Category: America

LA Times via Seattle Times: “Slaves’ courtroom fights for liberation revealed.” Archivists in St. Louis have uncovered, and digitized, an archive of the records of 283 “freedom suits” filed by slaves against their masters in St. Louis from 1814 to 1865. Many predate Dred Scott’s suit, often with more successful results. In fact Missouri, like Virginia, had a practice of “set[ting] aside taxpayer money to hire lawyers for slaves who sued for freedom.” The story, and the archive, open the doors on a fascinating chapter of US history.

In unrelated news, a historic copy of the Bill of Rights, which was one of 14 commissioned by George Washington when he was president and which was subsequently stolen from the North Carolina State House by a Union soldier during the Civil War, has been recovered, according to CNN. No word on whether Ashcroft has been notified, or whether he’s aware that we have a Bill of Rights.

CNN: Twenty-four cruise missiles were fired and 2000-lb. “bunker buster” bombs were dropped at “selected targets of military importance.” Speculation is that the target was a meeting of Saddam and his military advisors.

Hmm. Apparently itís operation Iraqi Freedom. As operation names go, itís no “Desert Storm.”

From a different front: The Guardian has reprinted a series of emails from Rachel Corrie, the American who was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer as she tried to keep Palestinian houses in the Gaza Strip from being destroyed:

I spent a lot of time writing about the disappointment of discovering, somewhat first-hand, the degree of evil of which we are still capable. I should at least mention that I am also discovering a degree of strength and of basic ability for humans to remain human in the direst of circumstances – which I also haven’t seen before. I think the word is dignity. I wish you could meet these people. Maybe, hopefully, someday you will.

I’m having a not-infrequent crisis of confidence, brought on by the failure of the administration’s incompetent, amateurish, hypocritical diplomacy… no, wait, let me start over.

I’m having a not-infrequent crisis of confidence, brought on by the nearness of the war and the lives being placed in danger on both sides. Prayer seems called for but pointless. Part of me says I should be supportive of our troops and not question their leader’s motives for bringing us to this point. And I do wish our troops Godspeed and a quick and decisive action, with no innocent blood spilt.

Part of me says I should just ignore it, that it will quickly go away, and that the stock market rebound will fix everything. (If it happens.) That’s not a very big part of me.

But I can’t stay silent. Even without questioning the president’s motives (which is tempting), I have to question his actions when they seem to fly in the face of everything I ever learned about this country and what it stands for.

I have to question his statement that we are legally justified in going to this war when the evidence to the contrary is strong.

I have to question his claims that Iraq poses a clear danger and possesses weapons of mass destruction, when all evidence of these weapons has proven to be based on fabricated documents, plagiarized British war dossiers, unreliable and discredited speculation, and misinterpreted reports.

I will not stay silent. These are my duties in this war:

1. It is my duty as a citizen to be informed.
2. It is my duty as a blogger to inform others.
3. It is my duty as a Christian to pray for the safety of our troops.
4. It is my duty as a patriot to question and challenge.

It’s probably long past time to do anything constructive with this, but Steve Kirsch’s listing of the top five learnings from 9/11—and how the administration’s actions have ignored them—is pretty persuasive. And his conclusions echo a lot of my thoughts:

1. Disarmament of foreign powers is not sufficient because our own weapons can easily be used to attack us
2. Increasing homeland security is not sufficient because there are way too many holes and we still can’t even plug one of them after years of trying
3. Attacking governments who support terrorists is not sufficient because it is not unfriendly governments who are the threat today; it is now the people from friendly nations who are attacking us
4. The root cause of the attack is that people don’t like us overseas because of our hegemonic foreign policies, not because they are jealous of us
5. The biggest threat to our world may be in our own reactions, and not the incident itself

…We should be asking ourselves two key questions:

• What could we have done that would have reduced the chance that this would have happened?
• What should we do now to reduce the chance of this happening again?

The answer is obvious. We should put our efforts on addressing the root causes of this terrorism, not the symptom. We need to make it less likely that people will want to fund and/or participate in such activities.

• We should have a Department of Peace and International Cooperation and Assistance, not a Department of Homeland Security.
• We should be supporting international treaties, not backing out of them.
• We should be a leader in seeking peaceful solutions to conflicts, not a leader in the pre-emptive strike.
• We should be respectful of foreign leaders, not insulting them by calling them pygmies.
• We should respect foreign governments, not label them “evil.”
• We should be having talks with our adversaries, not refusing to talk (as we are with North Korea).

In short, we should be doing exactly the opposite of what we are doing now.

Incidentally, this is the same Steve Kirsch who is the founder and CEO of Propel. When I met him in January of 2001, he was talking about energy policy mismanagement in California. Sounds like he found himself a bigger target.

MoveOn.org: Virtual March on Washington. The page plays back all the protests that participants made to their senators and to the White House yesterday. It is the single most impressive online democratic action I’ve ever seen. Mostly because it is a representation of a bunch of offline democratic actions: phone calls and faxes.

