I just got off the plane here in Kabul and was greeted by this news about the Bagram detainees

and this IS good news... while it ain't perfect, it's a start and a whole hell of a lot better than heading the other direction like we were under you-know-who...

Hundreds of prisoners held by the U.S. military in Afghanistan will for the first time have the right to challenge their indefinite detention and call witnesses in their defense under a new review system being put in place this week, according to administration officials.

The new system will be applied to the more than 600 Afghans held at the Bagram military base, and will mark the first substantive change in the overseas detention policies that President Obama inherited from the Bush administration.

[...]

Under the new rules, each detainee will be assigned a U.S. military official, not a lawyer, to represent his interests and examine evidence against him. In proceedings before a board composed of military officers, detainees will have the right to call witnesses and present evidence when it is "reasonably available," the official said. The boards will determine whether detainees should be held by the United States, turned over to Afghan authorities or released. For those ordered held longer, the process will be repeated at six-month intervals.

my preference would be that each detainee have a lawyer, even if it's a military lawyer, but let's see what happens...

by the way, the sign that greeted me the first time i landed here in march of last year is still there...

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Traveling can be a bitch

it's now 8 a.m. saturday and i'm in heathrow airport, london, where i arrived about an hour and a half ago... i fly out to dubai where i land at midnight and transfer to the 03:30 kabul flight... by the time i land in kabul at 07:00 sunday morning, i will be burnt toast...

i haven't slept well for the past few nights anyway and i didn't get much more than a couple of hours of restful sleep on the flight from d.c. to london... i doubt i will get much on the flight from here to dubai either... needless to say, i will crash once i hit kabul... they may see me in the office briefly tomorrow afternoon... then again, they might not...

i'm a pretty resilient traveler and generally manage long flights and multiple time zones well, but there's no question that it takes a toll...

p.s. let me add a very positive note... yesterday in d.c., i asked the taxi driver taking me to dulles airport where he was from... i know the world is full of serendipitous coincidences so i was only mildly surprised when he told me he was from afghanistan... i told him i was on my way there for the 5th time and we had a wonderful, wonderful conversation for the 45 minutes it took to get to the airport from georgetown... we compared perspectives, shared details of our work and our families, and mutually deplored the despicable extremism we're witnessing in both his country and mine... it's those kind of encounters that brighten a day and make life just a little bit more worthwhile...

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9/11 - eight years to the day, I'm back in Dulles airport

september 11, 2001, i was working here at washington d.c. dulles international airport for united airlines... needless to say, it was a day that will be forever burned in my memory... i've posted on the details of that day in previous blog posts (here and here, among others), and i'm not going to repeat them here...

however, once again i find myself in dulles airport on 11 september, eight years on, this time waiting for a flight to london, and i'm stunned at how little things have changed... in many ways, it's as if the clock had been turned back... same gates, same crowds, same godforsaken airline...

here's what i consider to be a solid observation for the day from rebecca solnit at tomdispatch...

Eight years ago, 2,600 people lost their lives in Manhattan, and then several million people lost their story. The al-Qaeda attack on the Twin Towers did not defeat New Yorkers. It destroyed the buildings, contaminated the region, killed thousands, and disrupted the global economy, but it most assuredly did not conquer the citizenry. They were only defeated when their resilience was stolen from them by clichés, by the invisibility of what they accomplished that extraordinary morning, and by the very word 'terrorism,' which suggests that they, or we, were all terrified. The distortion, even obliteration, of what actually happened was a necessary precursor to launching the obscene response that culminated in a war on Iraq, a war we lost (even if some of us don't know that yet), and the loss of civil liberties and democratic principles that went with it.

it's a sobering day for reflection...

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Juan Cole's take on the health care situation

kinda tells you everything you need to know, doesn't it...?

Here is the ranking by health researchers of 19 industrialized nations by how well their health systems intervene to stop preventable deaths. The US is now dead last at number 19, below not only France and Japan but also Denmark and New Zealand.

The US has fallen four places in the past decade, so things are getting worse in this regard.

1. France (64.8 preventable death per 100,000 persons)
2. Japan (71.2)
3. Australia (71.3)
4. Spain
5. Italy
6. Canada
7. Norway
8. Netherlands
9. Sweden
10. Greece
11. Austria
12. Germany
13. Finland
14. New Zealand
15. Denmark
16. Britain
17. Ireland
18. Portugal
19. United States (109.7 preventable deaths per 100,000 persons)

The researchers concluded that the lack of access to health insurance on the part of 47 million Americans contributed to this dismal showing.

and there ya have it...

