comes with leaving difficult moral decisions in the hands of others.

heaven and earth

I found this ad from a recent print version of the Economist to be problematic. It’s a picture of a hotel worker holding aloft an umbrella so a wealthy Western couple can waltz on the rooftop in the rain in Singapore. Very romantic, if not particularly practical. But what bothers me is the explicit servility of the worker, who gets drenched so the couple can do something absolutely frivolous. It’s just an ad, and in all likelihood no one has ever done this or ever will, but it’s an ad that has run for some time now presumably because it strikes a chord with the traveling business class. This lays out one of the principal failings of the present economic system: extreme inequality of outcome. This inequality is magnified across national boundaries. It’s not as though these three people grew up together, went to the same prep school in Connecticut, but one made foolish life choices and ended up as a bellhop while the other two became a corporate executive and spouse. This ad makes evident the way local workers are orientalized and made invisible to the superrich who inhabit the higher strata of the business world. The ad is meant to show the extreme lengths to which Shangri-La workers will go to enhance the comfort of their guests, which one surmises can be attributed to some deep inherent hospitality of the “native” population. In reality, it’s simple poverty of opportunity that makes a person submit to another in this way.

Picture an ad showing a ritzy hotel in Atlanta with a black bellhop holding an umbrella over a twirling white couple. The ad above is no better.

. . . adding that what bothers me most is not that, in all likelihood, the white guy in the picture makes 20 times what the brown guy does. It's the fact that one guy gets to dance while the other gets soaked. We have reason to believe that the system by which top executives, partners at white shoe law firms, or hedge fund managers are selected to receive the full munificence of the global economic engine is not a particularly fair or rational one. Those born into bad situations tend to stay there, while on the other hand we have . . . our ever-loving president (I rest my case). But even if the labor market evolved to the point where it could pluck out of the global masses the person whose talents and characteristics most suited a particular job regardless of the station of that person's parents, someone would still have to scrub the toilets. And scrubbing toilets sucks. Now I'm not saying we all need to move to a commune and let the economy go to shit. Division of labor is one of the foundations of modern life--it allows me to type on this computer and listen to streaming radio, talk to my family on the phone, do moderately interesting work, etc. etc. But that still doesn't get us around the unpleasant reality that scrubbing toilets for a living really really sucks. I'm reminded of the comment Imus made years ago about PBS journalist Gwen Ifill being a cleaning lady. Well, Don Imus is a pretty big loser. But there's a good reason that "cleaning lady" is considered an insult, notwithstanding the increasingly tortured efforts of the privileged classes to embue blue collar work with an honor and dignity it usually lacks. The reason is that spending your days scrubbing toilets, shining shoes, or carrying a goddamn rickshaw is unpleasant and demeaning and I've never met anyone in a job like that who wouldn't trade up if they had half a chance. If the casual reader of the Economist doesn't realize that the guy holding the umbrella in the picture above really fucking hates the people under the umbrella, then (a) he's never worked a crappy job and/or (b) sooner or later, he's in for an unpleasant wake-up call.

war on drugs

Here is the story of a stoner from Tremonton, Utah.

detachable penis

The most urgent news of the day comes from London:

A man who cut off his penis in front of diners at a pizza restaurant in the Strand, London, has had it reattached in the first operation of its kind in the country. It is too early to tell whether the operation will be a success, however, according to surgeons who carried out the procedure at St Thomas's hospital, south London.

The 35-year-old Polish man had grabbed a knife from the kitchen of the Zizzi's restaurant before climbing on to a table, dropping his pants and cutting off his penis in front of other diners, many of whom had gathered at the restaurant after the London marathon.

Ouch.

I liked this version of the story from a Croatian paper better, descriptively titled "Run Into The Restaurant And Cut Off His Penis", with the caption "Bizarrley Hurting" under a photo of a sharp-looking knife. Subcaption: "Police had to use the force to restrain the man who cut off his penis in the restaurant."

Police was forced to use a gas to restrain the man in the Zizzi restaurant. The man, between 30 to 40 years old, hurt himself by cutting his penis.