Over at Librarian.net, a set of perfectly legal signs that confirm to the letter of the PATRIOT Act: they don’t tell you whether the FBI has been there investigating your reading habits, but they make it perfectly clear that it’s a real possibility that they have been. Example: “Q: How can you tell when the FBI has been in your library? A: You can’t. (The PATRIOT Act makes it illegal for us to tell you if our computers are monitored; be aware!)

Oh, and Jessamyn: your RSS feed works just fine in NetNewsWire, your concerns to the contrary.

The Onion: N. Korea Wondering What It Has to Do to Attract U.S. Military Attention. I’m wondering this myself, but this summed it up beautifully for me:

“Bush says his number one priority is eliminating weapons of mass destruction, but he sure doesn’t act that way,” Kim said. “Iraq may have weapons of mass destruction and may be developing more. The DPRK, on the other hand, does have weapons of mass destruction and isn’t about to stop making them any time soon.”

“Can I be any more clear?” Kim continued. “We have nuclear bombs and delivery methods. Kablooey! There goes Anchorage! But does Bush care? Nope—he just goes on about how we’re ‘a diplomatic issue, not a military one.’ If he even mentions us at all, that is.”

“It’s like I don’t even exist,” Kim added.

Jane Siberry
From the Until the End of the World Soundtrack
Warner Bros., 1991

Santa Maria, Santa Teresa, Santa Anna, Santa Susannah
Santa Cecilia, Santa Copelia, Santa Domenica, Mary Angelica
Frater Achad, Frater Pietro, Julianus, Petronilla
Santa, Santos, Miroslaw, Vladimir
and all the rest

a man is placed upon the steps, a baby cries
and high above the church bells start to ring
and as the heaviness the body oh the heaviness settles in
somewhere you can hear a mother sing

then it’s one foot then the other as you step out onto the road
how much weight? how much weight?
then it’s how long? and how far?
and how many times before it’s too late?

calling all angels
calling all angels
walk me through this world
don’t leave me alone
calling all angels
calling all angels
we’re cryin’ and we’re hurtin’
and we’re not sure why…

and every day you gaze upon the sunset
with such love and intensity
it’s almost…it’s almost as if
if you could only crack the code
then you’d finally understand what this all means

but if you could…do you think you would
trade in all the pain and suffering?
ah, but then you’d miss
the beauty of the light upon this earth
and the sweetness of the leaving

calling all angels
calling all angels
walk me through this world
don’t leave me alone
callin’ all angels
callin’ all angels
we’re tryin’
we’re hopin’
we’re hurtin’
we’re lovin’
we’re cryin’
we’re callin’
’cause we’re not sure how this goes

Moxie: Weapons inspection. Brilliant riff on how easy it is to turn the administration’s prelude to war into a bad joke:

I’m kind of hesistant to go out tonight. No, not because of the elevated terror threat but because I think it’s only a matter of time until wankers in bars start using this stuff to get tail:

“The UN passed resolution 69 which clearly states I get some ass this weekend. If I don’t, the terrorists win.”

Don’t miss the comments section, which I (ahem) had some input into.

I have no words.

I’m letting the “astroturf” issue drop. For one thing, it’s not true astroturf—that is, it doesn’t represent some agency planting fake “grass roots” letters in newspapers around the country under phony names. Instead, it’s a letter writing campaign—one made transparent by Google, but a fairly normal occurrence nonetheless.

Greg pointed out yesterday that this sort of thing is fairly common practice on both sides of the aisle, and takes blame, or credit, for having done the same thing in support of environmental causes. I like his parting thoughts:

More citizens need to learn how to discern the difference between a real groundswell and the scripted kind. Politics would be healthier for it.

Paul reports that the origin of the “Bush economic leadership” astroturf is gopteamleader.com. Thanks to Mike Magee at TheInquirer.net for ferretting this out.

So who is gopteamleader.com? Why, the Republican National Committee, of course. They’re eager to make sure you never have to think for yourself, too: check out the page of Democratic “attacks” and responses.

Paul Boutin breaks an interesting story: Someone’s astroturfing local newspaper editorial pages on behalf of the President’s economic growth package. Dozens of newspapers “from Boston to Honolulu,” different names (the list of papers is here). The astroturfing was turned up by Google. Same text every time:

When it comes to the economy, President Bush is demonstrating genuine leadership. The economic growth package he recently proposed takes us in the right direction by accelerating the successful tax cuts of 2001, providing marriage penalty relief, and providing incentives for individuals and small businesses to save and invest. Contrary to the class warfare rhetoric attacking the President’s plan, the proposal helps everyone who pays taxes, and especially the middle class. This year alone, 92 million taxpayers will receive an immediate tax cut averaging $1,083 – and 46 million married couples will get back an average of $1,714. That’s not pocket change for a family struggling through uncertain economic times. Combined with the President’s new initiatives to help the unemployed, this plan gets people back to work and helps every sector of our economy.

What were they thinking? There are no secrets in the blogosphere. How are the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Chicago Tribune, and Boston Globe going to feel about being astroturfed? How seriously are they going to take statements from any official source who’s behind the Bush economic plan as a result?

Here’s a big clue: stop lying to us.