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A very personal take on Obama's health care speech last night

from a good friend in illinois...

I thought he delivered well on a complex issue. The Repubs. I felt were an embarrassing lot - or you can drop the "embarr" part. I do think that BO should refrain from hinting at dubya's faults though as he goes forward. That tain't going to play in Peoria too much longer. Let history speak for itself now - that will show George's incompetence soon enough. Liked how he ended it in speaking about how this issue defines our character.

I have a BIG stake in this. I lose my health coverage at the end of Oct. I've already tried to get it through AARP and Aetna. Told them I had RA [Rheumatoid Arthritis] and the person read a speech off a card how they were sorry, but they could not offer me insurance without an explanation. I told her to stop reading the speech and asked her if I was being denied due to my RA. She simply said "yes". So that means I'd have no access to the vital drugs I need in 6 weeks if something doesn't change and I'd be in severe pain that would eventually cripple me. Doesn't matter if I could afford to pay or not. And that's why these kind of changes are needed.

as a side note of interest, this is from a guy who voted for mccain...

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A 400% increase in death threats from Bush to Obama

from the uk telegraph...

Since Mr Obama took office, the rate of threats against the president has increased 400 per cent from the 3,000 a year or so under President George W. Bush, according to Ronald Kessler, author of In the President's Secret Service.

Some threats to Mr Obama, whose Secret Service codename is Renegade, have been publicised, including an alleged plot by white supremacists in Tennessee late last year to rob a gun store, shoot 88 black people, decapitate another 14 and then assassinate the first black president in American history.

Most however, are kept under wraps because the Secret Service fears that revealing details of them would only increase the number of copycat attempts. Although most threats are not credible, each one has to be investigated meticulously.

i have a feeling there are a lot of ugly, nasty types out there who would love to pop off our prez... it's truly a sorry time for my country...

p.s. i'm blogging from the phoenix airport on leg 2 of 5, this one to d.c. where i'll be until friday...

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A crime against the soul of a nation

caroline myss in the huffpo...

A conscious effort to "dumb down" the education of this nation qualifies as a crime against the soul of America. And dare I say this? If there was something as grievous as a mortal sin committed by a group against its own people, then the Republicans -- with Reagan at the helm -- and all the Democrats who stood by, or worse, backed this catastrophe -- committed that sin when they choreographed how they would dismantle the intellectual power and potential of our own children. (You should check your age -- you could be a product of this crime.)

[...]

There comes a time when we have to just stand up to these carnies (slang for carnival barkers) and tell them to stop polluting the soul of America with their constant and endless transmission of psychic free radicals in the form of lies, negative press, ridiculous criticism, overall lack of intelligent ideas and comments, and complete absence of creative thought. We should just blast them with emails and tell them to stop polluting the soul of our nation. Just stop it. We've had enough. I know I have. And I deeply believe the soul of our nation can't take much more of their strategy of deliberate division against the people of their own nation. That is a true crime -- and perhaps their greatest crime -- against the soul of this great nation.

as i sit in the food court of the airport on the first leg of the long trip back to afghanistan, a trip that will be punctuated by the next three nights in d.c., i'm surrounded by my dumbed-down fellow citizens, all sitting under the watchful eye of fox news, spewing worthless inanity in a constant reinforcement of our deteriorating collective mental capacity... what's supremely ironic is that, as i type this, fox is airing more of the completely bogus and manufactured controversy surrounding obama's address to the nation's schoolchildren...

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Yes, let's cultivate an enhanced ability to handle combat stress and slip back into life at home

back on 18 august, i posted on an nyt article that was evidently talking about the same thing (see Let's make our troops into cyborgs that can shake off that annoying malaise after killing people)... now time magazine is writing about the same thing...

is this how we want to condition our troops...? do we really want them to be able to kill and then just shrug it off...? is it just me or is this some really creepy shit...?

Samurai Mind Training for Modern American Warriors

[...]

Think military and you think macho, not meditation, but that's about to change now that the Army intends to train its 1.1 million soldiers in the art of mental toughness. The Defense Department hopes that giving soldiers tools to fend off mental stress will toughen its troops at war and at home. It's the first time mental combat is being mandated on a large scale, but a few thousand soldiers who have participated in a voluntary program called Warrior Mind Training have already gotten a taste of how strengthening the mind is way different - dare we say harder? - than pounding out the push-ups.