The restaurant spokesman said that the man entered the restaurant about 9 p.m. and tried to get into the kitchen. After he was stopped by personnel, the man still managed to run into another kitchen room, grab the knife and cut his wrists. He then run back to the restaurant and continued with self-hurting.

Everything happened within a second but it was still very scarry and shocking for the guests and the restaurant personnel.

The man was deported to the hospital, but doctors did not succeded in sewing on his penis, BBC writes.

Thank you, Google news.

sea of people, or the iceman skateth

Posting has been nonexistent light recently due to a shortage of inspiration and a spate of beautiful weather in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area.

Last weekend, I indulged in a bit of activism with my fiancée in lower Manhattan. The idea was to create a visual image of the potential post-global-warming waterline submerging large sections of the Financial District with, well, a sea of people. Or at least a river of people … a stream of people?

The SEA OF PEOPLE project combines the dynamics of a mass rally with the expressive power of an interactive artistic installation. A noon rally at Battery Park (main lawn) will kick off the event. Then, thousands of participants, ideally dressed in blue, will stretch north in two columns along the projected eastern and western 10-foot waterlines that may one day redefine lower Manhattan under the ten-foot sea level rise scenario. Creating, in essence, a Sea of People!

I think “thousands” ended up being “a thousand.” But minds were clear and hearts pure, and we trickled off with the other marchers to our assigned position.

We hope for this line to stretch a mile or more, winding up both sides of downtown Manhattan to create a visual and symbolic statement that our elected representatives can't possibly ignore!

I don’t think too many NYC politicians are ignoring the pro-environment wishes of their constituents; hence, Republican Mayor Bloomberg’s Earth Day congestion pricing announcement.

If you’ll note how close those tall shiny buildings full of stockbrokers, analysts, and lawyers are to the water surrounding the island, you’ll understand the mayor’s sense of urgency.

And this guy’s, um, sense of awesomeness:

Yes, he's on rollerblades. Yes, that's a tinfoil crown on his head. Yes, he is my idol.

These children sense that they are in the presence of greatness.

tear down that wha?

There's something wrong with this picture.

I think I've got it. It reminds me of something else. Here it is:



Then (1962):

While both [Peter Fechter and Helmut Kulbeik] reached the wall, guards fired at them. Although Kulbeik succeeded in crossing the wall, Fechter, still on the wall, was shot in the pelvis in plain view of hundreds of witnesses. He fell back into the death-strip on the Eastern side, where he remained in view of Western onlookers, including journalists. Despite his screams, he received no medical assistance either from the East or the West side. He bled to death after about an hour. Hundreds in West Berlin formed a spontaneous demonstration, shouting "Murderers!" at the border guards.

Now:

A grainy surveillance video taken as a Border Patrol agent fatally shot an illegal immigrant from Mexico appears to lend credence to the surviving immigrants' accounts of what happened.

. . .

Border Patrol agent Nicholas Corbett encountered a group of four immigrants among a larger group of border crossers whom he and other agents were rounding up on Jan. 12 near Naco. The group included three brothers and one man's wife.

Corbett has declined to be interviewed by investigators but told other agents that he came around the front of his SUV, saw a man with a rock in his hand close to the rear of the vehicle and fired when the man moved to throw it.

The witnesses said the agent came from behind the victim, and the video appears to support that version.

One clip shows Corbett's Border Patrol vehicle driving up to a small group of people and circling around them. The agent then opens the door and emerges from behind his SUV, running toward the group, bunched near his rear bumper.

He then appears to have contact with one person.

Within seconds, Corbett apparently pushed one of the immigrants, Francisco Javier Dominguez Rivera, toward the ground and shot him, authorities said.