Warrior Mind Training is the brainchild of Ernst and two friends, who were teaching meditation and mind-training in California. In 2005, a Marine attended a class in San Diego and suggested expanding onto military bases. Ernst and her colleagues researched the military mindset, consulting with veterans who had practiced meditation on the battlefield and back home. She also delved into the science behind mind training to analyze how meditation tactics could help treat - and maybe even help prevent - post-traumatic stress disorder.

Rooted in the ancient Samurai code of self-discipline, Warrior Mind Training draws on the image of the mythic Japanese fighter, an elite swordsman who honed his battle skills along with his mental precision. The premise? Razor-sharp attention plus razor-sharp marksmanship equals fearsome warrior.

[...]

The benefits of Warrior Mind Training, students have told instructors, are impressive: better aim on the shooting range, higher test scores, enhanced ability to handle combat stress and slip back into life at home. No comprehensive studies have been done, though a poll of 25 participants showed 70% said they felt better able to handle stressful situations and 65% had improved self-control.

i'm all for meditation... i've been practicing it on and off since the late 80s, it's taken me in some very positive directions and, quite honestly, has helped lead me to a place in my life more positive and satisfying than i would have ever thought possible... but the aim of this effort creeps me out...

personally, i don't WANT to blow somebody to bloody bits and come away unaffected... in fact, the very LAST thing in this world i could ever imagine doing is blowing someone to bloody bits... i managed to spend 18 months in vietnam without firing a weapon and four - soon to be five - visits to afghanistan without witnessing death (not that i'm not highly aware that it's been all around me), and have found even those experiences to be profoundly disturbing... i simply can't imagine how i would be impacted by the immediate, visceral reality of death and destruction right in my face...

the other thing about this article that really disturbs me is the whole concept of "warrior"... i've posted several times previously on this and i think it's worth repeating one of them here...

from 14 january 2008

i've posted previously (here and here) on the increasing and deeply disturbing prevalence of the term "warrior" to describe those we send off to fight and die protecting the "interests" of our nation monied elites... here's another, equally disturbing one that just caught my attention...

from a lockheed martin press release...

“Lockheed Martin continues to focus on providing our Warfighters with new and innovative technologies that will make their jobs easier,” said Lionel Liebman, manager of Program Development – Applied Research at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control.

also interesting that "warfighter" is capitalized...

what the increasing visibility of these terms suggests to me is that we are continuing to be slowly inculcated to seeing war as an integral part of our society... yes, it's true, that serving our country via military service has, at least in the past, been seen as an honorable calling, whether it's just for one hitch or for a career... these people have always been known variously as "members of the military," "career military," "soldiers," "sailors," "airmen," "marines," or, simply, "our troops"... all of those sobriquets implied government service, love of country, defense of freedom, etc., etc...

but what is implied by "warrior" and "warfighter"...? to me, for one thing, they do NOT imply any of those other things... "warrior," for instance, for me, calls to mind warrior nations like sparta, where the entire society was devoted to conquest, or to descriptions of the marauding huns, usually characterized as a "warlike" people... the only "service" implied is service to death and destruction... "warfighter" is even more chilling... to me, that word implies a weapon of advanced technology, an implement, if you will, of accomplishing that death and destruction...

words are powerful and the words we choose to use convey a great deal about our beliefs and views of the world... "warrior" and "warfighter" make my skin crawl...

my skin is still crawling...

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Happy Labor Day...? Not so much... A holiday outpouring of truth...

here's some of the juicier parts of juan cole's labor day rant... it's a beaut and i strongly suggest reading the whole thing... it captures what should be the essence of this day and places it firmly in the context of our present, sad reality...

The unemployment rate as a write is inching toward 10 percent nationally, and that is only counting people who were still looking for a job recently. A vast bank robbery by the corrupt on Wall Street has robbed them of the credit that made the economy go. Labor Day was passed by Congress under Grover Cleveland to celebrate not only the individual American laborer but the labor movement-- yes, unions, workers' parades, hard hats and blue jeans (before the youth movement of the 1960s appropriated them, blue jeans were working class clothing, and my working class relatives upbraided me for wearing them as an undergraduate) . It is to celebrate all those icons that shills for the barracuda billionaires, such as Glenn Beck, now castigate as "fascist" and "communist."