All in the line of duty.

reconnaissance

In my search of prominent conservative blogs today for some indication of how the Virginia Tech shooting might affect the chances of immigration overhaul this year, I didn’t find much, for which I was grateful. The murders were a heartwrenching tragedy. I would hate to see them used to stymie much-needed, already precarious immigration reform. I think that had the killer been a Chinese national here on an F-1 visa as people initially speculated, a bill would be impossible this year. Since he hailed instead from a strong U.S. ally (at least on paper—South Korean public opinion is fairly anti-American these days, here’s one example) and had lived here as a legal permanent resident for half his life, the connection to the immigration issue is more tenuous. Not that this matters to anyone who lost a loved one in the violence—nor should it—but it will matter to the millions of out-of-status immigrants hoping to bring a measure of normalcy to their lives.

But in my browsing I stumbled across something I didn’t expect at RedState—not that I read RedState on anything resembling a regular basis, so my expectations were based almost solely on my own preconceptions. But I was still pleasantly surprised to read a stern rebuke by RedState poster Erick of a conservative Georgia judge who took a young girl from her lesbian adoptive mother and put her into foster care. The girl’s best interests were pretty obviously not served by the decision, and the adoptive mother ended up in jail. According to the post, the case is currently tied up in appeals. Comments on the wisdom of the judge’s decision were divided, but to me, the tone and substance of the post, as well as much of the debate in comments, were hugely encouraging.

Here’s another indicator that public opinion on gay rights is inexorably shifting: BYU just changed its honor code to permit LGBT students to come partway out of the closet.

A small but significant change in how Brigham Young University's honor code may be applied clarifies gay students' status just weeks after gay-rights advocates were arrested at the school.

The changes, which condemn behavior rather than sexual orientation, "remove a lot of the Gestapo atmosphere from the campus," said Brett Condron, a BYU freshman.

The changes don’t look like much, but will make a difference to many students.

From the Tribune, the old provision:

Brigham Young University will respond to student behavior rather than to feelings or orientation. Students can be enrolled at the University and remain in good Honor Code standing if they maintain a current ecclesiastical endorsement and conduct their lives in a manner consistent with gospel principles and the Honor Code. Advocacy of a homosexual lifestyle (whether implied or explicit) or any behaviors that indicate homosexual conduct, including those not sexual in nature, are inappropriate and violate the Honor Code.

The amended provision:

Brigham Young University will respond to homosexual behavior rather than to feelings or orientation and welcomes as full members of the university community all whose behavior meets university standards. Members of the university community can remain in good Honor Code standing if they conduct their lives in a manner consistent with gospel principles and the Honor Code.

One's stated sexual orientation is not an Honor Code issue. However, the Honor Code requires all members of the university community to manifest a strict commitment to the law of chastity. Homosexual behavior or advocacy of homosexual behavior are inappropriate and violate the Honor Code. Homosexual behavior includes not only sexual relations between members of the same sex, but all forms of physical intimacy that give expression to homosexual feelings. Advocacy includes seeking to influence others to engage in homosexual behavior or promoting homosexual relations as being morally acceptable.

LGBT students still can’t hold hands on campus and are condemned to official celibacy. But with this policy change, the BYU administration (and therefore the church leadership) moved slightly further away from Riyadh and towards modernity. Keeping in mind that this is the church that excluded black men from positions of leadership until 1978, the year I was born. (Women are still excluded.)

Baby steps.

blessed are they that mourn

(abridged)

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

the deadliest weapon in the world is a marine and his rifle

News from the other war:

American marines reacted to a bomb ambush with excessive force in eastern Afghanistan last month, hitting groups of bystanders and vehicles with machine-gun fire in a series of attacks that covered 10 miles of highway and left 12 civilians dead, including an infant and three elderly men, according to a report published by an Afghan human rights commission on Saturday.

Families of the victims described in interviews this week the painful toll of the attacks, which took place on March 4 in Nangarhar Province. One victim, a 16-year-old newly married girl, was cut down while she was carrying a bundle of grass to her family’s farmhouse, according to her family and the report. A 75-year-old man walking to his shop was hit by so many bullets that his son said he did not recognize the body when he came to the scene.

In its report, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission condemned the suicide bomb attack that started the episode, striking a Marine Special Operations unit convoy and slightly wounding one American. And the report said there might also have been small arms fire directed at the convoy immediately after the blast. But it said the response was disproportionate, especially given the obviously nonmilitary nature of the marines’ targets long after the ambush.
. . .