[...]

The closest we get to celebrating the workers who built this country is when we talk about "working families," an odd locution, since aside from the idle rich who defrauded the country into bankruptcy last fall, wouldn't that be everyone?

[...]

Fewer effective unions have left American workers at the mercy of predatory company policies. Government has, since Ronald Reagan (who hated organized workers the way the devil hates holy water), also socially-engineered the tax laws so as to throw enormous further wealth at the wealthy. As a result, the average wage of the average worker in the United States has not increased since 1970 (in 2004 the bottom 60% of the population was actually making less in real terms per capita each year than in 1979). In contrast, the top 1% of the population by income now takes home nearly 20% of the country's annual income. The top 1%, about 3 million persons, has gone from owning 25% of the privately held wealth in the 1950s under Eisenhower to owning over a third today. The top 10 percent of Americans own almost all the country's privately-held property.


[...]

Reagan-Cheney between 1980 and 2008 created a new American aristocracy, a small sliver of super-rich, who buy and sell legislators, create whole "news networks" to present far right wing fantasies as "news," have their lackeys invade and occupy whole countries, hold themselves above the law, falsify financial statements, and suffer little or no punishment for stealing billions from the pensions of "working families" (i.e. those of us about whom P.T. Barnum remarked, "one is born every minute".) The Republican Party has come to represent these super-rich. Since .1% of the population couldn't actually win elections, they ally with other groups in society. About two-thirds of evangelicals have joined up with them, about a third of Latinos, significant numbers of mid-western rural families, and obviously large numbers of white southerners. In some cases these are lower middle class people on the make, who want to hitch their wagons to the brightest stars in the sky. In others, they share with the super-rich various resentments of the federal government. This alliance of odd bedfellows (think of Paris Hilton married to Joe Sixpack) is what produces the wackiness of Republican Party politics and media. They can't come out and say that they want the country run for the benefit of 300,000 multi-millionaires and billionaires (almost all of them white), so they say they are all in favor of guns, apple pie, Jay-sus and the Confederacy.

[...]

represents the poor schmucks who make up the 80 percent of the population that has been reduced to peasants by our new dukes, viscounts and princesses who have captured the lion's share of the country's wealth and income. Obviously, elements in the top 20% (and even more so in the top 1%) are not happy about any outbreak of democracy.

oh, god forbid we should even FLIRT with real democracy...

professor cole closes with this and a quote from carl sandberg's poem, chicago...

I celebrate today the organized workers, the ones who can push back against the crooks in pinstripe:

Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
and under his ribs the heart of the people

i see our new class of peasantry wherever i look these days - immigrant labor mowing lawns, joe sixpacks driving fedex delivery vans, stooped, elderly women ringing up purchases at walmart, young teens taking orders at fast food restaurants, middle-aged men manning security guard posts... we're all falling into line, taking our places in the service economy, eating highly processed, unhealthy food, going home to a house with an underwater mortgage to relax in front of our new giant, flat-screen tv that we bought on credit last december...

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Cloud photoblogging

my son tipped me off to this about 20 minutes ago and i took the photo off the back deck at 7:35 p.m. PDT... pretty amazing, eh...?

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Now, let's all feel sorry for the poor lobbyists and defense contractors

how 'bout it...? do ya think you can muster some sympathy...?

In a year when Washington's influence industry should be thriving, with epic battles over health-care and energy legislation, lobbying in many sectors is in marked decline as defense contractors, real estate firms and other companies pull back in a down economy.

Overall spending on lobbying has leveled off for the first time in a decade, according to disclosure data filed with Congress. Lobbying revenue for many of the city's most powerful advocacy firms, including bellwethers such as Patton Boggs and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, plunged 10 percent or more in the first half of the year.

Washington also has 2,200 fewer registered lobbyists than it did a year ago, the lowest tally since shortly after George W. Bush took office in January 2001.

[...]

The formidable defense industry, reeling from tens of thousands of layoffs, has cut back expenditures by 17 percent this year. That was true even with the lobbying effort triggered by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates's cancellation of the F-22 fighter jet and other major weapons projects, which had long survived thanks to the lobbying prowess of major contractors. Northrop Grumman has slashed its spending for lobbying in half, and Boeing and Lockheed Martin each have reduced spending by more than $1 million.

boo-freakin'-hoo...

p.s. ya gotta love that term, "influence industry"...

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