The events have had the highest profile of a number of potential human rights violations by both sides, many by the Taliban and its allies, in the fighting in Afghanistan that were documented by the Afghan commission, which was established after the Taliban’s ouster and is partly financed by Congress. The commission’s report comes amid resurgent Taliban violence and coalition reprisals that are costing an increasing number of civilian lives and that have brought harsh criticism of international forces in the country.

The deputy director of the human rights commission, Nader Nadery, warned that attacks like the highway shooting had greatly contributed to outrage in Afghanistan, contradicting efforts by coalition forces to win people’s support away from the Taliban. “This is not an isolated case” he said. “People are realizing more that they are a victim of the conflict from both sides, from the Taliban and from the international operations.”
. . .

In other cases involving coalition troops in Afghanistan, the report detailed an airstrike in Kapisa Province in March that killed a family of nine people, including two pregnant women and four children younger than 5.

If you kill them young enough, they can’t grow up to be terrorists. Or something.

The report also criticized continuing house raids by American forces, including one on the house of one of the human rights commission’s staff members, who the report said was hooded and handcuffed to a detonator and told not to move in case it exploded.

This is one way to show so-called human rights groups who is really in charge. Maybe now they’ll think twice about releasing reports like this one.

Via IOZ, we have word of mercenaries in Iraq joining in the fun.

On the afternoon of July 8, 2006, four private security guards rolled out of Baghdad's Green Zone in an armored SUV. The team leader, Jacob C. Washbourne, rode in the front passenger seat. He seemed in a good mood. His vacation started the next day.

"I want to kill somebody today," Washbourne said, according to the three other men in the vehicle, who later recalled it as an offhand remark. Before the day was over, however, the guards had been involved in three shooting incidents. In one, Washbourne allegedly fired into the windshield of a taxi for amusement, according to interviews and statements from the three other guards.

He’s a veritable army of one.

Can’t wait ‘till he comes home. Hold on, he’s back already.

Washbourne, a 29-year-old former Marine, denied the allegations. "They're all unfounded, unbased, and they simply did not happen," he said during an interview near his home in Broken Arrow, Okla.

The full story of what happened on Baghdad's airport road that day may never be known. But a Washington Post investigation of the incidents provides a rare look inside the world of private security contractors, the hired guns who fight a parallel and largely hidden war in Iraq. The contractors face the same dangers as the military, but many come to the war for big money, and they operate outside most of the laws that govern American forces.

The U.S. military has brought charges against dozens of soldiers and Marines in Iraq, including 64 servicemen linked to murders. Not a single case has been brought against a security contractor, and confusion is widespread among contractors and the military over what laws, if any, apply to their conduct. The Pentagon estimates that at least 20,000 security contractors work in Iraq, the size of an additional division.

Private contractors were granted immunity from the Iraqi legal process in 2004 by L. Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S. occupation government. More recently, the military and Congress have moved to establish guidelines for prosecuting contractors under U.S. law or the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but so far the issue remains unresolved.

IOZ clarifies for the Post’s readers:

[T]he fact that ignorant men made the decisions does not make the decisions themselves acts of ignorance. Or, as they say on the innertubes: Not a bug, but a feature. The United States didn't create a legal vacuum around two tens of thousands of heavily-armed hit men by accident, and the issues of their accountability and their culpability do not "remain unresolved" because they're "thorny" or "difficult" or "complex." How many times must we repeat ourselves: the war in Iraq was an act of aggression by the United States, an unprovoked invasion with no more moral or legal legitimacy than any conquest undertaken by Germany or the Soviet Union or Napoleonic France. We are not the good guys.

If we had a more patriotic press, we wouldn’t be plagued by these unpleasant thoughts. Thankfully, there’s a simple way to resolve any nasty cognitive dissonance—ignore it.

Blythe

These are some postcards my fiancée bought a couple years ago. Scary.

And here is psycho Blythe, in case there was any doubt.